Animal markets and the slaughter of certain animals at home are being banned as Flanders updates 40-year-old animal welfare legislation. The new Flemish Animal Welfare Codex gathers existing and new regulations in an attempt to improve the protection
A big issue with the dolphins is that you can’t just release them. I agree that they should be phased out but dolphins can still more or less be kept happy and stimulated if done well. (still not the same as in the wild but well we also keep dogs on a leash to keep us company)
There’s also an educational part about it. Because of these dolphin shows and movies with them they are perceived as cute, smart and happy so hunting them is frowned upon. If people had never seen a dolphin in real life or in a movie they would just be big fish to people and they would still be massively hunted.
What saddens me even more are the killer whales kept in captivity. There have been cases where they just killed themselves out of boredom/depression/… They also routinely hurt each other and there’s not a single tank in the world that can keep them in an animal friendly way.
Dolphins, just like killer whales, can become severely depressed/neurotic in captivity. Additionally, there are rescue facilities that can take these animals in and either give them a livable rest of their lives without being set out in the wild, or can be readjusted to living in the wild. Instead of sending subsidies to these facilities and closing the Dolfinarium, it’s allowed to stay open until 2037.
Instrumentalising animals for human entertainment is absolutely morally wrong. You can’t use animals in a circus anymore, but the Dolfinarium is still allowed to exist. There are better ways to teach people about the intelligence of dolphins than torturing them in captivity and letting them do tricks for humans. Kids don’t need to see an elephant do tricks to learn about it being very intelligent.