What was Dolphinaris Arizona?
In 2016 a company that ran dolphin parks in Mexico brought bottlenose dolphins to the desert. Dolphinaris Arizona opened in October 2016 at OdySea in the Desert, the attraction complex beside the Loop 101 that also holds OdySea Aquarium and Butterfly Wonderland. It sold swims and encounters with the dolphins, some of them on loan from Dolphin Quest in Hawaii. It was the company’s only location in the United States. The complex has a Scottsdale address but stands on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community land.
It opened over loud objections: more than 100,000 people had signed against it. Then the dolphins began to die. Bodie in September 2017, Alia, Khloe in December 2018, and Kai, 22, at the end of January 2019. Four of eight.
Dolphinaris closed in February 2019 for a review by outside experts, and never reopened. The surviving dolphins were flown to St. Thomas, and in March the company said it was done.
The deaths and the end
The four. Bodie, a male, died in September 2017 of a rare muscle disease, by KNXV’s report. Alia died of an acute bacterial infection. Khloe died in December 2018 of a chronic illness caused by a parasite, Sarcocystis. Kai, 22, showed trouble swimming, eating and breathing in January 2019; after hours of critical care, the company said, it decided to euthanize him on January 31. “We recognize losing four dolphins over the last year and a half is abnormal,” the general manager, Christian Schaeffer, said.
The closing. Dolphinaris shut its doors in early February 2019 to bring in veterinarians, pathologists, water-quality experts and behaviorists. Dolphin Quest then ended its loan agreement, and the four remaining dolphins were moved to a facility in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In March, KJZZ reported that Dolphinaris would not return to OdySea, and the company said it would put an attraction without animals in the space.
The protest. A group called Dolphin Free AZ had campaigned against the attraction from the start. Its co-founder, Patricia Cady, called what happened “more characteristic of a dolphin experiment” than a dolphin experience.
The sources, and the gaps
Main sources: CNN, citing KNXV, in February 2019; In Defense of Animals the same month; KJZZ in March 2019; ABC15 on the 2016 opening; and Raw Story on the 2016 petition.
What’s unsettled:
- Alia’s death. May 2018 by CNN and KNXV; In Defense of Animals puts it in 2017.
- What’s there now. The company promised an animal-free attraction; KJZZ found the space vacant in 2019, and we haven’t confirmed what, if anything, has replaced it.
- The exact opening day. A grand opening was set for October 15, 2016.
Why it matters
Dolphinaris was one of the Valley’s most widely covered animal-welfare stories of the 2010s, reported by CNN as well as local outlets. It came at the moment opinion was turning against keeping marine mammals for entertainment, it opened anyway, and its results seemed to confirm what its critics had predicted. It lasted a little over two years. OdySea Aquarium, its accredited neighbor, has been open ever since and carries some of that history.