The recent birth of two dolphins at the National Aquarium is certainly an event to be celebrated ("Baby dolphins mean quiet time at National Aquarium," June 2). I hope that this event also prompts reflection upon our society's practice of caging sea mammals.

Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures. In the wild, they swim between 40 and 100 miles per day, foraging for food and engaging in social behavior with their pods. In captivity, however, these magnificent creatures are limited to swimming in circles in tanks filled with chemicals. Captive dolphins living in tanks simply do not receive the same stimulation as they would in the wild, with the vast ocean as their playground. Even worse, hunger is often used as a motivator to entice dolphins to perform unnatural tricks for the sake of human entertainment.

Aquariums force captivity on dolphins, all in the name of education. Yet what, exactly, is the educational value of watching a confined and hungry dolphin perform a backflip or wave to the crowd? Such "edutainment" is clearly unfair: dolphins deserve our respect and conservation efforts, not lives of confinement.

Anna Martin, Baltimore