Marineland of Antibes
The Marineland of Antibes is a theme park founded in 1970 by Roland de La Poype in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes), in the French Riviera. On 26 hectares it includes a marine zoological park with dolphinarium, a water park ("Aquasplash"), a children's play park ("Kid's Island"), a mini golf ("Aventure Golf") and a three-star hotel ("Marineland Resort"). It is the property of the Spanish multinational company Parques Reunidos, whose majority shareholder is the British investment fund Arle Capital Partners. The actual director is Arnaud Palu. It is one of the four French dolphinariums and one  of the two European dolphinariums presenting orcas. With 1.2 million visitors in 2014, it's the most visited site of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. The zoological park is one of the most visited in France. Since the 2010s, it is more and more criticised by the opponents to cetacean captivity, which claims that dolphinariums can't assure captivity conditions that fits to the proper needs of those species. They also claim that this leads to more prematurate mortality of individuals. History. On July 25, 2006, the park was sold to the Spanish amusement park group Parques Reunidos for  about 75 million Euros The largest killer whale pool complex in the world performing in of water, with a panoramic glass wall long. Marineland holds four orcas: Inouk, Wikie, Moana and Keijo. Marineland is currently housing (Apr 2020) a total of 12 bottlenose dolphins. The name of the dolphins are: Malou (F), Sharky (F), Rocky (M), Dam (M), Neo (M), Nala (F), Tux (M), Ania (F), Jo (F), Kai (M), Luà (F) and Ollie (F). A live demonstration of the learning techniques used with all the mammals in the park, in which the seal and sea lion trainers disclose some  of the "ropes" for preparing the show, the better to understand the basis of the relationship between humans and animals. In a tunnel through an aquarium containing nearly of water, visitors are surrounded by sharks and manta rays. Marineland is one of few places in Europe where one can see polar bears. As of 2020, there are 4 of them: one female (Flocke) and her 3 babies : Tala (F), Indiana (M) and Yuma (M). The tropical aquarium gallery shows the world of coral reefs, and the touch pool is a chance to touch skates and rays - fish that seem to  fly in the water. Beaches featuring California sea lions, South American sea lions, black seals and grey seals. Beaches featuring penguins, pelicans and flamingos. Each session lasts approximately 1 hour, to discover the biology and ecology of dolphins, before approaching the dolphins for 20 minutes under close supervision by trainers on a sunken deck.