The Mediterraneo Marine Park in Bahar in-Caghaq has been listed as one of seven cruel destinations by the largest animal rights organisation in the world.
For several children and adults alike, the Mediterraneo Marine Park provides the perfect platform to observe closely the intelligence and beauty of dolphins. But for PETA, the 'swimming with dolphins' programme has miserable consequences for these mammals.
Dolphins in this type of programme were captured in the wild or imported from conflict-ridden countries, it said. They would never be able to swim in the vast oceans, and may become frightened by being constantly surrounded by clambering tourists.
When asked why Mediterraneo has been put on the same list as the brutal bull-running festival in Pamplona, a spokesman for PETA UK told The Sunday Times that members of the public who had visited the Malta park were horrified to find dolphins kept in small tanks. They had also alleged that the dolphins showed signs of illness and injury.
"Dolphins are highly intelligent, social beings who travel with their close-knit families for up to 50 miles a day in the open ocean. By confining them for eternity to tanks that are, to them, the size of a bathtub, and forcing them to perform silly, repetitious and meaningless tricks and swim in endless circles, is subjecting them to unforgiveable cruelty," the spokesman said.
PETA said dolphin shows provided no educational benefit for the public - in fact, they taught children all the wrong lessons about wildlife - and the 'swim with the dolphins' programmes were universally condemned as humans brought diseases to dolphins.
"All that is taught is that these wonderful, social, sentient animals are ours to exploit and torture at will; not a lesson for the 21st century."
PETA suggests an alternative - anyone who wants to get close to nature should take an approved dolphin and whale-spotting holiday and enjoy animals in their natural habitat: never by patronising aquariums and marine parks that involve stress, capture, close confinement and handling.
Animal prisons posing as fun-packed and educational attractions, like zoos and aquariums, are also on the list, which includes horse-drawn carriages in Paris and the Berlin zoo.
Efforts to obtain a reaction from Mediterraneo's management proved fruitless.