Ship Captures 3 Dolphins After Evading Activists : Wildlife: Protesters had hoped to stop the expedition by a Chicago aquarium. The animals are kept temporarily in a holding tank in San Diego.

A Chicago aquarium’s ship evaded a flotilla of animal rights activists and captured three Pacific white-sided dolphins off Santa Catalina Island during the weekend without the anticipated confrontation at sea, the Coast Guard said Sunday.

The dolphins--two females and one male--were transferred to a holding tank on the San Diego waterfront, where they are to be acclimated to captivity, perhaps for months, before being flown to the John G. Shedd Aquarium on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago.

“We got beat, no question about it,” said Benjamin White, one of the activists who unsuccessfully tried to locate the Shedd vessel in hopes of blocking the captures. He said protesters’ resources and equipment could not match those of Shedd and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which approved the aquarium’s expedition.

A Coast Guard official who monitored the capture said the protesters’ boats were not near the spot where the dolphins were netted Saturday and hoisted on a stretcher from the ocean. “It was real peaceful, real quiet,” said Petty Officer Randy Reid, who is based in Long Beach.

The Shedd voyage was the first government-approved effort to capture dolphins in U.S. waters in four years. With a permit that extended through Dec. 31, the aquarium had extremely good luck in netting five dolphins on the first day of the search.

Two male dolphins were put back into the ocean because the Shedd wanted two females and a male for its breeding program, an aquarium official said. The three that were kept--each weighing more than 200 pounds and ranging in length from six feet to 6 feet, 5 inches--appear to be in good health and “are really calm, really comfortable already,” said Jeffrey Boehm, Shedd’s assistant director of research and veterinary services. The females will be returned to where they were netted if examinations show that they are pregnant, he added.

Shedd, a world-renowned research and educational facility, has four Pacific white-sided dolphins in its 3-million-gallon Oceanarium, which simulates a Pacific Northwest coastal ecosystem with otters, beluga whales and penguins.

Aquarium officials insist that the dolphin species is common off the California coast and is under no extinction threat. But animal rights protesters liken the nettings to kidnaping, and point to a recent government study that shows many premature deaths among dolphins in captivity.

“We are mourning the capture of these three dolphins. We will do our best to make sure these three are the last captured in American waters,” Peter Wallerstein, president of the Malibu-based Whale Rescue Team, said Sunday.

Wallerstein and half a dozen other protesters demonstrated outside the facility on San Diego’s Shelter Island where the dolphins are being guarded in a seawater pool that is 30 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep. Activists hope to stop the dolphins’ transfer to Chicago.

The controversy gained attention partly because of the success of the film “Free Willy,” which details a boy’s attempts to free a captured whale. The movie’s producers loaned Wallerstein their 65-foot cabin cruiser, equipped with cameras, for the fight against the aquarium. On Saturday, protesters in nine other boats and several small airplanes searched the waters from San Diego to Point Arguello in Santa Barbara County.

Animal rights activists suggested that the Shedd ship improperly avoided detection by going outside the area allowed in the federal permit. Shedd and Coast Guard officials said the permit boundaries were not broken. The Coast Guard cutter Point Divide had patrolled nearby the Shedd vessel in case protesters tried to disrupt the expedition.

Both sides said the captures will help the species of white-sided dolphins, whose light-colored stripes set them apart from the more familiar common and bottlenosed dolphins.

“We have lost this one battle, but there is a bigger picture there,” Wallerstein said. “We have made tremendous strides in educating the public.” He predicted larger protests against any future federal permits for captures.

Boehm, the Shedd official, said veterinarians and oceanographers will study the dolphins to help the species survive better in seas increasingly polluted and affected by human activity. Plus, visitors who see the dolphins at the aquarium may become more informed about wildlife protection, he said.