Maui dolphin facility’s
future looks dim

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By Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.com

WAILUKU >> A Maui County Council committee is poised to pass a bill to halt development of a dolphin exhibition facility in South Maui.

Three persons on the five-member committee -- Jo Anne Johnson, Michael Molina and Chairman Robert Carroll -- said they are inclined to support the bill.

"I think it's a good bill," Carroll said. "Right now, I'm leaning toward it, but I never make a final decision until I hear everybody."

Molina said he appreciated the educational benefits of a dolphin facility but thinks that keeping dolphins in captivity is not in the best interest of the dolphins.

"Taking them out of their natural habitat is not the natural order of things," he said.

The Council's Human Services and Economic Development Committee is scheduled to resume a meeting about the bill at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

With backing from Mayor James Apana, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation last year received approval from the Maui Planning Commission for a shoreline permit to develop the dolphin facility, as part of a family educational theme park.

Under the plan, the Dolphin Institute would move its Kewalo Basin operations to the 29-acre Weinberg development, mauka of Suda Store in Kihei.

Opponents this year have backed a bill drafted by Johnson that would outlaw the exhibition of captive dolphins and whales in Maui County. Johnson said a number of jurisdictions, including South Carolina, have enacted similar legislation.

During the committee meeting Thursday, more than 15 people spoke in favor of the bill, and a couple of scientists spoke against it.

Paul Nachtigall, interim director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, said he believed research needed to be done on dolphins in captivity and the ocean.

Nachtigall said dolphins have remarkable sonar capability, and the U.S. Navy used them to detect and mark the locations of underwater explosives during the Gulf War.

However, Charles Maxwell, a native culture practitioner working with the Maui Ocean Center, said keeping dolphins in captivity was not the Hawaiian way.

"Who are we? Are we God? How dare they do that," he said.

No representative was present at the committee meeting to speak on behalf of the Weinberg Foundation or the Dolphin Institute. Molina said one of the reasons for recessing the meeting was to give officials who oppose the bill an opportunity to speak before the committee.

If the bill is passed by the committee, the nine-member full Council would have two votes to approve it before sending it to the mayor.