Swimming with non-captive dolphins?

[d55guy]

My wife and I are going to Cozumel and Talum for our honeymoon/anniversary in late June. She absolutely loves dolphins and I wanted to get her a pass to one of those swim with the dolphin experiences. However I would really rather do it at a place with "free" dolphins. I have heard of places offering these experiences in open water but I haven't been able to find which ones do. Can anyone help? otherwise Chankanaab National Park seemed to have the most humane living conditions for them.

Thank you,
Kerry

 

[ggunn]

My wife and I are going to Cozumel and Talum for our honeymoon/anniversary in late June. She absolutely loves dolphins and I wanted to get her a pass to one of those swim with the dolphin experiences. However I would really rather do it at a place with "free" dolphins. I have heard of places offering these experiences in open water but I haven't been able to find which ones do. Can anyone help? otherwise Chankanaab National Park seemed to have the most humane living conditions for them.

Thank you,
Kerry

There are not a lot of free dolphins around Cozumel, at least in the summer; I see them occasionally but not very often. The enclosures at Chankanaab are larger than most Sea World tanks, but they still look pretty small to me for a species that is used to swimming many miles every day. I won't editorialize any more than that.

 

[Scubaroo]

I know this post was about non-captive dolphins, but anyone considering doing a dolphin encounter with captive dolphins should do a google search on the following terms:

dolphins solomons mexico

This has been covered extensively before, but should not be forgotten.

 

[catbrown]

It's true we don't see many dolphins in the area and we have not heard of any free dolphin experiences here. The operators of pens at the 'theme' parks do run them cleanly and well and they do try to make the experience educational as well but it just breaks my heart to see them there. When the captured dolphins were brought to Park Nizuc in Cancun from the Solomons it was kept fairly quiet even tho it was all over the Australian papers.

 

[AmyJ]

Scubaroo,

Thanks for the info!! We need to be aware of what is going on!

 

[d33ps1x]

I was just down in Playa Del Carmen for 2 weeks and did some dives on Cozumel. I saw 2 wild dolphins in my time there. I refuse to support any captive dolphin programs whatsoever.

My friend who is an instructor in Playa Del Carmen did a Christmas day dive on Moch-Che reef and saw an entire group of dolphins and has photos of it. So there is a chance of finding them.

The entire (not sure if is called a pod like whales), group of dolphins was seen on Moch-Che reef which is cool considering it is only in 35 feet of water.

While on that reef I was able to spy lobsters, green morays, spotted morays, Great Barracuda, Scorpianfish the usual collection of reef fish, and had triggerfish take some good chunks out of my wetsuit.

Pretty good place to see a lot of variety in a nice low current shallow setting.

I was also happy to see a 10 foot bull shark on Los Arcos reef in around 95 fsw right at the start (wsw) of the reef. It was nice enought stick around in the background for quite a while.

At the end of the day it's a lot more fun, rewarding, and humane to get out to Kalamazoo and find Elvis then have him brought to you in a glass box.