MONTREAL — A U.S. and Canadian coalition urged a Quebec aquarium Thursday to scrap plans to build an aquarium where visitors could swim with dolphins.
Animal welfare and environmental organizations from Canada and the United States said the proposed aquarium at the Granby Zoo, about 40 miles southeast of Montreal, would be dangerous to the dolphins and to humans.
The interactive aquarium is expected to open in 2003 or 2004. Zoo officials say it would be the first in Canada where people could swim with dolphins.
Called No Granby Dolphins, the coalition claimed that 40 percent of captured bottlenose dolphins die from stress or infection within five days.
Franck Tieman of Global Action Network, a Montreal environmental group, said there are 15 cases on record in which people swimming with dolphins in the United States were hurt.
“We’re talking about broken bones, people being bitten, or hit against the wall,” Tieman said. “The dolphins are in a stressful situation.”
