Ocean Park employees have been filmed tracking dolphins in the Solomon Islands by animal welfare campaigners who claim the theme park's representatives were on board a boat that was attempting to capture wild dolphins for export.
The claim - denied by Ocean Park - comes a day after the park admitted it had been in 'very preliminary' talks with the Solomon Islands government to carry out research into dolphin numbers in the country's waters in an arrangement that will include an option to import dolphins.
A film crew for the Animal Planet channel, working with renowned dolphin trainer-turned-activist Ric O'Barry, followed the Hong Kong employees by helicopter as they travelled by boat along the coast of the country's main island, Guadalcanal, earlier this month.
O'Barry and other activists claim the boat was equipped with nets and was trying unsuccessfully to catch bottlenose dolphins. Two dolphins had already been captured and put in holding pens on a nearby island, they claim.
However, Ocean Park chief executive Tom Mehrmann yesterday denied the claims, saying the park's executive director for zoological operations, Dr Suzanne Gendron, and general curator, Grant Abel, were on board an observation boat that was tracking dolphins but had no nets and was not involved in the capture of dolphins. They were aware of the helicopter filming them, he said.
He said a four-member Ocean Park team had also been on board a vessel in December that took two captured dolphins on the first part of a journey to Singapore after they were bought for Resorts World Sentosa in a controversial deal.
Mehrmann said he believed the activists might have confused the Ocean Park team with other groups capturing dolphins for export earlier this month, saying: 'It was an observation boat. It had no nets. There was no capture of dolphins.'