Dudley Zoological Gardens Dudley Zoo killer Whale

Hi,

Yes Calypso was kept at Cleethorpes Marineland and Zoo for a few months as the pool at Marineland in Antibes where she was meant to go began leaking badly. She then moved on to France when it was fixed. She was an adult when imported - quite unusual really. There were 4 Clacton whales in total - Susie Wong (also called Hoi Wai) was kept there for training or a few months before being transferred to windsor when the pier was badly damaged in a storm, later she was moved to Ocean Park in Hong Kong. Then there were 3 males kept at the pier also for training - an unnamed male died soon after arrival and Neptune lasted 18 months. The last male Nemo was moved to Windsor Safari Park in 85.

Windsor was very successful with killer whales despite the size of the pool they offered....Ramu/Winston was kept there from when the park opened until 1976 when he was moved to seaworld in the US, Winnie followed from 1977-1991 when she was moved to seaworld and was used at Florida, then Ohio and finally the Texas park.

There were no more killer whales kept in the UK although several have been kept in various places throughout Europe. Currently Marineland in Antibes and Loro Parque in Tenerife display them, although Oceanographico Valencia will probably be getting some soon from France.

Here are Photos
(there are no known ones of the other 2 clacton males)

Ramu/Winston
Winston / Ramu

Calypso
Calypso

Nemo
Nemo

Winnie
Winnie

Cuddles
Cuddles

Susie Wong/Hoi Wai
Hoi Wai
 
According to the 1960's guidebook of dolphins and whales in captivity (from Flamingopark and Cleethorpes Marineland/Zoo) Flamingoland is trying to catch a youngster for display. There was a young female whale of some kind held for a while at FP which was kept in the former dolphin house with the two tiny circular connected pools. It was rescued from the faroe Islands and was called Winnie. It was being bottle fed as it was so small. I have a picture & film of it but unfortunately I am unable to upload them for now on this computer. Cleethorpes held a beluga for a while though.....

No other ones in UK dolphinaria that I'm aware of, mostly it has just been the normal BNDs and orcas
 
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FP had both Common Dolphins and Common Porpoises briefly. There were plans to capture both Narwhals and Pilot Whales. The former certainly never came to fruition and I'm fairly certain the latter never did. I think the film footage is a young Beluga. The one that went to Cleethorpes was the remainder of three that were originally shipped over. One died at sea and was thrown over board or, according to another account, was washed over board alive during a storm. The other, so the story goes, was dropped from the crane whilst being unloaded and died.

Don't forget that Belugas were also seen during the 19th century at the Aquariums in Manchester, Westminster and Glasgow.
 
Pentland Hick sold up the Associated Pleasure Parks chain of zoos to Scotia Investments who simultaneously enlisted Don Robinson to run the parks. Robinson had been a partner of Hick's from the start but departed the scene in the late sixties with differing views on how the company should be run. In the interim he had opened up Scarborough Zoo and Marineland.

Robinson's first move to improve visitor figures at the flailing Dudley Zoo was to bring in the Killer Whale from Flamingoland. In its first week there it had dragged him to the bottom of the pool and pinned him there. This may have been a fabricated story to further boost visitor figures which it certainly did. Following the 'incident' ticket sales rose to the highest they'd been since the zoo's initial decade. Apparently the chaos caused by the sudden influx of visitors to the roads surrounding the zoo was commented upon in parliament.
 
The Clacton pool was really a converted swimming pool and of no real depth, certainly not for whales. I saw Nemo as a child, as vistors we were encouraged to stroke him after a performance and the pool area was also used for the sealion show (I don't remember if the whale was shut away for this).

Are any of the UK killer whales still alive and did any breed after leaving the UK?
 
None of the UK orcas survive today unfortunatly, Winston died in 1986 (he fathered several calves though), Nemo in 1986, Cuddles in 1974, Calypso in 1970 and Hoi Wai died in 1997. Winnie survived the longest of all the UK killer whales and died in 2002 after debris impacted in her gut. Seaworld blamed Windsor safari park for the impaction as there were some british coins and so on in her system. But I fail to see how a few coins and bits of tile supposedly ONLY from WSP caused such a rapidly fatal problem even though the whale left that park 13 years before dying. Winnie must have been still ingesting things while living in seaworld......AI was apparently tried on Winnie but she never conceived.
 
It is strange how culturally subjective our attitude to various taxon can become. It is inconcievable now for cetaceans to be housed in UK collections, but they can still be seen in France, Germany or the Netherlands, certainly not nations that are thought of as 'behind' the UK in terms of captive animal management. The public appetite for mammals in public aquaria has waned to the point that Brighton Sealife centre (formerly the aquarium that housed dolphins) had to abandon plans for a seal and otter pool last year due to public opposition. I wonder if it was because the collections here got it so wrong for so long, I mean we were left with Morecambe, Flamingoland (at the lowest point of the collection's decline), Brighton and Windsor in the end. Although I don't approve of cetaceans in captivity, I wonder if it would have all been different if Windsor hadn't procrastinated for so long about a new facility and had went ahead with something that more than met the guidelines?

With the exception (relatively speaking) of Windsor, could the loss of this taxonomic group in the British Isles be due to the shoddy list of their holdings over the last few decades? Most of the adult british public will have a killer whale/dolphin experience from their childhood that would make most think of their captivity as unjust. Morecambe, Dudley and Clacton especially come to mind.
 
Hyak2 said:
Hi, Cuddles was captured late in 1968 and sent to Flamingo Park Zoo (now flamingoland)
where he (initially thought to be a she) was kept for a few years. Pentland Hick the then owner of the zoo paid $15000 for him and flew him over from Seattle - he was captured by famous whale catchers Griffin and Goldsbury and was a massive hit at FP as the only performing killer whale in europe at the time. (Holland had had one a few months earlier but it died soon after arrival). He lived with 2 BNDs in the current sealion pool ~250,000 gallons.

After the first year he became more and more unreliable to handle, at one point pinning a swimmer underwater and roughing up trainers cleaning the pool etc. Cuddles became severely ill at FP at one point including having several terrible bouts of intestinal bleeding - turning the whole pool red with blood on more than one occasion and then becoming dark grey instead of the normal killer whale black colour as a side effect of loosing the blood. Fortunately he was cured, supposedly by a white which from Devon who told the vet not to worry and the whale would stop bleeding the moment he put the phone down.........that was at 8:30 one morning. While checking back through the log books,the vet found the last time Cuddles was seen to pass blood was 8:31am that same day.........

In the early 70's Pentland Hick sold the zoo out of the blue and Cuddles was moved, against all advice, to a hurriedly adapted dolphin pool at Dudley - slightly over 15m long and 6m wide and 3.5m deep on the left side of the castle bridge. It was totally inadequate for him , even by the standards of zoos in those days. Initially the plan was to build new dolphin and whale pools at Dudley, then to move him to Marineland in France, but in the end Cuddles suspiciously broke a rib in April 1974, the infection overtook him and he died a few days later.

I have several pictures of him at Dudley and FP, I'll dig them out if people are interested?
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Ooh I would be very interested to see your photos of cuddles!!
 
Hyak2 said:
Hi, Cuddles was captured late in 1968 and sent to Flamingo Park Zoo (now flamingoland)
where he (initially thought to be a she) was kept for a few years. Pentland Hick the then owner of the zoo paid $15000 for him and flew him over from Seattle - he was captured by famous whale catchers Griffin and Goldsbury and was a massive hit at FP as the only performing killer whale in europe at the time. (Holland had had one a few months earlier but it died soon after arrival). He lived with 2 BNDs in the current sealion pool ~250,000 gallons.

After the first year he became more and more unreliable to handle, at one point pinning a swimmer underwater and roughing up trainers cleaning the pool etc. Cuddles became severely ill at FP at one point including having several terrible bouts of intestinal bleeding - turning the whole pool red with blood on more than one occasion and then becoming dark grey instead of the normal killer whale black colour as a side effect of loosing the blood. Fortunately he was cured, supposedly by a white which from Devon who told the vet not to worry and the whale would stop bleeding the moment he put the phone down.........that was at 8:30 one morning. While checking back through the log books,the vet found the last time Cuddles was seen to pass blood was 8:31am that same day.........

In the early 70's Pentland Hick sold the zoo out of the blue and Cuddles was moved, against all advice, to a hurriedly adapted dolphin pool at Dudley - slightly over 15m long and 6m wide and 3.5m deep on the left side of the castle bridge. It was totally inadequate for him , even by the standards of zoos in those days. Initially the plan was to build new dolphin and whale pools at Dudley, then to move him to Marineland in France, but in the end Cuddles suspiciously broke a rib in April 1974, the infection overtook him and he died a few days later.

I have several pictures of him at Dudley and FP, I'll dig them out if people are interested?
Click to expand...


Ooh I would be very interested to see your photos of cuddles!!
 
kiang said:
Winnie the female killer whale went to one of the seaworld parks, the one in Florida i think and the dolphins went to Kolmarden in Sweden when the park closed.
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Yes Winnie went to the Sea World group. The dolphins at Windsor went to Harderwijk Marine Mammal Park in Holland.
 
I'm not sure of Whales but in Rhyl there was a Dolphinarium, now the Rhyl SeaQuarium. Thats all i know i'm afraid.
 
elephant400 said:
I'm not sure of Whales but in Rhyl there was a Dolphinarium, now the Rhyl SeaQuarium. Thats all i know i'm afraid.
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Rhyl Dolphinarium was one of the three owned by Entam - the entertainment division of Trust House Forte. The others were at Knowsley Safari Park and Woburn Safari Park. The pools at Woburn and Knowsley now house sealions. I worked with the dolphins at both Knowsley and Woburn.

knowsley.html


I also ran the sealion show in the old dolphin pool at Woburn for anumber of years in the 1980s.

 
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johnstoni said:
IWith the exception (relatively speaking) of Windsor, could the loss of this taxonomic group in the British Isles be due to the shoddy list of their holdings over the last few decades? Most of the adult british public will have a killer whale/dolphin experience from their childhood that would make most think of their captivity as unjust. Morecambe, Dudley and Clacton especially come to mind.
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You properly have a point. As someone who professionally worked with cetaceans in the 1970s at various places the conditions these animals were kept in where not controlled by any basic standards as the Zoo Licensing Act and the Secretary of Standards of Practise did not exist. Anyone with money and a small pool could acquire and display dolphins and whales.

Some facilities in the 1970s where adequate for there time but many of those keeping cetaceans where from the entertainment industry and not the zoo world. Moreover, many of the pools had no appropriate holding areas; some where just a small single pool. Ironically at the same time you had places like Harderwijk's large dolphin stadium and pools complex being built which even by todays standards are reasonably impressive. There actually seemed to be little commitment in the UK to invest the time and money to build a world class facility.

For it's time I think the Flamingoland dolphin pool was okay for dolphins but it was, of course, designed and built by the former curator of Chester Zoo prior to his appointment at Flamingoland.

Dolphinaria still remain popular and the UK is an exception to this rule. World wide there are probably more dolphin facilitates now than the where in the 1970s.

Keeping the small cetceans in captivity is no different from keeping any other zoo animals - they do have special requirements in husbandry and accommodation but so do other exotic animals. I suspect that because they are creatures of myth - both modern and ancient - some people consider them "special" but they are not any more than keeping the great apes in captivity which many collection do with very little public concern.

I am not aware of any public misgivings regarding the keeping of pinnipeds as I also worked with them extensively up until a couple of years ago. The Brighton Sealife Centre has the "misfortune" of being in an area where there is a lots of animal-rights activists which didn't help their situation.

I actually run a web site dealing with the issues of marine mammals in captive care which some may find of interest;

Marine Animal Welfare - dolphins in captivity
 
John Dineley said:
Rhyl Dolphinarium was one of the three owned by Entam - the entertainment division of Trust House Forte. The others were at Knowsley Safari Park and Woburn Safari Park. The pools at Woburn and Knowsley now house sealions. I worked with the dolphins at both Knowsley and Woburn.

knowsley.html


I also ran the sealion show in the old dolphin pool at Woburn for anumber of years in the 1980s.

YouTube - Sealion Show Woburn Safari Park
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is that you in the video?
 
bongorob said:
I also found a book called Dolphins and Whales in captivity which I purchased from Flamingoland in 1976. According to this booklet Flamingoland and Cleethorpes Zoo had exhibited Atlantic Bottle-nosed Dolphin, Common Dolphin, Beluga, Common Porpoise, Atlantic Pilot Whale and Killer Whale.
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I have put up the two version of the Flamingoland Dolphin Book on my UK Dolphinaria site here:

Flamingo Park Guide Book
 
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