Over 100 years ago the New York Aquarium (NYA) was purchasing live dolphins from a dolphin fishery in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The fisheries’ focus was food and oil, but the director of the aquarium Charles Haskin Townsend, approached the company to supply the aquarium with live dolphins for display – they agreed.
Beginning in 1908, the NYA purchased between two and five dolphins a year for over 15 years and despite ailing dolphins and continuous deaths, the aquarium attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. The longest a dolphin survived at that time was under two years, some only lasting weeks upon their arrival at the facility. Over the years the facility continued to display various cetacean species including an orca for a brief time in 1968 and a narwhal in 1969. Although today no dolphins are taken from US waters for display, sadly wild captures continue elsewhere including Japan, to supply demand from the entertainment industry.
