THEY DESERVE TO BE FREE

It is important to remember that dolphins are largebrained, cognitive animals. This accounts for their social nature, their communications with each other, and their complex relationships within their dolphin pods, other dolphins, and the rest of their marine habitats. They also transfer behaviors to succeeding generations -- effectively a cultural transfer in their own cetacean way.

That said, they need their native habitats to flourish, and it bears repeating that dolphins need to live out in the open, not in dolphinariums or an enclosed facility like the upcoming Cebu Ocean Park. Some may claim that such facilities serve research purposes, but it is also well documented that dolphins in captivity behave differently than in the wild, as mentioned by Ocean Conservation Society President Maddalena Bearzi in a 2014 article for National Geographic Blogs.