The female bottlenose dolphin is called Veera, which was once a popular attraction at the now closed Särkänniemi dolphinarium in Tampere, has died at a 43-year-old facility in Italy.
Death was reported Dolphinaria-Free Europe (DFE), a European coalition of NGOs and professionals working to end the imprisonment of dolphins, was cited as the cause of the cardiovascular arrest.
Veera had been born in the wild, but was taken prisoner for a public exhibition and transferred to Tampere from the Gulf of Mexico in 1984.
When the Särkänniemi dolphinarium closed in 2016, Veera was moved to the Attica Zoological Park in Greece with three others: Delphi, Leevi and Eevertti. The controversial resettlement was criticized by animal rights groups that had long campaigned to release dolphins into the natural environment.
"Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to re-experience some kind of wild reality in his lifetime, we believe that no dolphin should face the same fate as Veera, to die in a tank far from the sea in which they were originally born," The DFE wrote in a statement in which he announced his death.
The story continues after the picture.
Delfi also died in 2017 of cardiac arrest.
Veera did not adapt to the conditions of the Greek institution and was transferred from Greece to Oltramare in Italy last August.
Source: The Nordic Page