AN ANIMAL rights group here yesterday petitioned the owners of Underwater World Singapore to release to the wild the six pink dolphins that perform at Sentosa every day.

Acres, or Animal Concerns Research and Education Society, has tried since July to get the Haw Par Corporation to set the animals free.

Yesterday, it parked a black car, with a pink dolphin soft toy chained to the top, outside the Haw Par Glass Tower building in Clemenceau Avenue.

Then, accompanied by TV's Heartlanders stars Steph Song and Corine Adrienne, both 26, three Acres members handed over the petition with nearly 8,400 signatures to a Haw Par official, who declined to comment.

Acres now says it will report Haw Par to the police for animal abuse and for endangering spectators of dolphin shows - but only if its further attempts to get Haw Par to have talks with it are rebuffed.

Acres says its petition is backed by 44 international and local animal-welfare organisations.

Its president, Mr Louis Ng, 25, said: 'If Haw Par continues to ignore our calls, we will have no choice but to seek legal action.'

He later told The Straits Times that Acres would ask the police to investigate animal abuse and possible endangerment of spectators. But he said it had no plans for now to take the company to court.

He said that a 1995 study had recorded a dolphin killing a man in Brazil and there had been instances of people at dolphin shows being bitten, head-butted, bruised, cut, or having their bones broken.

But several lawyers told The Straits Times that legal action would not succeed here as there had been no such injury caused here, and the Dolphin Lagoon was a tourist attraction.

Last month, Haw Par had denied Acres' claims that the dolphins were stressed, citing the birth of a baby male last year as evidence of their health.

At any one time, three of the six dolphins perform four times a day in 30-minute shows at the lagoon. There are also petting sessions and Swim With The Dolphins programmes.

These activities and their being in captivity do not harm the dolphins, Haw Par had said earlier.