Black Sea bottlenose dolphins can’t be caught
legally without a permit, but Russian fishermen
can catch belugas and orcas under legal quotas
in the name of science and education. Some
belugas are sold legally to aquariums around
the country. Russia now allows only a dozen
or so orcas to be caught each year for scientific
and educational purposes, and since April 2018,
the government has cracked down on exporting
them. But government investigators believe that
Russian orcas—which can sell for millions—are
being caught illegally for export to China.
Captive orcas, which can grow to 20 feet long
and more than 10,000 pounds, are too big for the
traveling shows that typically feature dolphins
and belugas. When I contacted the owners of the
Moscow Traveling Dolphinarium and another
operation, the White Whale Show, in separate
telephone calls to ask where their dolphins and
belugas come from, both men, Sergey Kuznetsov
and Oleg Belesikov, hung up on me.
Russia’s dozen or so traveling oceanariums are
touted as a way to bring native wild animals to
people who might never see the ocean.
“Who else if not us?” says Mikhail Olyoshin, a
staffer at one traveling oceanarium. And on this
day in Kaluga, as the dolphins perform tricks to
American pop songs and lie on platforms for sev-
eral minutes for photo ops, parents and children
express the same sentiment: Imagine, dolphins,
up close, in my hometown. The ocean on delivery.O
WNERS AND OPERATORS of wildlife
tourism attractions, from high-end
facilities such as Dolphin Quest in
Hawaii to low-end monkey shows in
Thailand, say their animals live lon-
ger in captivity than wild counter-
parts because they’re safe from predators and
environmental hazards. Show operators proudly
emphasize that the animals under their care are
with them for life. They’re family.
Alla Azovtseva, a longtime dolphin trainer in
Russia, shakes her head.
“I don’t see any sense in this work. My con-
science bites me. I look at my animals and want
to cry,” says Azovtseva, who drives a red van with
dolphins airbrushed on the side. At the moment,
she’s training pilot whales to perform tricks at
Moscow’s Moskvarium, one of Europe’s largest
aquariums (not connected to the traveling dol-
phin shows). On her day off, we meet at a café
near Red Square.Tourists take turns
snapping photos with
a pygmy slow loris at
a floating river mar-
ket near Bangkok. The
nocturnal primates are
mostly poached from
the wild. Their sharp
teeth are cut off or
extracted to safeguard
people from the ani-
mals’ venomous bite.
WILDLIFE TOURISM 67