Aquarium bucks trend by keeping whales

FEATURE
Aquarium bucks trend by keeping whales
> B Y TR AVIS LUPI CK
T
he last time that an orca
gave birth at the Vancouver
Aquarium was in 1995. Annelise Sorg, a long-time local
animal-rights activist, described the
delivery as one of the defining moments of her life.
“The aquarium was full of people,”
she said. “Children were screaming
and banging on the windows of the
underwater viewing gallery. And when
this little one died and sank to the bottom, there was a collective gasp.”
For hours, Sorg said, she watched
the mother, Bjossa, attempt to raise
her calf’s lifeless body from the floor
of their tank.
“It would just slip off her nose and
slowly drift and fall down to the bottom and lay there again,” Sorg continued. “Bjossa kept doing this until
she finally realized that there was
nothing that she could do. And then
she just lay on the surface of the water,
looking at her baby down below.”
It was the third time the orca had
lost an infant calf in less than 10 years.
In 2001, Bjossa was transferred to
a SeaWorld in San Diego, bringing
an end to the Vancouver Aquarium’s
exhibition of orcas, sometimes called
killer whales. The facility still keeps
two Pacific white-sided dolphins
named Helen and Hana, two beluga
whales named Aurora and Qila, a
pair of Pacific harbour porpoises
named Jack and Daisy, plus a number of sea otters, seals, and sea lions.
It also owns three additional belugas
currently on “breeding loan” to SeaWorld parks in the United States.
Although most aquariums across
Canada have discontinued exhibits of large marine mammals, the
Vancouver Aquarium plans to increase the number of cetaceans it
holds in captivity.
A $100-million expansion is under­
way and scheduled for completion
Morton also told the Straight that she
disagrees with keeping cetaceans in
captivity and, if possible, would like
to see the aquarium return its whales
and dolphins to the wild.
“It’s not that everything about
the Vancouver Aquarium is bad,”
she said, “it’s just that this one
thing is terrible.”
Morton once recalled swearing
that she’d never stray from science to involve herself with activism. However, as it was for Sorg,
an aquarium birth forever changed
her mind about marine mammals
in captivity.
Morton recounted the story of
Corky, an orca held in Los Angeles whose family she traced to
B.C. waters. Corky was captured
when she was five years old, Morton began, and never learned how
to nurse future calves, given the
young age at which she was separated from her family.
“I watched her give birth and lose
a number of babies,” Morton said.
“She lost them and would go on to
slam herself against the tank and
ram the windows. It was really horSome scientists worry that a Vancouver Aquarium expansion will result in more belugas and dolphins being kept in captivity.
rible.…She literally cried on the botin phases beginning in 2016. Van- scheduled for November, Sorg ex- performed there in the late 1960s. tom of the tank for two full days.”
couver Aquarium senior vice presi- plained, at which time citizens But he told the Straight that he opdent Clint Wright told the Globe and should be given a vote on the matter. poses the prospect of the aquarium ONE OF THE MOST comprehensive
Mail in August 2012 that another (The Vancouver Aquarium’s location increasing the number of marine studies examining deaths of marine mammals in captivity was conbeluga will be brought in for a new on public land in Stanley Park means mammals it holds in captivity.
breeding program. It is unclear what its operation is a municipal matter.)
“It absolutely disappoints me ducted in 2004 by the Sun Sentinel,
the aquarium’s plans are for its dol“This is the last opportunity we that they are so determined to keep a Florida newspaper. Investigative
phin population—management re- have for the public to have a say,” on exhibiting belugas and dol- reporter Sally Kestin analyzed 30
fused to answer questions for this Sorg said. “It is the last chance be- phins,” Spong said via phone from years’ worth of government docustory—but the construction project cause this expansion project will be his lab. “I think that they should ments covering some 7,120 whales,
includes a significant expansion of finished by the following year.”
recognize, like they have with the dolphins, seals, and sea lions.
Kestin found that despite vetthe facility’s dolphin habitat that
Two scientists previously ap- display of orcas in the past, that it
would allow a greater number of ani- plauded by the Vancouver Aquarium is a very inappropriate thing to do erinary care and protection from
predators and other threats, marine
mals to be kept there.
agree with her.
in this modern age.”
According to Sorg, that renovation
One of B.C.’s foremost orca exAlexandra Morton, another B.C.– mammals often do not live long in
makes 2014 the last chance to stop the perts is Paul Spong, who has run based scientist who studied cetaceans captivity. Of roughly 3,000 animals
Vancouver Aquarium from obtaining OrcaLab on Hanson Island near for decades, received praise from the whose ages could be determined, a
animals it will otherwise hold in cap- northern Vancouver Island since Vancouver Aquarium when in 2006 quarter died before the age of one, and
tivity for years or even decades.
1970. Spong is celebrated on the it bestowed on her an award for ex- half were dead before they were seven.
see next page
There’s a park-board election aquarium’s website for research he cellence in aquatic research. But
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FEBRUARY 13 – 20 / 2014 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 13
Aquarium bucks trend
from previous page
A database maintained by the
Orca Project, a collective of North
American researchers, sheds further
light on the challenges of aquarium
breeding. Of the 189 orcas whose
deaths are listed, 30 were recorded as
stillborn and another 47 did not live
past the age of five.
Animals once kept at the Vancouver
Aquarium appear in those statistics.
Hana, a dolphin that remains
there today, had two calves die in
childbirth: in 2006 and 2007. During
the 2000s, three beluga whales born
at the Vancouver Aquarium died before the age of four. Before the aquarium discontinued its orca exhibits in
2001, Bjossa, once the facility’s top
attraction, had three calves die within 100 days of their births.
Health problems associated with
captivity lessen as cetaceans get
older, but they still persist.
On the phone from Washington,
D.C., Naomi Rose, a marine-mammal
scientist with the Animal Welfare
Institute, recounted how visits to the
Vancouver Aquarium helped shape
lifelong attitudes toward animals.
“When you spend so much time with
them out in the field, you start noticing how small the tanks are,” she
said in a telephone interview.
According to Rose, a growing
body of scientific research indicates
that cetaceans do not live as long in
aquariums as they do in the oceans.
“We have a sense that beluga life
spans are about half in captivity
compared to what they are in the
wild,” she said. “Whales and dolphins
in captivity are under a chronicstress situation, and that affects
their health and they die young.
That is my hypothesis.”
Leah Lemieux is a Canadian author whose 2009 book, Rekindling the
Waters: The Truth About Swimming
With Dolphins, explores cetacean intelligence and arguments about captivity. She told the Straight that the
science she’s reviewed shows the lifespan of captive dolphins is typically
half that of those in the wild.
“With storms and nets and predators taken out of the equation, they
should be living longer in captivity,”
Lemieux noted. “But we find that
that is not the case at all. What we
find is stress erodes their immune
systems and makes them vulnerable
to all kinds of sicknesses and ulcers
and so forth.”
Supporting Rose and Lemieux’s
arguments is a 2009 Humane Society of the United States report comparing the results of six studies on
dolphins and orcas. It states that the
annual mortality rates for captive
cetaceans range from double to triple
those of their wild counterparts.
The consequences of prolonged
captivity are not just physical.
The 2013 documentary Blackfish
presents the life of Tilikum, an orca
captured in 1983. The film explores
the psychological impacts of captivity and Tilikum’s involvement in
the deaths of three trainers, one of
whom was a 20-year-old biology student named Keltie Byrne who was
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14 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT FEBRUARY 13 – 20 / 2014
drowned at an aquarium in Oak Bay,
British Columbia.
In a telephone interview, Lori
Marino, a science director for Jane
Goodall’s Nonhuman Rights Project
who appears in Blackfish, recalled
last visiting Vancouver in 2012 for
an American Association for the
Advancement of Science conference
that focused on cetaceans’ intelligence and emotions.
“We talked about what we know
about the cognitive abilities of dolphins and whales and what that says
about how well they fare in captivity,” she said. “A dolphin with just
another dolphin or one other whale
is essentially like someone in solitary
confinement; there is just no social
infrastructure there for their lives.”
Marino explained that captivity’s
effects on intelligent cetaceans include repetitive tendencies, hyperaggression, and self-mutilation. “A
complete decoupling of their ability
to control their behaviour,” she said.
“We see, basically, the same things in
dolphins and whales that we see in
primates—including humans—who
are psychologically disturbed.”
On the phone from his lab on
Hanson Island, Spong used another
phrase to describe cetacean captivity: he called it “sensory deprivation”,
a term associated with the George
W. Bush administration’s aggressive
handling of enemy combatants.
“These are acoustic animals; they
live in a world of sound,” Spong explained. “When you deprive them of
that normal acoustic environment,
you are really subjecting them to
sensory deprivation. And we know,
in terms of the effects of sensory
deprivation, that it is psychologically damaging. That’s been a longstanding method of torture.”
VANCOUVER AQUARIUM director
of communications Charlene Chiang
wrote in an email that president and
CEO John Nightingale would not
speak to the Straight for this story.
Two UBC researchers with ties to the
aquarium also declined to be interviewed, instead referring questions
to the facility’s communications department, where Chiang refused to
answer questions.
The Vancouver Aquarium is unusual among such organizations in
that it is located on public land and
is a registered charity. However, according to documents filed with the
Canada Revenue Agency, in 2012
donations accounted for only 11 percent of earnings while sales of tickets and merchandise constituted 66
percent of proceeds. The year before,
those numbers were five percent and
87 percent, respectively. The same
documents indicate that in 2012,
one staff member collected between
$250,000 and $299,000. Seven other
full-time employees earned annual
salaries of more than $120,000.
Kevin Willis is president of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and
Aquariums, an industry association
of which the Vancouver Aquarium is
a member. He told the Straight that
animals’ quality of life is one of the
organization’s primary concerns.
“We have demonstrated that it is
possible to maintain cetaceans in our
care and to meet their welfare needs
and their mental-stimulation needs,”
he emphasized. “Evidence of that fills
scientific journals.”
According to Willis, captive dolphins, on average, live twice as long
as those in the wild, and belugas live
at least as long as or longer than their
free counterparts. (Other scientists
the Straight interviewed characterized such findings as outdated.)
Willis, a biologist by training,
stated that he supports the Vancouver
Aquarium’s decision to increase the
number of cetaceans it holds in captivity. “Frankly, that [captive beluga]
population needs an infusion of more
individuals to get its reproductive potential back,” he explained.
In Canada, aquariums are largely
left to regulate themselves via membership in industry associations.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada is
charged with protecting wild marine
life, but its jurisdiction doesn’t extend to mammals held in tanks. The
province is charged with ensuring
the safe care of captive animals such
as grizzly bears, but cetaceans aren’t
on its list of responsibilities either.
That leaves the municipalities, a level
of government that watchdogs like
Sorg argue is too close to aquariums
to take on monitoring and enforcement responsibilities.
In 1996, the Vancouver park board
passed a bylaw forbidding the Vancouver Aquarium to acquire animals
via capture. But other than that, the
city doesn’t have a lot of control over
aquarium operations. In August
2004, CEO John Nightingale went so
far as to tell the park board there was
no requirement that he even inform
it of new acquisitions unless they
were dolphins or whales.
Park board commissioner Nikki
Sharma told the Straight that the
city’s agreement with the aquarium is up for review in 2015.
“Certainly, this will be an important one for us to look at and make
sure that we are keeping up with the
science of the day,” she said. “I think
our understanding of these creatures
has changed over time.”
But Sharma said activists won’t get
their wish for a plebiscite that would
give the public a say on cetacean
captivity as part of this November’s
park-board elections. “We’re waiting for 2015 to have a full review,”
she repeated.
The Vancouver Aquarium is now
one of the last facilities in Canada
holding large marine mammals
in captivity.
For this story, the Straight contacted the country’s largest aquariums and zoos in Victoria, Calgary,
Edmonton, Toronto, and Montreal.
Every one of those operations reported that it does not hold a single
dolphin or whale in captivity. (A
notable exception is MarineLand in
Niagara Falls.) Several that once did
house cetaceans emphasized that
they eliminated those exhibits in response to public pressure.
Some scientists still maintain that
cetacean captivity is necessary to
continue beneficial research.
Andrew Trites, director of UBC’s
marine-mammal research unit, described the Vancouver Aquarium—a
partner—as an “incredible” resource
that has advanced researchers’
understanding of the pressures marine mammals face. “I think many
studies are contributing to improving the lives of animals in the wild,”
Trites told the Straight.
But onetime aquarium partners
like Spong and Morton argued that
there’s no longer any valid reason
for cetaceans to be kept on land.
Another former employee, Doug
Pemberton, who served as the
aquarium’s assistant chief trainer
from 1972 to 1991, told the Straight
that he left the organization on good
terms and didn’t like the film Blackfish. But Pemberton added that he,
too, has come to oppose keeping
cetaceans in zoos or aquariums.
“I’m not sure that any animals
deserve to be in captivity,” he said.
“If the aquarium is coming out right
now and saying that they are going
to get more belugas, I think people
would storm the place. I think there
is enough anger out there and enough
resentment for animals in captivity
that that would probably stop it.”
On the phone from her home in
Alaska, Samantha Berg, a former
SeaWorld trainer who takes a lead
role in Blackfish, told the Straight
that it’s become clear to her that the
needs of marine mammals cannot be
met in captivity.
She noted that although Blackfish
focuses on orcas, there’s a growing
body of research indicating that
captivity is detrimental to all cetaceans, including the whales and
dolphins that remain at the Vancouver Aquarium. “My personal
story with beluga whales was that I
always thought they seemed sort of
disassociated, almost like an autistic child,” Berg said.
She offered a simple observation:
that although aquariums house animals, they are designed to meet the
desires of humans.
“My dream is to swim with a killer
whale, but the killer whale’s dream is
not to swim with me,” Berg said. -