Britain's cetacean history (and other awful things we ought to be ashamed of)
25-minute read
Britain’s empire was the biggest in history. My home country began slowly taking over the world in the late 1500s and at its peak it covered almost 14 million square miles (35.5 million square kilometres). That’s a quarter of the Earth.
By 1913, the Union Jack flew over 400 million heads. The official end of the empire didn’t come about until 1997, and the UK still maintains overseas territories to this day. Please don’t think I’m boasting here, I’m extremely ashamed of Britain’s history.
Over the years we pilfered sacred artefacts (that we still refuse to give back), instigated bloody wars (12,000 African lives were taken during the Second Boer War alone, and the fight was between Dutch settlers and British colonists who started squabbling after gold was discovered nearby) and enslaved countless people (we literally ran the slave trade).
The cruelty of my forefathers also extended to animals, of course. Cockfighting and bear baiting were common forms of entertainment for generations. Animals were hunted down, packed up and shipped home by various explorers who wanted a living souvenir to remind them of all the damage they’d done abroad.
If you’ve heard A Dolphin Pod you’ll know that the practice of dolphin captivity didn’t begin in earnest until the 1930s. There had been plenty of attempts to bring whales to the people, but the confusingly-named Flippy the Educated Porpoise was the first dolphin not to die immediately in captivity. He lived at the first oceanarium in history, now called Marineland Florida.
True dolphin mania didn’t hit the rest of America until the early 60s. Britain soon caught wind and wanted to copy cool Uncle Sam. In total there were 30 facilities that kept dolphins captive, and there were even travelling dolphin shows. Aquarium operators took their dolphins to swimming pools across the nation to earn more in ticket sales. It makes me want to rage vomit.
I’ve written up a little profile for each UK dolphin facility. I rinsed America, China and Russia pretty hard in the podcast so I think it’s only fair that I show you my country’s closet full of dolphin skeletons.
Battersea Park Dolphinarium
Not to be confused with Battersea Park Zoo, this rusty little hell-hole was a circular steel tank in a windowless room in the middle of a busy funfair. There were three resident dolphins, apparently nobody bothered to write it down.
It was in business from 1917 to 1973 and was documented to house dolphins temporarily before they were sold on to other European aquariums. In 1973 a fire damaged the building beyond repair. The dolphins survived the blaze and were relocated to Porthcawl.
Blackpool Dolphinarium
This place seemingly only ran for one summer season in 1969. Two dolphins named Simbad and Pronto were the stars of the show. Three dolphins had been bought from South Africa but one died in Blackpool. At the end of the run the surviving two were sold to Margate Dolphinarium, which also ran seasonal and touring shows. Eventually they were exported to Malta.
Like the four bottlenoses that performed at Brean Down, the two survivors eventually made their way back to their home country where they continued to travel and perform.
Blair Drummond Safari Park
The dolphinarium had a plastic-lined sunken pool around 15 by six metres (50 by 20 feet) and three metres (10 feet) deep. Records are fuzzy, but it would seem there were two dolphins that performed under the names Flipper and Scottie. They spent winters doing shows in Malta, and Gibraltar, Mauritius and Scarborough. A report I read about the place described the fate of the dolphins -
Jenkie was said, in a press report, to have been pregnant in March 1977, with birth expected in 3 weeks. However, 'pregnancy' sometimes covered other reasons for failure to perform, for example: required elsewhere, incompatibility, illness or death. One of this pair is said to have died at this time, possibly on the return journey to the UK.
Brean Down Dolphinarium
Brean Down Dolphinarium was another one-season facility riding the dolphin wave in 1974. The pool was a breeze block structure lined with plastic. The dolphins Max, Leigh, Little Charlie and Peewee were all wild captured in Florida.
They were initially kept at Margate Dolphinarium before going on loan for shows at Cleethorpes Zoo, Sandown Dolphinarium and Brean Down. The four dolphins were returned to the US in 1975 and most likely carried on performing.
Belle Vue Zoo, Manchester
In December 1972 a temporary dolphin show was held at the zoo. Two dolphins swam in a small portable pool. This wasn’t all that unusual for Belle Vue, which frequently hosted a circus with animal acts that continued right up until its closure in 1977.
Brighton Aquarium and Dolphinarium
This was one of the UK’s longest-running dolphin facilities. Its cetacean captivity spanned from 1874 to1992, and the site is now a Sea Life Centre. The dolphins may be gone, but the poor welfare continues across the whole chain. In a 2018 investigation, it was found that more than 33% of all the animals at SeaLife Great Yarmouth had died in a single year. Facilities with touch tanks have particularly high mortality rates. Brighton has one. But it gets way worse.
Since they were so early to the party, they had some real trial and error to tackle at the beginning. I mentioned on A Dolphin Pod that at the beginning they briefly had a beluga whale and captured a pregnant porpoise which died almost immediately after arrival. I discovered more recently that she was just one of the porpoises they had, all of whom did not last long in captivity.
It wasn’t until 1968 that they had some success. Six bottlenose dolphins arrived and were placed in a pool that was later used to house sea lions. A bigger pool was built the next year and the aquarium planned to expand their cetacean collection.
In 1977 they imported five new dolphins from Mexico. They fell ill during transit and all but one died shortly after landing on UK soil. Instead, Brighton decided to help themselves to a rescued stranded dolphin called Missus and her calf Baby. In 1979 they bought six more dolphins, this time from Ocean Park, Hong Kong.
Due to desperately-needed repair work in 1982 the dolphins were moved to a converted swimming pool elsewhere in Brighton. Later down the line when more loud construction work was required, they didn’t bother moving the dolphins again and just let them suffer through the noise.
The animals had a total of 230 square metres (2,475 square feet) of space in their indoor pool. In fairness, it was filled with natural seawater and was the only tank in the UK to have ‘brushes’ attached to the bottom to entertain the dolphins. Not that that makes any of this remotely okay.
At one stage there was a plan to build an even bigger dolphin complex. They wanted a pool designated for breeding and rearing new dolphins, along with a quarantine and isolation pool. The works would have doubled the water’s surface area, but once captivity fell from public favour the plan was scrapped and the dolphins were sent away to perform overseas.
Missy and Silver didn’t get moved to a new facility though. A project called ‘Into The Blue’ helped get the dolphins to an enclosed lagoon in Providenciales, one of the islands of Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. They were released back into the wild, and ultimately we don’t know what happened to them.
Clacton Pier Dolphinarium
This place got a tongue-lashing in the podcast but believe it or not, there is so much more to tell you it’s insane. I learned so much researching this blog post. For starters, the recycled swimming pool on Clacton Pier wasn’t just home to orcas. but bottlenose dolphins, penguins and sea lions too.
It opened in 1971 and blessedly closed in the summer 1985. Primarily it was a training facility that animals would pass through after being shipped to England. There were resident animals, namely orcas Nemo, Neptune and Suzie Wong and bottlenose dolphins Bubbles and Squeak.
Nemo and Neptune were captured in Iceland along with a third male who died too quickly to be given a name. Here’s a snippet of an article I read that describes what happened -
Within days - and only two months after they were fished out of the sea - the anonymous male died of traumatic shock following severe injury to its abdominal wall and kidneys, either caused by a transit accident, attempted suicide, or by the aggression of his brothers in the sloping 2.4 metre - 3.2 metre deep former swimming pool. Neptune died 18 months afterwards of peritonitis.
Suzie was only there briefly. She was from Iceland like the others, but went to Windsor Safari Park before being sold to an aquarium in Hong Kong. She died on the 21st April 1997 after being held captive for 19 and a half years.
The animals were trained by a father-son duo called Reg and Peter Bloom. They operated a company called Dolphin Services, an off-shoot of their other enterprise Bloom U.K. which supplied dolphins to various British establishments. Reg Bloom was also involved in the capture, purchase and transportation of dolphins for other owners.
Sadly for the dolphins, they were expected to endure more than living in a shallow swimming pool and training to perform around the clock. There were scientific studies on how dolphins use their tongues and how well they can taste. There was also a strandings rescue service associated with the Clacton facility. Since we know other British aquariums had rescued stranded animals in their collections, I wouldn’t be surprised if this place was on the take too, dolphins-wise.
Cleethorpes Marineland and Zoo
The three dolphin pools here were outdoors, and if you’ve been to Cleethorpes you’ll know how rough that must have been. The biggest was 12 metres (40 feet) wide and embarrassingly shallow at only 2.44 metres (eight feet). The average length of an adult bottlenose dolphin is 2.5 metres (eight feet) and some have measured up at 3.7 metres (12 feet). 2.44 metres is not enough water for an animal that can grow to almost four.
They had bigger animals too. A shipment of beluga whales came in from Canada on the 8th June 1965. The only one to survive the journey was a female named Mamma. She refused to eat, and a public appeal was made for a beluga’s favourite food -squid. Sadly I can’t find how her story ended. Please email in to adolphinpod@gmail.com if you have any information about what happened to Mamma.
We do know exactly what happened to Calypso, the facility’s orca. She was a 5.5 metre (18 foot) seven-year-old who’d been captured off the coast of Canada in late 1969. She went to Cleethorpes on the way to a marine park near Nice in France. She was transferred there in 1970. I found the following account of the rest of her life in the Grimsby Telegraph -
Calypso’s time in captivity was sadly not a happy experience on the whole, particularly after her move to France, where she became something of a test subject for the future of killer whale exhibits.
Calypso was the first orca to be artificially inseminated, though it proved unsuccessful. Though alone in Cleethorpes, she at least had another whale to look at in France – a young male named Clovis.
This may not have been welcomed by either animal though. The two shared a tank but, while Clovis was from the Southern resident population in the wild, Calypso was from the Northern resident community.
It is believed this would have meant the pair would have had no community affiliation so they may not have been able to socialise without a potentially violent process of sorting out their dominance roles.
However, in the end, Calypso’s life away from the seas was brief. She sadly passed away in December 1970 after reportedly developing an abscess on her lung.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about this facility is that I worked there. Kind of. I worked at Pleasure Island, Cleethorpes in the off season in 2012. It was a small seaside theme park closed for the winter, but the animal attractions needed caring for. I only discovered it was on the same site as Cleethorpes Dolphinarium during the research for this blog post. I hope both of you who read this appreciate the days of my life I’ve lost to this. I’m kidding, I’ve loved every minute of it. All 14,000 of them.
I talked about how badly run the animal care side was in my podcast. and I mentioned that the sea lions and all the birds in the parrot show belonged to a company called Parrot and Seal. At the time it was run by none other than Peter Bloom - former trainer and trader of live dolphins. Peter’s son now runs his company, and they continue to profit from forcing animals for perform for the purpose of human entertainment.
In case anybody would like to see what a dolphin experiences when it travels, feel free to watch this video. I’ll warn you, it’s horrible. It’s footage of a dolphin being transported from Cleethorpes and don’t be deceived by the fact that it’s in black and white. This is pretty much exactly how it still happens to dolphins today.
Coventry Zoo Dolphinarium
To describe this facility as problematic would be an understatement. A UK dolphinarium archive opens its profile of this place thusly -
The Coventry Zoo was opened in 1966 by cousins of the Chipperfield circus family. It was notably famous for a large fibreglass Zulu warrior standing at the main gates. Coventry Zoo housed two bottlenose dolphins, 'Chipper' and 'Nero' for a number of years in the early 1970s in a geodesic dome. The animals had been originally imported from Florida.
That could be one of the worst paragraphs I’ve ever read. We already know it’s terrible for wild dolphins to be wrenched from the wild, flown across the world and made to entertain people. And the culturally insensitive statue isn’t helping their case one bit. But the part that haunts me is the family the profile mentions. The Chipperfields.
If you’re from the UK, the name Chipperfield might already send a shiver down your spine. If you have no idea what I’m talking about grab a torch because we’re headed down a rabbit hole.
James Chipperfield introduced performing animals to England at the famous Frost Fair on the Thames in 1684. His business would endure 300 years and Chipperfield’s Circus went on to become a household name.
Early shows included monkeys, dancing bears and trained pigs. Horses and dogs quickly became staple circus sights too. After World War II the Chipperfields bought nine elephants from Sri Lanka. They subsequently advertised an ‘elephant ballet’.
During the late 1940s, the animals were stored at RAF Wethersfield base. Elephants were housed in hangars and old offices doubled up as enclosures for lions, ligers, snakes and monkeys.
Chimpanzees were also on the bill, along with another highly intelligent species that is unsuitable for captivity called Homo sapiens. Human beings. The Chipperfield's Circus exhibited ‘Zulus from Africa’ and ‘Aztecs from Mexico’.
There’s very little information about this part of the Chipperfield tapestry, but human zoos and freak shows were once relatively common. Aside from being exploitative and dehumanising, it’s estimated that 1.4 billion people in the western world were exposed to human zoos and they likely played a part in the development of modern racism in Europe.
Mary Chipperfield took over the family business in 1955. She specialised in chimpanzee acts, and provided animals for BBC productions. In 1998, she was accused of cruel treatment of some animals in her circus. An infant chimpanzee named Trudy had been seized by police and taken to the Monkey World primate sanctuary in Dorset.
I worked at Monkey World in 2011 and spent a lot of time with the chimps. Trudy is one of the sweetest animals I have ever met, and I’m so happy that she gets to live the rest of her life in an enriching enclosure in a big group of her own kind, none of whom can be released into the wild because of how they’ve been treated by humans.
Footage emerged of massive animal cruelty at Chipperfield HQ. Mary’s husband Richard Cawley was shown beating a camel across its face to make it practice its act. He was also shown whipping Flora, a frail elephant who had discoloured skin from being beaten so frequently. The video also allegedly showed a circus employee, Stephen Gills, beating an elephant called Tembo with both a spade and a scaffolding rod.
Several minutes of film show Trudy repeatedly being beaten with a riding crop and kicked, and made to sleep in a tiny box. Mary Chipperfield was found guilty of twelve counts of cruelty to animals and fined £8,500. But she has not been banned from keeping animals.
But back In the 1960s Jimmy Chipperfield expanded the business into drive-through safari parks. They opened Longleat Safari Park in 1966, Windsor Safari Park in 1969 and Lambton Lion Park in 1972. They also had a hand in the establishment of Woburn, Blair Drummond and Knowsley Safari Parks. The majority of these places are still very much in business. I thought any UK consumers reading might be interested to learn that.
Another member of the family I’d like to highlight is Dicky Chipperfield. He had an exotic animal farm called Chipperfield Enterprises in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. The place kept UK circuses well-stocked with big cats for decades and had also been home to elephants and polar bears.
Dicky once told BBC Wildlife magazine that he had bred over a thousand lions and tigers at the farm. He would also train the animals up for circus acts to be sold or rented for performances. A fully trained circus animal could be sold for up to £30,000.
In 2008 a farm employee lost an arm to a tiger attack. 32-year-old Nigel Wesson had been working at the farm for just five weeks when the attack happened. He was taken straight into emergency surgery at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. The arm could not be reattached because it had already been eaten by the tiger.
Just a few weeks previously, the Chipperfields had made headlines over another violent tiger incident. Here’s how The Independent put it -
Early last month, Richard Chipperfield, 24, was seriously injured when a tiger he had raised as a cub clamped its jaws around his head. His brother Graham, 28, was questioned by police after he killed the 21-stone animal, which attacked Richard in Florida.
Animal Defenders International infiltrated the business and exposed Jimmy Chipperfield’s abuse on multiple occasions. They released a short documentary called Circus Madness showing row after row of caged big cats waiting for the next circus season. They tracked him down when he fled to France, and found him abusing tigers there too.
Believe it or not, Chipperfield’s is still going. Their acts don’t have animals any more, but that’s not for lack of trying. In April 2018 Thomas Chipperfield lost an appeal against a decision by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to refuse him a licence to use two lions and a tiger in a travelling circus. In a public statement he said that he plans to make a new appeal. It’s just unreal.
Please don’t go to a Chipperfield Circus. I wouldn’t step across the threshold if they paid me. This company spent years profiting off suffering of both people and animals. And they weren’t hiding it away. They were proudly building commemorative statues of their shady history outside their dolphinariums. Oh yeah, that’s what I’m supposed to be talking about.
The pool at Coventry was 12 metres (40 feet) across and 4.3 metres (14 feet) deep. Their fish preparation facilities are also said to have been inadequate. The training was probably sub-par too. One of their four listed trainers was Mrs Mary Chipperfield herself. Those poor animals.
Chipper and Nero were originally brought ashore to perform in a season at an amusement park in Weymouth, Dorset in 1971. They were sold off to a dolphinarium Hamburg, Germany in 1976.
Dudley Zoo
The outdoor whale and dolphin tanks were adapted sea lion pools in the remnants of moat around the old castle in the middle of the park. Both bottlenose dolphins and an orca were kept in there between the years of 1971 and 1974.
On October 5th, 1968, 25 killer whales were netted in Yukon Harbour, Washington. It was the largest killer whale capture at the time. Cuddles, originally thought to be female, was the first captive killer whale in England, and the first killer whale to fly across the Atlantic.
Cuddles started to become aggressive towards his trainers by October of 1969, and he attacked them at least twice. This forced keepers to clean his tank from inside a shark cage.
He died there on February 6th, 1974 due to a burst abscess near his heart. He also had a broken rib from a training accident. The wound got infected and contrubted to his death. Afterwards, the pool he lived in went back to housing sea lions.
Flamingoland
Three dolphins arrived in Yorkshire in 1966 and were soon thrust into the public eye. At first, they drummed up business by touring the animals. One of the three, a male, passed away soon after being put into the travelling exhibition.
The first pool they were kept in was 3.66 metres (12 feet) wide and 1.52 metres (five feet) in depth but a bigger one came along a little down the line. It was mostly home to bottlenose dolphins but other whales were imported too. A young beluga whale arrived in 1964 and a young pilot whale came in 1966. Sources are scant, but I don’t think either of these animals survived very long.
The brainiacs at Flamingoland planned to expand their pilot whale operation nonetheless. They wanted to piggyback on the drive hunts in the Faroe Islands and send some live animals back to the UK. Luckily, this idea fell to the wayside.
Flamingoland also had a busy seasonal dolphin tour operation that ran from 1966 to 1970 that travelled as far as the south coast of the country. In 1975 they had the audacity to ship two of their dolphins on a three-month performance engagement in Taiwan.
Their last three dolphins arrived in 1984 and were owned and cared for by Peter Bloom of Dolphin Services UK. The animals remained on site until 1993 when the dolphinarium finally closed due to new husbandry legislation for cetaceans in the UK. The three female dolphins were then relocated to European collections and have since bred and reared several calves to populate the captive population.
Gwrych Castle
Now famous for being home to the COVID editions of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in the UK, this historic landmark had a dolphin show in 1970. The dolphins lived in a free-standing, plastic lined, portable tank built into the ground. It was said to leak, leaving the animals stranded. There were also said to be major filtration problems, so the water got very dirty, when it was there at all.
Knowsley Safari Park
Various dolphins went through Knowsley between 1972 and 1985. Two of those where acquired from a drive fisheries in Japan made famous in 2010 by The Cove. The Japanese dolphins were acclimated to captivity at Ocean Park, Hong Kong before their transfer to the UK.
The story of these animals gets even weirder though. Their capture and transport were highlighted in a special edition of the BBC animal series 'Animal Magic' . It was hosted by TV presenter Terry Nutkins, who I was staggered to learn was also the general manager for a dolphin trading company Entam Groups Dolphinaria. They also built new dolphin tanks across the UK, Knowsley’s included.
London Dolphinarium
Located at 65 Oxford Street, the address is now a bustling Zara store. The indoor pool was slightly longer than the average at 14.5 metres (48 feet) but was just as shallow at three measly metres (10 pathetic feet).
The male dolphins were given testosterone-lowering drugs called anti-androgens to reduce their sex drive. Apparently they were making vigorous amorous advances to the human female performers who played the parts of ‘aquamaids’ in the show.
The establishment was never a great financial success. They did try hosting a lecture and demonstration service for schools, but they didn’t survive past 1971.
Queen’s Entertainment Centre
At least seven dolphins called this converted swimming pool of a Butlin's Hotel home at one time or another. The mere thought makes me queasy. The place was still a hotel, and there were viewing windows into the dolphin pool in the bar. I’m sure the patrons were all quiet and respectful.
Marineland Morcambe
Two owners of established UK zoos came together to open a new marine park on the west coast of northern England. They had funding issues almost immediately and had to be bailed out by the council. The pools were very small and the absolute definition of grot.
The most noteworthy thing I found on this place was the fate of their last remaining dolphin, Rocky. He was part of the release project I mentioned earlier that set two of the Brighton dolphins free in the wild.
Rocky was transported to the Florida lagoon from the UK on February 11, 1991. All three were released from this to the wild at 1.30.pm on Tuesday, September 10, 1991. I already told you that we don’t know what happened to them, but there was one sighting of the male dolphin Silver.
He’d lost weight and appeared to have a skin infection on his snout. He was given food and medicine, but the only reported sightings from then on were secondhand accounts of fishermen and beachgoers. Like I said, the fate of all the dolphins is unknown.
Morcambe Marineland closed in 1990 and, unlike many of the establishments on this list, isn’t still doing business today. It isn’t even standing any more, it was demolished in 1992.
Ocean Park Seaburn
This Sunderland-based dolphin pool was seasonal outdoor facility with animals on loan from Flamingoland. They went back there during the winter. The dolphin display at Seaburn appears to have only operated for one or two summers starting in 1973.
On Thursday October 11th 1973, a harbour porpoise stranded on the beach nearby. It was found by the owner of a local pub who put it in the boot of his car and took it to Ocean Park where it promptly died.
Porthcawl Dolphinarium
Like Battersea Park Dolphinarium, the animals here lived in a tiny pool in a concrete building in the middle of a funfair. In fact, the dolphins were unlucky enough to spend time at both Battersea and Porthcawl.
It established in 1971 and the last two dolphins to be housed here were in the winter of 1974 and they were only there to be trained for a show in London. The next year the pool was used for sea lions and has since been demolished. Thank goodness.
But rather chillingly, the design of the 13.7 by 6.7 by 2.7 metres (45 by 22 by 8.9 feet) pool became something of a template for other British aquariums. Rhyl Dolphinarium, Knowsley and Woburn Safari Parks were all likely at the very least inspired by the cramped Porthcawl pool.
Rhyl Dolphinarium
The dolphins here on the north Wales coast were seasonal loans Knowsley and Woburn from 1972 to 1974. I’ve read that they performed under the names Flipper and Blodwyn, which makes me think those were stage names so the public didn’t notice the same few dolphins were performing at venues all over the country.
Yet another fairground facility, this place was the first construction of a major player in the captive dolphin game called Entam. I mentioned them earlier in the Knowsley Safari Park section. Terry Nutkins was in charge of the dolphins at Rhyl Dolphinarium as well as Knowsley. Etam discontinued the operation of its dolphinariums in 1983.
The dolphin pool remained under the floor of the Breaks Snooker Club and Sports Bar until its closure and subsequent demolishment in 2017. There’s still an aquarium in Rhyl though, and their seals perform twice a day.
The Royalty Folies
This wasn’t an aquarium, but a three-month long show held at the Royalty Theatre in London in 1974. The content was adult in nature, and the production has since been renamed The Great International Nude Show. The poster featured four scantily clad women, one of which was in the water with dolphins.
The show featured ‘mermaid’ Ms Linda Salmon. At the climax of the show, a glass tank containing two dolphins emerged from the stage. They had been trained to remove her swimwear for the act, which was called the Flipper Stripper. It incenses me that the whole reason they wanted dolphins in the first place because they thought up the name and went to any lengths to make it happen.
The two dolphins were called Pixie and Penny and they were trained for the show over the winter of 1973 at Porthcawl Dolphinarium. The show wasn’t a success and closed because it wasn’t making enough money. The animals were sent on a tour in Asia, where they both got ill and died within the year.
It is said that the Royalty Theatre, which is now known as the Peacock Theatre in Holburn, is haunted by a dolphin. Rumour has it there were supposed to be three dolphins in the show, but one died in the tank before the first show. Some say they hear ‘spectral squeaking’ and ‘desolate wailing’ of the phantom animal in the empty theatre.
I would be willing to believe that. Not the ghost part. I may write This Paranormal Life but I’m not a lunatic. I don’t doubt a dolphin could have died there. But records indicate two dolphins arrived and the same two left. Honestly I’m still suspicious, but we’re very unlikely to uncover the truth. Again, not about the ghost. I’m giving that an unlicensed double no, even though there’s only one of me.
Sandown Dolphinarium
The Isle of Wight is a short ferry ride from mainland Britain and from 1971 to 1973 a seafront swimming pool in Sandown was home to four dolphins you’ve already been introduced to - Max, Leigh, Little Charlie and Peewee. They bounced around between Margate, Cleethorpes, Brean Down and Sandown.
Scarborough Marineland & Zoo
This was one of the earliest facilities to show dolphins in the UK, starting in 1969. Natural sea water was used in the early years, but they switched to artificial salt water later down the line, citing ‘water quality control’ issues. The dolphin pool was cooled in summer. Not sure how necessary that would have been in Scarborough but we can just move on.
The dolphins performed under the names Flipper and Jenkie. I’m starting to think that they just picked names and grabbed two random dolphins out of their collection and gave them the same stage identities.
Scarborough supplied dolphins to other aquariums and sent several on tour. They visited at least three different swimming pools. Grove Baths in Belfast, Horwich Swimming Pool in Bolton and Maindeep Baths in Newport, Wales.
Sadly, they were routinely sent further afield than the UK. Their winters were spent in Malta, South Africa and Gibraltar. Some animals travelled between Scarborough and a facility in Hemingford, Quebec in Canada between 1970 and 1974.
Skegness Dolphinarium
This was a temporary outdoor exhibit with a partially-sunken plastic-lined pool on the Lincolnshire coast. It was only 9.14 metres (30 feet) in diameter and 2.13 metres (seven feet) deep. The show had a commentary with scientific information that I’m sure was 100% accurate.
South Elmsall Animal Training School and Dolphinarium
Active from 1972 to 1974. The animals were kept in repurposed swimming baths built in 1932. There are documents that suggest 35 or more dolphins were shipped to this facility from America. There’s conflicting evidence though and the truth has been lost to history. There were at least eight dolphins housed there together at one time.
It appears they were something of a holding facility that made money in trading dolphins rather than displaying them. The biggest piece of evidence for that is that the facility wasn’t open to the public. This is the only photo I found of the facility, but to be quite honest I didn’t look that hard.
Southend Dolphinarium
The were in fact three facilities that displayed dolphins in Southend between 1969 and 1974. There was a summer show at the Kursaal Amusement Centre in 1969. It was run by Jim Tiebor, the son of a famous American seal ion trainer called Roland Tiebor.
Jim’s company, Florida Dolphin Shows, supplied animal displays to various theme parks and attractions across Europe. The two dolphins at the Kursaal were Sinbad and Sally and went back to Germany at the end of the 1969 season.
The second and third dolphinariums were an expansion of the facility at Margate. For the 1971 season the animals were put in the Westcliff-on-Sea saltwater swimming pool. It had become vacant due to the construction of a superior new indoor swimming pool in Southend. It looks pretty big in pictures, but it was still nowhere near deep or spacious enough for dolphins.
A new pool was built ready for the following year on the east side of Southend Pier. It was originally designated to be a children's puppet theatre but operated as a dolphinarium until 1974. I found a newspaper article that said one of their dolphins had to be given libido-lowering drugs to make him more co-operative in the shows. The site was abandoned by the owners and laid derelict for years and was eventually demolished in 1976.
Southsea Dolphinarium
Two dolphins that were originally captured from the wild in Florida were displayed here in Portsmouth in 1973. Patsy and Lulu were loaners from Flamingoland for the summer show.
The pool was a plastic-lined steel tank set above ground level. Size-wise it was basically the same as all the others I’ve described so far - a hellishly small 9.14 metres (30 feet) in diameter and 3.05 metres (10 feet) deep.
The dolphins were transported by train from Flamingoland up in Yorkshire to Southampton on the south coast then driven to Southsea. At the end of the season they were sold to Windsor Safari Park.
Patsy died at Windsor in 1974 after three years of captivity, transportation, training and performing. Lulu was still alive when the park closed in 1992 and was sold to Dolphinarium Harderwijk in the Netherlands. She lived to the age of 34 after having three male calves.
Juno (born 1984) and Apollo (1989) are still alive at the time of writing this. They are still at Harderwijk as I type. Zeus was born in 1993 but has since died. I’d love to tell you how and when but the captive dolphin database doesn’t have that information.
In fact, looking at the ‘dead’ tab on the Harderwijk entry is pretty horrifying. There are 113 animals listed as deceased at the facility. 28 of those are not named. That usually means they died too quickly after being born or arriving at the aquarium to be given a name.
West Midlands Safari Park Dolphinarium
This was another single-season deal in either 1975 or 1976. Believe it or not, sources disagree. This was another park founded by the Chipperfield family, namely Jimmy. He put some of his ex-circus animals on display and in case you’re wondering, yes! West Midlands Safari Park is still up and running.
The old dolphin pool was repurposed for South African fur seals and then California sea lions. The sea lions perform twice daily on weekdays.
Weymouth Dolphinarium
I was horrified to discover that a dolphinarium was built in Durley Chine, Bournemouth in 1971. It might not sound any worse than anything else I’ve described thus far, but it’s particularly jarring because that’s where I live.
The show had four dolphins named Adonis, Chipper, Mickey and Nero. After a single season run two of the dolphins were bought by the Chipperfield Brothers Amusement Park in Weymouth.
Chipper and Nero performed there for one season before being sent to Coventry Zoo, another Chipperfield Brothers property. They went to Woburn for a bit before getting shipped to Hackenbeck Tierpark in Germany in 1976, as I mentioned in the Coventry section of this full-length novel.
Whipsnade Zoo
In case you aren’t au fait with Britain’s animal facilities, Whipsnade is owned by the Zoological Society of London, or ZSL for short. They also run London Zoo. In the early 1970s it was decided that a representative of the Order Cetacea would enhance the educational value of ZSL’s collection. Yippee.
They opened their water mammal exhibit in May 1972, after getting tips from the other facilities that had imported dolphins to learn the ‘best practice’. Because those other places were just great.
Whipsnade had three small pools, one of which was partially outdoors. One of the first three dolphins died within a few days of arrival. Two more arrived in the autumn of 1972. In 1984 a calf was born to Nina, who had arrived in 1978, which lived for just under a month.
Their male, Samson, was captured along the Texas coast in 1978. The female, Lady, was taken from the same area in 1980. She had previously been at Windsor and performed at Scarborough and was bought by ZSL in July 1985.
The dolphins would perform all summer and train during the winter. The public were still allowed to come and see the training. They were essentially full shows but without the on-mic commentary the summer presentations had.
The original concept was that the exhibit would later be expanded to become a dolphin research and breeding centre. Thankfully those plans fell through when the UK government saw sense and demanded conditions be made better for UK whales or they would end cetacean captivity altogether. Genuine yippee!
The dolphinarium closed its doors in 1988. Lady went to Marecambe’s Marineland where she died before the end of UK dolphin captivity. Samson went to Barcelona, Spain to continue entertaining against his will.
Windsor Safari Park
This facility has already had a fair few mentions so far, and for good reason. The park was founded in 1969 by the Billy Smart's circus family and the dolphinarium was opened to the public the following year.
But the family’s history with whales goes back further. In 1965, 30 pilot whales were sighted in the Thames. Billy Smart went straight out in a boat, along with some other aquarium owners, to catch some. The expedition lasted for five days and cost £1,000 (£23,878 today adjusted for inflation) and only stopped when the police warned them that since the whales were in the Thames, they belonged to the crown.
They had three pools. There was a square holding pool measuring 7.6 metres (25 feet) each way and three metres (10 feet) deep. They also had a pear-shaped one spanning 26 metres (85 feet) with a width of 12.5 metres (41 feet). The rectangular display pool was 26 metres (85 feet) long and 14 metres (46 feet) wide. Both were 3.5 metres (11.5 feet) deep.
Not counting depth, that’s significantly bigger than most of the enclosures we’ve heard about, but these pools weren’t just for bottlenoses. The park had two orcas on top of their dolphin collection.
The first four bottlenose dolphins arrived in July 1969. Our great mate Reg Bloom from Clacton helped catch them in Florida. Two more came in March 1970 and they got their first orca, Ramu in September. One of the original four dolphins died that November after ingesting plastic.
The second killer whale was housed at Windsor at the request of the Department of the Environment, presumably because it’s cruel to keep an orca alone. Heck, it’s cruel to keep an orca. End of sentence.
They almost got their hands on a pilot whale called Hummer. He was supposed to be part of their deal to sell Ramu to SeaWorld in 1976. Hummer was deemed too sick to travel and stayed in San Diego. They also looked into getting in on the pilot whale action in the Faroe Islands but couldn’t form a workable plan.
In 1982 a team from Windsor went to Malta to rescue two baby pilot whales that had spent three days on a fishmongers slab. Their skin was a mess, and once they’d been rescued/dumped in a swimming pool they were exposed to too much sunlight. They got blisters, which got infected, and then they died.
The park closed down in 1992 and eventually reopened as Legoland Windsor. Most of the animals were sold off to other UK zoos but the marine mammals went to Dolphinarium Harderwijk in the Netherlands.
Woburn dolphinarium
Two of Woburn's first dolphins were Bonny and Clyde. They came from the London Dolphinarium and were part of the group managed by Terry Nutkins. He can be seen on the right hand side in this image. They’re restraining Bonny to give her an ultrasound. Well, the caption says they were trying to determine if she was pregnant. I hope it was an ultrasound.
The dolphins were in residence from 1971 to 1983. Like many of the substandard dolphin tanks we’ve heard about, Woburn’s went on to become a sea lion exhibit. They still perform twice a day, once indoors and once outdoors. In fact, Woburn has an animal feed, demonstration or encounter at least every 15 minutes from 11 in the morning to 5:15 PM. Some time slots have two shows.
Congratulations everybody. We made it. That’s all of them. But before I wrap up, I’d like to clarify something. On my podcast, I talked about dolphin captivity being outlawed in the UK. The thing is, it’s technically still legal. The welfare laws are just so tight that it would be very difficult and expensive to abide by them.
In 1983, a scientific report was ordered by the government to lay down new regulations about minimum pool sizes. Would you believe it, every single dolphin tank in the country failed to meet the new minimum standards. Facilities were given 10 years to bring things up to code but get this - none of them bothered.
While I think it’s great that we don’t have captive dolphins, we really should make it properly illegal. Another thing to bear in mind is that, as we’ve heard, once the laws changed the dolphins didn’t magically disappear. They got sent all over the world to continue lives in captivity.
I saw some of the British dolphins in a Netflix documentary called ‘The Last Dolphin King’. It was about a world-leading dolphin trainer who got caught physically abusing the dolphins in his care. They show footage of extremely rough medical treatment on the ex-UK dolphins after their arrival in Spain. The distress is painfully clear.
I would give you a timestamp, but I feel sick at the thought of watching one more second of that documentary. I didn’t even make it all the way to the end. It brings me so much shame to know these animals that were ripped from their natural habitats and auctioned off like cattle in the name of entertaining us. There’s no excuse for that, and just because it isn’t still happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Listen to A Dolphin Pod if you want to learn more.
