Andramonov: animals in Krasnodar Territory's Dolphinarium are kept in awful conditions

The Gelendzhik Dolphinarium in the Krasnodar Territory is the single swimming pool in the world, where visitors are allowed to swim with dolphins without any medical examination and permit. Meanwhile, the death rate among the dolphins kept here is the highest in the world, as asserted by biologist Konstantin Andramonov, former employee of the Closed Joint-Stock Company (CJSC) "Gelendzhik Dolphinarium".

Specialists from the Centre of Hygiene and Epidemiology of the Krasnodar Territory have established, after laboratory essays of water from the swimming pool of the Dolphinarium that its quality, both by chemical, and microbiological parameters, does not meet the requirements moved to water of swimming pools. In fact, its contamination level is the same as in storm drainage.

Mr Andramonov explained that this was also confirmed by water analyses made by the laboratory of sea chemistry of the Southern Branch of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The specialist is confident that these abnormalities stem from one root - the desire of the Dolphinarium's managers to save money on expenses. First of all, it concerns the water exchange rate in the pool where dolphins are kept. According to the Gelendzhik branch of the Territorial Department of the Russian Federal Service for Consumer Goods Supervision ("Rospotrebnadzor"), a complete replacement of the whole volume of 860 cubic meters of sea water in this pool is made only once every 3 months (which is 1% of pool volume per day but not 30% as it should be according to Russian sanitary regulations).

The biologist adds that according to international standards for keeping sea mammals in bonds, 500 cubic meters per animal is recommended, while at the Gelendzhik Dolphinarium this figure makes only... 77.27 cubic meters.

"It's no surprise that in 2006, out of 8 Black Sea bottle-nosed dolphins kept in bonds at the Gelendzhik Dolphinarium two animals died - the highest death rate in the world (25 percent) among the dolphins kept in bonds," he has added.

In this context, in the opinion of the respondent the position of nature-protection and law enforcement bodies looks extremely mysterious, since they would not see obvious violations in operation of the CJSC "Gelendzhik Dolphinarium". He sent at least a dozen applications to various establishments, but none of the conducted examinations has revealed anything.