The Vancouver acquarium was one of the top cetacean health, care, and research institutes in the world. It was one of the models of how good a captive and public educational environment can be. Thanks to campaigns like this one, they had to close down and transfer their rescue orcas to the only organizations that could take them... Which turned out to be SeaWorld, where they died shortly after. Of course, SeaWorld is notorious for terrible conditions for the animals.
It drives me nuts that kids growing up in my hometown now don't understand these magnificent creatures, don't feel any special connection to them. For many in my generation, it feels like a betrayal on the part of our local environmentalist movement. They killed our orcas and disconnected our children from one of the most amazing parts of their environment. They destroyed the model that powered legislative attempts to protect cetaceans around the world.
We had a similar story with the beavers in Stanley park - our environmenal lobby campaigned to have the city stop dredging "Beaver lake", because it disturbed the beavers. They stopped dredging, the lake filled with silt and most of the beavers (and other wildlife) died. Now they're debating starting dredging again, to save the one surviving beaver.
For people like me that care about our environment and the animals we share it with, it's rage inducing. The naturalist fallacy at work. :/
"They killed our orcas" - really? 2 Belugas just died in captivity at that aquarium -it wasn't environmentalists who killed them, it was the aquarium. I have been to that aquarium and it was just depressing. Watching the Orca swim upside down around and around in circles was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Making intelligent creatures perform tricks for profit is hardly a noble enterprise.
Have you seen Blackfish? http://www.blackfishmovie.com/
Watch it and then come back and tell us that Tilikum had any kind of good life. These animals belong in the wild. They don't need to be "rescued". The idea that gawking at magnificent animals in captivity is somehow required to instill respect for them is ridiculous. The best way to respect all animals is to leave them alone.
There's been a lot of public outcry because coastal sanctuaries seem like the only place you can give these animals close to what they need "artificially". What it really boils down to is if you love someone, let them free, especially if you can't take proper care of them. You omitted also that recently the park killed two cetaceans:
> Michael Wiebe, chair of the Vancouver Park Board, said that after two belugas died within days of one another at the aquarium last fall, the board decided they needed to look into whether it was right to keep bringing in more.
The truth is people can't really build a tank large enough to take care of these creatures, or offer them the proper conditions. Killer whales can travel up to 100 miles a day, and dolphins sure do a lot of traveling as well. How do you offer that or allow for the group social dynamics in a cage?
I'm not even sure how good the education value of seeing a dolphin locked up in a tank is. Anecdotally, I went to the zoo a lot as a kid but all I remember doing is gawking. Watching documentaries as a kid I actually heard about their social interactions and natural behaviors. Many of those behaviors don't come up surrounded by people in enclosures.
If we want to "understand and appreciate" a creature it should be on their terms. For dolphins documentaries or visiting them in their habitat seems like the best way, not some aquarium where the parking lot for visitors is larger than their tanks.
I am rather for a ban on cetaceans in any tank too small to use their sonar, but as a Vancouverite I am extremely uncomfortable with who and how this ban was made.
Vision Vancouver, the political party, is very slick and spends an order of magnitude more on PR than anybody else in the city, in a town now with little news reporting.
1. It's well known who killed 2 of belugas -- somebody who publicly presents themselves as caring for whales -- but there is no discussion of it in the reporting.
2. There has been zero effort to have a conversation with the people at the Aquarium. There is an intentional effort to get shock value, encourage a public squabble that rouses some of their base and that distracts from their overall performance.
Vision Vancouver is now feeling the heat for freezing upzoning of single family home neighbourhoods so that they can direct hundreds of millions annually in buildable land grants in one-off variances to the large developers who are their main donors (Wall, Westbank, Concord). The problem in Vancouver is a monopoly of new buildable land where a single marketer, Bob Rennie, can dictate pricing for a year by virtue of controlling over 80% of new units in any given year under Vision Vancouver.
The next municipal election is a year away, but they've been around at full speed hiring PR folks on the public dime, setting up astroturf groups, wining and dining the few remaining beat reporters, and sending moles to infiltrate the new Vancouver Renters' Union. They're picking fights that are fake and real, any news is good news now if they can be ahead of the story instead of chasing to catch up for once.
---
Disclosure: I volunteered for the last two Vision Vancouver campaigns, as a favor to a friend and when I believed they actually meant what they said. I had already given up on them when I was asked to join an astroturf group by Mike Magee last summer
I remember going to the Vancouver Aquarium as a kid 20 years ago or so and watching the dolphins do tricks. These might have been rescued, but they were still trained to for entertainment. The Vancouver Aquarium isn't totally innocent.
> Of course, SeaWorld is notorious for terrible conditions for the animals.
I'm sure this is going to be a very unpopular comment here, but for the sake of a different perspective... Every time I see this sentiment, it tends to come from fans of Blackfish. I watched that "documentary", which was very cherry-picked to push a biased perspective. I've also lived near a SeaWorld and have noticed, first-hand, the conservation they do of the environment and cetacean life.
Yes, SeaWorld is for-profit, while many zoos are non-profit, but they do make some meaningful effort to help out.
On the plus side it seems like they've learned their lesson with this regulation. Instead of shipping off these animals to poorly run facilities, they're just stopping the import of all new animals. I feel fairly mixed about all of this, but if you want to end whale and dolphin exhibits in aquariums then this is probably the best way to go. Let them live out their lives with their peer group and in an environment they are familiar with.
I also wonder if they can shift away from the 'orphanage' model to a more 'foster' model by bringing in sick animals, nursing them to health, then releasing them shortly after. Not sure if this is in the cards politically, but it would be a middle ground between traditional aquariums and a total ban. Its important to note many of these animals get to aquariums because they've been injured by humans. We should feel a responsibility to help them if we are the ones hurting them. Washing our hands of this responsibility seems irresponsible to me and justifying it with feel good politics seems highly questionable.
> It drives me nuts that kids growing up in my hometown now don't understand these magnificent creatures, don't feel any special connection to them.
Pods of orcas visit Stanley Park and False Creek at least once every couple years, usually more. And thats a magical day when they do. If you think that kids dont feel special connections to these creatures that come visit downtown once in a while, you're deluded
My fear is that these laws will ultimately prove to be worse for conservation efforts. The same applies to zoos.
The vast majority of people in the developed nations, will never actually see these animals in their native habitat. I would say the majority of the HN readers have never seen a lion, tiger, rhinoceros, elephant, orca, or shark outside of a zoo, aquarium, or sanctuary.
The effect of these laws is that more and more people will not have a personal connection to these animals. Therefore, when it comes to cheaper goods versus animal extinction, people may say that they feel bad about it, but their behavior and voting patterns are unlikely to change to prevent the extinction.
For example, if I hear that the giraffe will go extinct, I think back to the excitement of when I first saw a giraffe, and feel sad that my kids may never get to experience that and am likely to be more motivated to prevent it. If, however it is some animal that I have only seen in a video, well, I'll make sure to download it so I can show it to my kids someday.
Out of sight, out of mind really is a true statement about human attention and motivation.
> The effect of these laws is that more and more people will not have a personal connection to these animals
IMO not true. Photography / cinematography have historically proven to move people enough to take action (eg. war photography, poached animals, rhinos with their horns cut, etc.). Zoos only provides a little more than a photography. Can you pet the animal? Should you if you could? Would that help to make the point of protecting them?
I don't think this justifies transporting the animal on the other side of the planet into unnatural, prison like conditions where they often suffer both mentally and physically.
Sanctuaries are IMO way better in that they are built in animal's natural environment, further from cities, where the animals can live their lives in peace instead of being stressed by thousands of visitors every day.
There's a more direct impact, too: The Vancouver Aquarium houses animals which have been rescued and nursed back to health after various injuries. This ban will result in many of those animals being left to die instead.
I also have the same fears as you. I was raised going to the zoo and aquariums a lot when I was young. Although I don't actively participate in anything to help conserve wildlife (anything substantial at least) I consider myself someone who really cares for wildlife. Although I go to the zoo with my son quite frequently I feel his generation (or the next) may not appreciate wildlife as a whole.
-Locking a dolphin up in "jail" or killing a cow/pig?
-Locking the few dolphins up in "jails" or the billions of cows/pigs killed each year?
I think the ethical inconsistencies with regards to animal treatment are huge, but also understandable. I don't know the answers, but the questions do bother me.
The dolphins at the Vancouver aquarium are deemed not releasable by the federal government due to injury or lack of ability to survive in the wild (e.g. Chester, the aquariums false killer whale was found at 2 months old and was not properly socialised).
Cows are treated pretty fairly until the end. They are usually grass feed and graze until they fatten them up for slaughter. They have miles and miles of fields to roam. You can find pigs that are treated fairly or are "free range". Both of these animals have been domesticated and lives with humans for a couple thousand years.
Both of these animals are slaughtered young so they aren't locked up for years and years.
Putting an dolphin in a small pond and put to work all day doing tricks is horrible. Whales and dolphins belong in the open ocean where they can swim for miles and miles. They are not domesticated animals.
My view is that if you have to put the animal in a cage to keep it, you shouldn't have them. The exception would be a fish tank with nothing exotic.
From now on, the reproduction of cetaceans is prohibited, as the introduction of new animals. Therefore, dolphins and whales in captivity will no longer exist and suffer. This was triggered following an incident at MarineLand, one of the biggest parks, where a mudslide killed many animals in 2015.
There used to be a place for these animals in aquariums. When they were they for research purposes, rehabilitation, and education, like it or not - the public education benefit was worth it for humans. Most belugas and dolphins live much longer lives, with much less stress, than they would in the wild.
I say used to be, because the current climate in aquariums is just "Make it jump for us." and education is a far off second thought.
Our ability to study animals in the wild, with high tech GPS tracking, more accessible travel options, better sensor data, etc, is much greater than it was 30-40 years ago when these animals were being put in zoos and aquariums. We don't need them in there anymore from a scientific point of view. The argument that people form connections with them? I don't know.
As someone who grew up visiting the Vancouver aquarium, I struggle a bit with this decision. Vancouver'saquarium has always tried to brand itself as research focused, and I have concerns about the loss to research if we stop allowing the aquarium to work with rescues. Personally, I have no problem with keeping rescues that are unreleaseable and injured by humans.
The way the headline is phrased, it could also be read as "Vancouver will not allow whales and dolphins admission to the aquarium" which makes me giggle. Imagining a dolphin with a DSLR camera around its neck and some oversized flip flops. Reminds me of a book I grew up reading. "The Three Hawaiian Pigs and the Magic Shark" - not exactly mainstream, but I really liked it.
It seems that somebody poisoned the beluga whales for pushing some agenda and the aquarium stopped the recovering programme either in fear or as response. I understand the situation. This is happening at global scale and is totally upsetting.
All discussions of killer whales (which inevitably include Blackfish now) remind me of that Phoenix Wright case where he defends a killer whale accused of murder (Spoiler alert: the real killer was a person!).
I believe the Aquarium here was against it, saying they've only ever taken rescues who couldn't survive in the wild anymore. Those rescues would now be put down.
[+] [-] ohthehugemanate|8 years ago|reply
The Vancouver acquarium was one of the top cetacean health, care, and research institutes in the world. It was one of the models of how good a captive and public educational environment can be. Thanks to campaigns like this one, they had to close down and transfer their rescue orcas to the only organizations that could take them... Which turned out to be SeaWorld, where they died shortly after. Of course, SeaWorld is notorious for terrible conditions for the animals.
It drives me nuts that kids growing up in my hometown now don't understand these magnificent creatures, don't feel any special connection to them. For many in my generation, it feels like a betrayal on the part of our local environmentalist movement. They killed our orcas and disconnected our children from one of the most amazing parts of their environment. They destroyed the model that powered legislative attempts to protect cetaceans around the world.
We had a similar story with the beavers in Stanley park - our environmenal lobby campaigned to have the city stop dredging "Beaver lake", because it disturbed the beavers. They stopped dredging, the lake filled with silt and most of the beavers (and other wildlife) died. Now they're debating starting dredging again, to save the one surviving beaver.
For people like me that care about our environment and the animals we share it with, it's rage inducing. The naturalist fallacy at work. :/
[+] [-] jamesgagan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marricks|8 years ago|reply
> Michael Wiebe, chair of the Vancouver Park Board, said that after two belugas died within days of one another at the aquarium last fall, the board decided they needed to look into whether it was right to keep bringing in more.
The truth is people can't really build a tank large enough to take care of these creatures, or offer them the proper conditions. Killer whales can travel up to 100 miles a day, and dolphins sure do a lot of traveling as well. How do you offer that or allow for the group social dynamics in a cage?
I'm not even sure how good the education value of seeing a dolphin locked up in a tank is. Anecdotally, I went to the zoo a lot as a kid but all I remember doing is gawking. Watching documentaries as a kid I actually heard about their social interactions and natural behaviors. Many of those behaviors don't come up surrounded by people in enclosures.
If we want to "understand and appreciate" a creature it should be on their terms. For dolphins documentaries or visiting them in their habitat seems like the best way, not some aquarium where the parking lot for visitors is larger than their tanks.
[+] [-] throwaway2348|8 years ago|reply
Vision Vancouver, the political party, is very slick and spends an order of magnitude more on PR than anybody else in the city, in a town now with little news reporting.
1. It's well known who killed 2 of belugas -- somebody who publicly presents themselves as caring for whales -- but there is no discussion of it in the reporting.
2. There has been zero effort to have a conversation with the people at the Aquarium. There is an intentional effort to get shock value, encourage a public squabble that rouses some of their base and that distracts from their overall performance.
Vision Vancouver is now feeling the heat for freezing upzoning of single family home neighbourhoods so that they can direct hundreds of millions annually in buildable land grants in one-off variances to the large developers who are their main donors (Wall, Westbank, Concord). The problem in Vancouver is a monopoly of new buildable land where a single marketer, Bob Rennie, can dictate pricing for a year by virtue of controlling over 80% of new units in any given year under Vision Vancouver.
The next municipal election is a year away, but they've been around at full speed hiring PR folks on the public dime, setting up astroturf groups, wining and dining the few remaining beat reporters, and sending moles to infiltrate the new Vancouver Renters' Union. They're picking fights that are fake and real, any news is good news now if they can be ahead of the story instead of chasing to catch up for once.
---
Disclosure: I volunteered for the last two Vision Vancouver campaigns, as a favor to a friend and when I believed they actually meant what they said. I had already given up on them when I was asked to join an astroturf group by Mike Magee last summer
[+] [-] wunderlust|8 years ago|reply
So you're saying that to have a "special connection" to ocean wildlife we need to keep animals captive in a small pool?
Obviously we can't all go on excursions into the sea, but aquariums don't seem like the best model for understanding and appreciating wildlife.
[+] [-] giarc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alpha_squared|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure this is going to be a very unpopular comment here, but for the sake of a different perspective... Every time I see this sentiment, it tends to come from fans of Blackfish. I watched that "documentary", which was very cherry-picked to push a biased perspective. I've also lived near a SeaWorld and have noticed, first-hand, the conservation they do of the environment and cetacean life.
Yes, SeaWorld is for-profit, while many zoos are non-profit, but they do make some meaningful effort to help out.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|8 years ago|reply
I also wonder if they can shift away from the 'orphanage' model to a more 'foster' model by bringing in sick animals, nursing them to health, then releasing them shortly after. Not sure if this is in the cards politically, but it would be a middle ground between traditional aquariums and a total ban. Its important to note many of these animals get to aquariums because they've been injured by humans. We should feel a responsibility to help them if we are the ones hurting them. Washing our hands of this responsibility seems irresponsible to me and justifying it with feel good politics seems highly questionable.
[+] [-] j2bax|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrainInAJar|8 years ago|reply
Pods of orcas visit Stanley Park and False Creek at least once every couple years, usually more. And thats a magical day when they do. If you think that kids dont feel special connections to these creatures that come visit downtown once in a while, you're deluded
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|8 years ago|reply
The vast majority of people in the developed nations, will never actually see these animals in their native habitat. I would say the majority of the HN readers have never seen a lion, tiger, rhinoceros, elephant, orca, or shark outside of a zoo, aquarium, or sanctuary.
The effect of these laws is that more and more people will not have a personal connection to these animals. Therefore, when it comes to cheaper goods versus animal extinction, people may say that they feel bad about it, but their behavior and voting patterns are unlikely to change to prevent the extinction.
For example, if I hear that the giraffe will go extinct, I think back to the excitement of when I first saw a giraffe, and feel sad that my kids may never get to experience that and am likely to be more motivated to prevent it. If, however it is some animal that I have only seen in a video, well, I'll make sure to download it so I can show it to my kids someday.
Out of sight, out of mind really is a true statement about human attention and motivation.
[+] [-] skratlo|8 years ago|reply
IMO not true. Photography / cinematography have historically proven to move people enough to take action (eg. war photography, poached animals, rhinos with their horns cut, etc.). Zoos only provides a little more than a photography. Can you pet the animal? Should you if you could? Would that help to make the point of protecting them?
I don't think this justifies transporting the animal on the other side of the planet into unnatural, prison like conditions where they often suffer both mentally and physically.
Sanctuaries are IMO way better in that they are built in animal's natural environment, further from cities, where the animals can live their lives in peace instead of being stressed by thousands of visitors every day.
[+] [-] cperciva|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wapz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saiya-jin|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tuna-piano|8 years ago|reply
-Locking a dolphin up in "jail" or killing a cow/pig?
-Locking the few dolphins up in "jails" or the billions of cows/pigs killed each year?
I think the ethical inconsistencies with regards to animal treatment are huge, but also understandable. I don't know the answers, but the questions do bother me.
[+] [-] jlos|8 years ago|reply
The aquarium is not a jail.
[+] [-] wil421|8 years ago|reply
Both of these animals are slaughtered young so they aren't locked up for years and years.
Putting an dolphin in a small pond and put to work all day doing tricks is horrible. Whales and dolphins belong in the open ocean where they can swim for miles and miles. They are not domesticated animals.
My view is that if you have to put the animal in a cage to keep it, you shouldn't have them. The exception would be a fish tank with nothing exotic.
[+] [-] hbbio|8 years ago|reply
From now on, the reproduction of cetaceans is prohibited, as the introduction of new animals. Therefore, dolphins and whales in captivity will no longer exist and suffer. This was triggered following an incident at MarineLand, one of the biggest parks, where a mudslide killed many animals in 2015.
[+] [-] jcroll|8 years ago|reply
1) To be left to die of starvation.
2) To be rescued and spend the rest of your life fed but kept in a 6x6 ft cage.
Pick one.
[+] [-] bbarn|8 years ago|reply
I say used to be, because the current climate in aquariums is just "Make it jump for us." and education is a far off second thought.
Our ability to study animals in the wild, with high tech GPS tracking, more accessible travel options, better sensor data, etc, is much greater than it was 30-40 years ago when these animals were being put in zoos and aquariums. We don't need them in there anymore from a scientific point of view. The argument that people form connections with them? I don't know.
[+] [-] kauai73|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xfeba|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apalmblad|8 years ago|reply
A friend who worked there shared the following, which is worth a read if you're n interested in the topic:. http://vanmag.com/city/how-working-at-the-vancouver-aquarium...
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