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[AuraDragoness]

So I said I'd never come back here but a thought came to my mind recently about things like Marine Parks and Zoos:

Why do people blindly hate them without seeing for themselves or researching? As far as I remember, until PETA infiltrated SeaWorld and made the 'Blackfish' film (which come on people, its obvious that it was a bunch of clips poorly edited together in an attempt to sabotage, even my 12 year old brother can do THAT) no one seemed to give the whole 'Marine animals in captivity' thing a single thought.

Here's some food for thought, do you guys ever think, that by doing things like forcing the whole 'animals in zoos are being abused lets riot and unleash an onslaught of hate onto them' that you ruin it for those that find those things good? Actually, you know what? You already have, SeaWorld is forfitting one of their shows to appease PETA/Green-peace activists yet are still being hounded by them about the other animals. One's beliefs should be kept to themselves since other people may see otherwise...but no, these days this world is seen in black and white which is what causes war to break out and people to die due to conflicting beliefs.

Look up some National Geographic stuff on YT about animals in the wild/reality THEN tell me if they are better off out there. For a cheetah in the wild only 1 out of 7 hunts is successful so cubs sometimes won't make it to their 2nd birthday, if even that. Orcas, dolphins, etc. are exposed to pollution, nets, starvation, and a lot more stuff as well.

Oh, and before you say 'Sanctuaries are better' keep in mind those can only hold so much, and what if, lets say, tomorrow something happens to all those sanctuaries and the animals that they held inside them, as well as their wild brethren, all perish? If not for places like Zoos, many animals would have gone extinct a LONG time ago. Besides, some of the animals in places like zoos that were rescued will never be able to return to the wild due to injury or something that prevents them from being able to thrive.

Lastly, I'm going to tell you some words of wisdom that many do not follow:
"The eyes are the key to the soul"
Basically, before you state that an animal that is unable to curve the sides of their mouths is suffering/depressed/whatever in captivity, take a look into their eyes and you'll see their emotions that way.

Also, FWI, the animals in SeaWorld came LONG before the rides and stuff (at least in the San Diego one) and all the animals there now are the descendants of the originals which btw, were all rescues. How do I know this? Because my parents were THERE when the park was founded.

End of the wall of text, next time you see a picture of one of the SeaWorld animals (or any animal of captivity even) look into their eyes like I said; after all, animals can express more emotion than humans can.

[SmokeyKitty]

Basically just adding onto what Orque said at this point.
(By the way, before I respond I should say that PETA is complete and utter garbage and Greenpeace isn't far behind them)

It really annoys the heck out of me when people basically come to the conclusion that zoos and marine parks and wildlife sanctuaries are the ones doing all the work to protect wild animals, because it's not true and it devalues everything that conservationists and researchers have done to try and preserve animals still living in the wild. It also is a statement that ignores the fact that many facilities are not as up to date, or spacious, or naturalistic as they could be. Take big cat conservation for example; there are many facilities that allow close contact with their big cats and sometimes even subtly promote exotic pet ownership - and the exotic pet trade is one of the biggest things that actually hurt wild populations of animals. Did you know that there are more tigers being kept as 'pets' in the United States alone than there are wild tigers? And please don't get me started on those "cute" videos of Slow Lorris'.

Humans are the sole reason that many animals have to be held in captivity in the first place.

Wild animals need help, yes; but if we ignore those in captivity that do not live in the best conditions available, than it just makes it okay for more facilities and more people to mistreat these animals. A person can care about more than one thing at once. I can advocate for wild animals as well as captive animals; these two things are not mutually exclusive.

Anyways, back to the actual subject of cetaceans...

Wild cetaceans are exposed to various pollutants and noise and man-made threats, but many of those pollutants are a result of how we live. For example, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not only being built on land that belongs to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, pipelines always rupture and leak, and so that oil would eventually leech into the soil and the water and kill various species of wild animals that live along that proposed route. And in case you were not aware, the functional extinction of the AT1 Transients that live in Prince William Sound, Alaska was directly caused by the supertanker, Exxon Valdez, running aground in 1989. The AT1's are thought to have lived and hunted in the Sound since the last ice age and now the remaining 7 whales will die out within this lifetime due to humans.

I could go on and on about why wild animals are suffering because of humans, but if I did, this post would probably never end, so I'll just address a couple more things below:


1. Protesting/advocating for animals in captivity is not a new thing. Many people protested when Ted Griffin hauled Namu to the Seattle Marine Aquarium to keep as his "pet", and they have protested against the captivity of animals ever since.


2. PETA was not involved in the making of Blackfish in any way, shape, or form. Just because PETA endorses the film or protests against cetacean captivity, does not at all mean that they were involved in the making of the film.

3. I could look into the eyes of a dog getting a bath and I wouldn't be able to tell if he were happy or sad because dogs don't communicate their feelings/intentions through their eyes, they do it through body language. The most you can tell from looking into an animals eyes is whether their eyes are healthy or have issues.

4. SeaWorld was founded by four graduates of the University of California on March 21, 1964 (which was 52 years ago), so does that mean your parents are around 60 or 70+ years old today?

5. Morgan is quite literally the only Orca who was "rescued" and kept in captivity because she supposedly has hearing problems and they could not locate her family (which is highly debatable).

Apart from other rescues who ultimately died instead of recovering, every living and deceased captive Orca in history were not rescues.

"In February 1976, Sea World collector Don Goldsberry captured six orcas in Budd Inlet, deep inside Puget Sound. He was accused of violating the terms of his permit. This time, he was seen using seal bombs and buzzing aircraft to herd the whales and drive them into his nets."

The reason those 6 [Transient] Orca were released was because former Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munroe was out sailing on Puget Sound the day that those captures occurred and he witnessed the capture tactics first hand, which did violate the capture permits. In 1976, Munroe worked to ban live captures in the state of Washington, while captures in British Columbia/Canada had been banned the year before. That same year (1976), capture teams moved to Iceland where they began capturing whales there until Iceland also banned live captures in 1989.

Anyways, that's enough. This post is long enough and it's still all over the place but like I said, that's how I am.

[Gypaetus Barbatus]

It seems that Tokitae actually does have dental issues, just not as severe as other captive Orca. In 2011, this article was released saying that she was being treated for a tooth infection due to a "dental issue" she had in 1994.

Someone also told me that they'd seen an article or post somewhere saying that Toki had worn 'tooth caps' to hide or protect her damaged teeth, but they can't find the source and I've never heard of any captive wearing such things.

And in this picture, you can clearly see her very, very front teeth on her bottom jaw are damaged, though the rest of her teeth are still in great shape.

(Photo source)

That stems from an old tumblr post that went around a few years back. But it got deleted since. There was no source added to the post though, so I'm rather skeptical it was true.

[oceanmando]

I think zoos and aquariums can save animals and help so much or really hurt animals. Take the Blue Spix Macaw. Similar to in the movie Rio, there are none left in the wild due to deforestation and the pet trade. But, places like Loro Parque have been breeding them. Without breeding programs they most likely would have died out and there would be none left.
Another example is SeaWorld's rescue program. They have rescued 37,000+ orphaned, ill, or injured animals, many of whom are returned to the wild. For example, SeaWorld recently rescued a dolphin who was tangled in 3 pounds of fishing gear. They rescued him, removed the fishing line, and returned him almost immediately. And they've rescued thousands of orphaned sealions. One of them had a bullet in his jaw, but SeaWorld rehabilitated him, removed the bullet, and eventually was able to return him. They also have done critical research into cetaceans and their gestation, life cycle, birth, ect that can help us protect wild whales.
But, there are places that do more harm than good. Take the Taiji Whale Musuem as an example. They directly support the slaughters of thousands of cetaceans every year. A lot of their pools are small and dirty.

Or Miami Seaquarium. Although they help with critical manatee rescue, the state of their park is terrible. Especially Lolita.
Or Marineland Ontario. This park is terrible. They keep an orca alone, with only trainers as her companion. Almost half of their 50 belugas are wild-caught from Russia (the most recent being from 2008 I believe). Their animals are treated terribly.



So there's just my thoughts. I shall return to my little hole now.

[Lilian Nightshade]

I've always kept an eye on this thread, but never felt like commenting my opinion because it was almost identical to many others who post here often. With this topic regarding zoos and aquariums being brought up, though, I can't resist joining the discussion.

There will always be good and bad zoos, it isn't hard to spot unprofessional zoos and thus I've always found them very easy to avoid, and the same goes for aquariums. Here in my city there's an amazing aquarium that recently finally reopened after spending over a year working on a massive expansion, and when I went there to see the new attractions I was really blown away. It's now technically a zoo because it focuses on other animals besides aquatic wildlife, and every single habitat for the animals is super well done and spacious for them. Heck, the habitat for the polar bears I saw there was gigantic, and it actually had a passage underwater leading to yet another huge room filled with toys for them. There was also a kangaroo habitat that was practically a big field so they could freely exercise. When it comes to marine mammals there weren't any cetaceans, but I saw separate pools for manatees, sea lions and seals and all of them were very decently sized too. It's very clear that they care a lot for the animals they host there and invest money on making them as comfortable as possible.

On the other hand, regarding my opinion on cetacean captivity, while I'm completely against orca captivity, I do believe it is possible to provide a good captive environment for smaller cetaceans such as dolphins. I, for example, have seen another aquarium with a really large pool for their dolphins and that didn't use them for shows. They provided lots of exercise for the pod and never separated them to export to other parks in order to maintain the family bonds between dolphins intact, specially between mother and calf. Unfortunately this isn't the case of many aquariums out there and I'm definitely against those, but I'm pretty sure it IS possible to keep smaller captive cetaceans with the right conditions to keep both their physical and mental health in check. When it comes to orcas, however, they are simply way too big for us to provide any decent captive environment that isn't a sea pen(probably belugas too), and thus I can't support orca captivity at all. I guess this makes me... half anticap? I've never been sure XD.

[Lilian Nightshade]

Yeah I know, but with a large animal it's still much harder to have a decent captive environment and at the same time offer good exercise and entertainment. No captive environment is perfect, animals show stereotypical behavior even in the best captive habitats due to pent up energy, only much less intensely than an animal in a badly planned habitat... I think that what matters is providing a place spacious, varied enough so they won't be confined to such a repetitive place(like those spherical fish bowls that drive me nuts), and also have ways to provide them stimuli and spend this pent up energy. Those tedious barren pools we see so often are definitely out of question in this case ¬¬'.

You know, some time ago I saw footage of a marine park that did shows with dolphins and belugas, and what surprised me was that they focused a really big portion of the show on human performances. They had a group of professional swimmers performing tricks and intricate coreography like in an animal-free circus, only in the water, and they only called the dolphins/belugas over for more specific tricks. I found this very interesting because I can't help but think that, if there was a bigger focus on human performance like this in marine parks, maybe we would have a way for smaller cetaceans like dolphins to do shows, and thus exercise, without going through so much stress and repetitive moves... I dunno, it's something that has been in my mind a lot. What do you all think?

[SmokeyKitty]

Another example is SeaWorld's rescue program. They have rescued 37,000+ orphaned, ill, or injured animals, many of whom are returned to the wild. For example, SeaWorld recently rescued a dolphin who was tangled in 3 pounds of fishing gear. They rescued him, removed the fishing line, and returned him almost immediately. And they've rescued thousands of orphaned sealions. One of them had a bullet in his jaw, but SeaWorld rehabilitated him, removed the bullet, and eventually was able to return him. They also have done critical research into cetaceans and their gestation, life cycle, birth, ect that can help us protect wild whales.

Ehh, I would like to point out two or threeish things relevant to this.

1. The 37,000+ rescues is a bit misleading. In June of 2000, the MV Treasure, a bulk ore carrier, sank off the coast of South Africa after being damaged and leaking at least 1,300 tons of bunker oil into the sea. As a result, over 20,000 African Penguins got caught in the oil and organizations like the International Fund for Animal Welfare immediately mobilized the International Bird Rescue's response team to rescue the penguins. However, none of the sites or articles I have read even mention SeaWorld. The only place I have found mention of SeaWorld and their involvement in the rescue of these penguins was directly on the SeaWorld Cares website.

2. It's also worth mentioning that their rescues (non-profit) are completely separate from their amusement/marine park(for-profit). It is entirely possible that their rescue program could still exist and function, even if their parks did not. They even receive government funding/grants for their rescue program just like any other organization.

3. Many of the studies that SeaWorld has done on their Orcas in particular have either already been done on wild cetaceans/Orca, or they are really not at all relevant/helpful to wild populations (most studies tend to focus on breeding and husbandry, which are usually completely irrelevant and useless when applied to wild populations). For example, SeaWorld released a supposed "groundbreaking" paper in 2015(i think?) on how a female Orca can transfer toxins through her milk to her calf, despite the fact that researchers studying wild populations had already known this for years prior.
(one - two - three - separate and vague/unrelated sources because I could not find where I originally kept the info about this bit, my bookmarks are a mess)

(Also should have mentioned in a previous post that SeaWorld has actually been involved in wild cetacean captures in recent years, just not with Orca. Though I remember reading somewhere that SeaWorld had sent trainers over to Russia to assist with the new captive Orca over there. I'll stop before I get carried away again, but I felt this little bit was worth mentioning. I can [hopefully] provide sources on this if anyone wants to get more in-depth.)

[SmokeyKitty]

It's not anything big, really. But basically a number of facilities were trying to import wild-caught Beluga whales from Russia, but the permit was denied [twice].

On June 15, 2012, the Georgia Aquarium submitted an application for an Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) permit, requesting authorization to import 18 Beluga Whales from the Utrish Marine Mammal Research Station in Russia to the U.S. for the purpose of public display. These whales were wild-caught and were not rescues - and it is worth noting that Russia does not have very strict regulations regarding the capture of cetaceans.
(Beluga capture limits were set at 825 for this year)

GA requested that the animals be imported and legally held by them, though some of the animals would be transported to other facilities under breeding loan agreements. The facilities included the Shedd Aquarium and all 3 SeaWorld parks (SeaWorld would have received 11 whales).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) denied the permit on August 5, 2013 on the grounds that these imports/live captures may or may not have an adverse impact on the species/stock of wild Belugas, they determined that the requested import would more than likely result in the taking of marine mammals beyond those authorized by the permit, and because they estimated at least 5 of the Belugas were approximately 1.5 years of age at the time of capture and were potentially still nursing and not yet independent.

The Georgia Aquarium contested this by filing a complaint in U.S. District Court on September 30, 2013. They stated that "NMFS's (NOAA) permit denial was arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law."

Interestingly enough, SeaWorld pulled out of the whole ordeal almost 3 years later on September 1, 2015; stating on their website that they would not accept any of the Beluga's listed on the permit. On September 28, 2015, the court upheld the decision by NOAA and once against denied the import permit.

This website, SeaWorld Fact Check, actually has a lot of good information and sources on various discrepancies regarding SW.
Also here is the summarized version of the Beluga import on NOAA's website, along with the full court documents.

[SmokeyKitty]

Also, I just remembered this; there was a huge controversy in 2003 because SeaWorld was attempting to get a permit from NOAA to grant them permission to harvest sex cells/sexual organs from wild marine mammals.

"Now a Sea World vet is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for permission to harvest reproductive cells from animals killed in international waters through fishing practices that would otherwise be illegal in the United States. Sea World also wants to collect sex organs of seals, sea lions, walruses, whales, dolphins and porpoises to further study marine-mammal reproductive physiology."

So basically SeaWorld has gone under fire for a lot of things over the 50+ years they've operated - it's not something that started just because of Blackfish.

[SmokeyKitty]

Going back to Tokitae, it seems that things could actually change for her in the future.

"The Marine Mammal Commission (MMC), a government body that works with Congress to protect animals, has backed Cole’s words by recently stating clearly that when it comes to tanks carrying orcas and other dolphins, measurements for minimum space requirements are to be unobstructed; otherwise, the agency says, the regulations are “rendered meaningless.”

“… The existing regulations specifies that enclosures must be constructed and maintained so that the animals contained within are provided sufficient space, both horizontally and vertically, to be able to make normal postural and social adjustments with adequate freedom of movement, in or out of the water,” wrote Rebecca J. Lent, the executive director of the commission. “All minimum space requirements should be met in an unobstructed manner, otherwise the definition of ‘minimum’ would be rendered meaningless.”

Some APHIS officials allude that the regulations allow for multiple obstructions in Lolita’s tank. The MMC, however, says “minimum space requirements should be met in an unobstructed manner, otherwise the definition of ‘minimum’ would be rendered meaningless.”

Lent also said that APHIS should “clarify” to the public that “all minimum space requirements for all species/groups under section 3.104 of the regulations (which Lolita is a part of) are to be calculated and based on unobstructed horizontal distances and depths.”

Animal advocate Russ Rector, the Fort Lauderdale man who once led a devastating campaign against Ocean World in the ‘90s, has filed a new complaint urging APHIS to remeasure Lolita’s tank in light of the MMC’s statement regarding measurements.

“In light of the May 4, 2016, Marine Mammal Commission’s letter to APHIS saying that minimum space requirements are to be measured without obstructions, I ask that APHIS have an investigator please use that complicated instrument called a tape measure and measure the whale Stadium’s tank as it should be measured,” Rector quips in his complaint. “Does this tank meet MHD regulations for an Orca?”

This complaint may pose a dilemma for Seaquarium. If an investigator finds Lolita’s enclosure does not meet unobstructed space requirements, then the nearly 50-year-old orca can no longer legally be permanently housed in the present stadium whale tank."