Hays Travel, Delta and Virgin Atlantic regularly promote "swim with dolphin experiences. I love dolphins - they are beautiful creatures so it’s no surprise that people would love the opportunity to swim with them. It’s seemingly harmless but it is actually cruel and inhumane.

Dolphins are often stolen from the wild in order to supply the demand for such experiences. The process of capturing and transporting dolphins to marine parks is excruciating and many animals die during transit. Those that survive are condemned to live a stressful and miserable life.

In the wild, dolphins are highly intelligent social beings who live in large family groups and can travel up to 100 miles a day. In captivity, they are forced to live in confined, artificial conditions and they suffer immense mental and physical stress as a result. A life in a tank is no life at all.

The emotional and physical distress that captive dolphins experience can weaken their immune systems and make them prone to disease.

I’m certain that if more holiday makers knew this, they would never support this exploitation. This practice must stop. That is why I’m calling on Thomas Cook to stop promoting and selling trips to swim with dolphins in captivity.

Let’s make sure dolphins stay wild, free and happy!

Please help to stop dolphin exploitation by signing and sharing my petition today!

Dolphins have evolved over millions of years, adapting perfectly to life in the ocean. They are intelligent, social and self-aware, exhibiting evidence of a highly developed emotional sense. Here are just a few of the issues with captivity:Captures of dolphins are traumatic and stressful and can result in injury and death of dolphins. The number of dolphins that die during capture operations or shortly thereafter are never revealed in dolphinariums or swim-with-dolphins programs. Some facilities even claim their dolphins were "rescued" from the ocean and cannot be released. This claim is almost invariably false.

Training of dolphins is often deliberately misrepresented by the captive dolphin industry to make it look as if dolphins perform because they like it. This isn't the case. They are performing because they have been deprived of food.

Most captive dolphins are confined in minuscule tanks containing chemically treated artificial seawater. Dolphins in a tank are severely restricted in using their highly developed sonar, which is one of the most damaging aspects of captivity. It is much like forcing a person to live in a hall of mirrors for the rest of their life - their image always bouncing back with no clear direction in sight.