Dolphin Tale tells us the story of Winter, a baby dolphin who was found in a lagoon in southern Florida, hopelessly entangled in crab trap line. She was transported immediately to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium for treatment of her tail, which had lost circulation during the hours that she was trapped. Despite the best efforts of the veterinarians at Clearwater, Winter’s tail was amputated.

After a long and difficult surgery, Winter was in a situation totally foreign to her—she had to learn to swim, eat, and survive, all without her tail. The tail fluke and joint are the powerhouse of a dolphin’s body—movement is virtually impossible without it.

But against the odds, Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics and Dr. Mike Walsh, Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s veterinarian, created a prosthetic tail for Winter. This was remarkable achievement, not only for Winter but for the scientific community as a whole.

This is the story of Winter as told from Clearwater’s perspective.

While Winter’s case is certainly extraordinary and the passion that the volunteers and professionals have for her well-being is evident, Dolphin Tale is doing more harm than good. With a cast of prestigious actors such as Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd, and Morgan Freeman, the film performed well and spread throughout the globe. The movie was marketed to show the altruism of humans in nurturing and taking care of Winter, as well as reinforce the idea that dolphinariums are wonderful places for the dolphins to be. This is a publicity stunt.

The film emphasizes the role of a young boy in Winter’s rescue. Captivated by the dolphin, he and his mother, a veterinarian, set out to mobilize the public to rally for a prosthetic tail instead of euthanization. Once the tail is on and Winter is “cured,” the resemblance to Flipper is eerie—nothing more than a dolphin, good looking and forever happy in her little blue pool.

Without a doubt, this film has torn into the hearts of families and encouraged swarms of visitors to the Clearwater Aquarium, where teary-eyed visitors can watch Winter and her co-detainees perform pirouettes with her plastic fin. Parents and children will wipe their eyes and blush as the show ends, saying “My God! What a wonderful place this dolphinarium is! Look at these trainers with their little protégés! We’ll have to go see this at SeaWorld too!”

What the film doesn’t tell you:

The near-death experience of Winter is not surprising–many animals have been seriously injured or mutilated by the furious boat traffic in the Gulf of Mexico, where full-speed travel is not out of the ordinary. Less surprising is the fact that this two-month old baby dolphin, condemned to certain death, was nurtured back to health at Clearwater, a former sewage tank turned dolphinarium.

This commercial gimmick, which poses as a “center dedicated to the rehabilitation of sick or injured marine animals,” only recently managed to pull its PR game together. Before the release of Dolphin Tale and the increased popularity that came with it, the home page of the website was meager at best—making it’s argument and mission pretty unconvincing.

The problem is that Clearwater isn’t freeing the dolphins.

This is understandable in Winter’s case, who would not be able to survive in the open ocean. But what about Sunset Sam, kept captive for 17 years and dying from a classic “liver infection”. What about his only companion, Panama, or Indy, Nicholas Sybil, Halona, and countless other dolphins inadvertently stranded? Why, after having received the necessary care from Clearwater or other Florida branches, weren’t they released back into the open ocean? These dolphins are literally feet away from the sea, but instead they are condemned to a life of chlorinated bathwater.

Why?

Because acquiring a “fresh” dolphin is too expensive.

We know that capture is banned in the US since the terrible red tide that massively decimated the population of bottlenose dolphins. From July of 1987 to March of 1988, 750 dolphins perished on the East Coast, all of them with livers containing brevetoxin—a buildup from eating contaminated fish.

The ability to “rehabilitate” dolphins has been used as a way of acquiring new dolphins without breaking the law—new genetic makeup means less cost, risk, and time spent trying to fabricate a “breeding program.”

Dolphin Tale does not tell you what you’re really doing when you visit a dolphinarium—fostering perpetual hunger and boredom for these dolphins. A meal of dead fish is fed to them in the morning, but the only way they can obtain the rest of their daily quota is by performing shows. These “performances,” are marketed as a fun time for humans and animals alike, but it’s far from that for the dolphins. It’s just something to distract from the awful monotony of existence in a pool that is entirely too small and lacking even the slightest environmental enrichment.

In terms of marketing, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium is very good—it forces its detainees to paint shimmering canvases of the false ideal that dolphinariums market, and sells this “artwork” to visitors at astronomical prices. When it comes to fraud, there is hardly anything better than this. Although dolphins have excellent vision, it’s monochromatic. In other words, they don’t see colors and do not know what they paint. It’s the trainer who chooses their brushes, and the trainer who ultimately “paints.”

But not to worry, all of the other usual distractions are there too—touch the dolphin, trainer for a day, take a picture with Winter…everything is about the money.

Dolphin Tale doesn’t explain the physical, let alone the psychological, suffering that captive dolphin are subjected to, nor the fact that many were captured violently off of Cuba. It also neglects to mention the massive slaughters that occur in Japan, with butchers creating shipments off to China, Canada, and the USA!

Boycott this film now.

Watch The Cove instead, which stars Ric O’Barry and raises awareness for the atrocities in Taiji, Japan.