Jim Murren

CEO
MGM Resorts International
3600 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Dear Mr. Murren,

I am writing to inform you that the morals and ethics of keeping dolphins in captivity has become more
controversial over the past year and is increasingly being reflected in public opinion in part due to the popularity of
the documentary Blackfish.
In case you arent aware, scientific evidence has found dolphins to be self-aware meaning that they see
themselves as individuals, separate from the environment and other individuals. This trait has only been proven
among Great Apes, Elephants, Orcas, Bottlenose Dolphins, And European Magpies and of course, humans.
In the wild, dolphins have complex social lives which cannot be recreated in captivity. Even if the majority of your
dolphins are related; males and females and juveniles would never be forced to separate in the wild.
The Dolphin brain is not only larger than the human brain, but they have a cerebral cortex that is about 40% larger
than the humans. This cortex concerns emotional control, objectivity, reality orientation, humor, logically
consistent abstract thought and higher creativity. Some say that dolphins are even more emotional than humans.
If this is so, how can we ethically confine them to such small living quarters? How would you feel if you lived your
life enclosed in a small room?
Dolphins are wide ranging intelligent and social animals and no holding pool can be adequate to fill their physical
or mental needs no matter how often they are trained. There are numerous pictures of The Mirage dolphins
displaying unnatural behaviors like lying listless at the gates and beaching themselves (beaching would only occur
in the wild due to extreme stress). There are pictures of a few of The Mirage dolphins with poxvirus (which would
normally go into remission in the wild). Maverick has shown poxvirus spreading for over a year and no sign of
remission and stress is a key implication of this.
The death rate of The Mirage dolphins since 1990 is 55%. 12 out of 22 dolphins have died (mostly from stress
related illness). Wild dolphins can live to their 50s, even 60s. The average age of death at The Mirage is 10.6
years.
26 MILLION People have seen Blackfish. Those people are asking questions and beginning to research on their own
and coming up with their own conclusions that these animals do not belong in captivity. They shouldnt be captive
in Florida, or California, or Texas and certainly not in the Mojave Desert.
Currently, there is a bill in California that could end Orca captivity. The state of South Carolina hasnt allowed
dolphin captivity for almost 30 years. Countries such as the U.K., Costa Rica, Hungary and Chile have banned
dolphin captivity. India was the most recent to ban dolphin captivity, even going as far as to declare dolphins high
level of intelligence as non-human persons.
Please consider closing the dolphin exhibit at The Mirage.

Thank you.