Americans expect the government to keep them safe from drug traffickers, human smugglers and violent criminals. Add “therapists who help patients through dolphin encounters” to the federal bureaucracy’s list of societal outlaws.
In Hawaii, Eliza Wille and Lisa Denning are part of a small community of professionals who had built their lives around spinner dolphins. Ms. Wille, a psychotherapist, used dolphin encounters as experiential therapy for people struggling with addiction and mental illness. Patients who found it difficult to talk about their problems in the office opened up once they got in the water with these empathetic mammals. But in 2021, a low-level National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration bureaucrat banned anyone from swimming within 50 yards of Hawaiian spinner dolphins. If you’re in the water and a dolphin swims up to you, you must immediately back away.
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