Watch How He Reacts! (Video)

Captivity is a lonely existence for any marine animal. But for a bottle-nosed dolphin named Honey, her situation is decidedly worse. For months, Honey has been stuck in a dirty tank in a marine park that’s no longer open to the public. In many ways, she’s been forgotten. In 2005, Honey was captured during the annual dolphin drives in Taiji, Japan. Tim Burns, a volunteer with Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project, explained that Honey was probably kept in Taiji for a period of time while being trained to perform tricks.

“Typically, Taiji dolphins go through a training process, and that could take six months to a year, and then they get sold off as a trained dolphin,” Burns said. “And that’s where the real money is — selling a trained dolphin.” The person who ended up buying Honey was the owner of the Inubosaki Marine Park, a dolphinarium near Tokyo, Japan. Honey spent many years at the park performing shows for paying guests, along with a few other dolphins — but these other dolphins have since died, Burns explained. In January, the park closed its doors to the public due to failing tourism in the area. Yet Honey, as well as 46 penguins and hundreds of fish and reptiles, has remained at the park.

Abandonned in a dirty tank!

There appears to be a staff member who still cares for Honey and the other residents, but animal welfare advocates are becoming increasingly concerned about Honey’s living conditions. Team members at Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project were able to observe her for several hours on one occasion. “Her pool doesn’t look really clean,” Burns said. “The water condition did not look great, and it looked pretty dingy. For about two hours that we were observing her, I don’t think she moved 10 feet. She was simply just logging, laying there, a third of her body out of the water.” In the wild, dolphins spend all of their time swimming and moving around, but Honey doesn’t have any opportunity to do this in an artificial tank. Watch the video, she’s all alone and she’s exhibiting repetitive, compulsive patterns known as stereotypic behaviors, a sign of severe captive distress.