Vacationers of the Turkish 5 star hotel of Kefaluka in Bodrum critically reported in a holiday forum about the swimming injured dolphins in a tiny sea pen of the hotel and it created a worldwide public outcry.
On Facebook, the hotel management received several thousand notes of protests. Andreas Morlok, the CEO of ProWal and a member of the board of trustees of the Whale and Dolphin Protection Forum (WDSF), hit the road to Turkey for the week-end to stop the animal cruelty.
Both German marine protection organisations had already organised in April with several other animal welfare against the dolphinaria in Turkey. With the mayors of the towns with dolphinaria (Alanya, Antalya, Belek, Kemer, Kas, Bodrum, Marmaris, Kusadasi and Istanbul) and the governor in Antalya Andreas Morlok (ProWal) and Jurgen Ortmuller (WDSF) carried on intensive conversations, so that the catastrophic keeping of dolphins in small concrete tanks and sea pens has to be stopped.
The mayor in Bodrum, Mehmet Kocadon, promised immediately to the animal welfare groups the closing of the dolfinariums, after they had presented him pictures of the keeping of dolphins in cages.
As a result, the owner of the dolphinarium of Bodrum loaded two of his dolphins and transported them to the Kefaluka Hotel close to Bodrum. The dolphins there had swum with vacationers. For five minutes of swimming with the marine mammals the vacationers pay 70 euros.
The hotel management expressed their surprise about the protests in the conversation with the CEO of ProWal Andreas Morlok and promised to immediately remove the dolphins from the hotel facility. According to the own information of the hotel speaker, Mrs. Emine Mandira, they were not aware the outcome of keeping dolphins on their image. Emine Mandira announced to the CEO of ProWal, “We will never again agree to such an inquiry with dolphins.” Recently Thomas Cook had interestingly granted the hotel with the EXCELLENCE AWARD.
Morlok could find out on site that both dolphins were seriously injured. One of the dolphins had no teeth and apparently a mandibular fracture. The other had bloody abrasions at the head and a great sunburn. The sea pen for the animals had only a depth of four metres (0,0025 miles), so that the animals had to suffer the torrid sun. According to Morlok in immediate nearness of the marina and the hotel disco they have been exposed day and night to a deafening noise.
In the early Monday morning both maltreated dolphins were transported again in the dolphinarium of Bodrum with a truck. Both dolphins were in a tiny pool in a department store in Bursa last year. After the closing there they were transported to the tiny sea pen to Bodrum/Governilink. The animal welfare groups demanded immediate medical care and a careful releasing program for the dolphins. The dolphin owner who should have earned a lot of money with his dolphins during the last five years should bear the costs of more than 100,000 euros for one animal according to both organizations.
With the co-operative mayor of Bodrum both organisations want to keep contact so that a solution have to be found for the captive dolphins. With the other cities, the dolphin protectors are not so patient. Because there are no reactions up to now fromProWal and WDSF who were called out to close the dolphin prisons.
