By Naomi Rose
The world of captive cetaceans would appear to be a zero-sum
game. While the number of whale and dolphin facilities in the
United States has fallen, the number of captive cetacean
attractions in other parts of the world is growing, notably in
the Caribbean and Asia.
This perpetually balancing equation also plays out with the
animals involved. When U.S. facilities close, the operators
can't just release their former charges back into the wild.
They must find a place for them, and that place is often in
those foreign countries that harbor less-than-ideal captive
facilities.
The case of Rapid City, South Dakota's Marine Life
Aquarium's provides a perfect example. This particularly grim
place had two bottlenose dolphins, Sunny and Hoaka, languishing
in an indoor swimming pool. When the facility finally closed
its rusty doors in the mid-1990s (owing in part to
investigative efforts by The HSUS), Sunny and Hoaka were sent
to the Guangzhou Aquarium in Beijing, China. Marine Life
Aquarium was able to make this deal because the current version
of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, weakened in 1994
through the lobbying of the marine park industry, allows the
easy export of live marine mammals, without public
oversight.
To the amazement of many, both dolphins remain alive in
their gloomy, concrete tank, thousands of miles from Sunny's
original home in the waters off Florida. (She was captured near
Charlotte Harbor in 1981; Hoaka was born in captivity in
1991.)
Their plight recently inspired the Summerlee Foundation to
sponsor a meeting of cetacean-protection activists who work on
issues related to the marine park industry. The meeting, dubbed
The Sunny Summit, was held last October in San Francisco. The
summit focused on, among other things, the growing number of
swim-with-the-dolphin (SWTD) facilities in the Caribbean and
elsewhere, the global trade in wild-caught cetaceans,
legislation to protect marine mammals, and the pressing need
for more options—other than transferring captive animals to yet
another captive situation—when marine parks close.
No Sanctuary
The topic of transferring captive cetaceans from one park to
another was of particular concern to the Summerlee Foundation.
The foundation had hoped Sunny could either be retired to a
sanctuary, where she would not have to perform five times a day
for fish, or perhaps even, with the proper rehabilitation, be
returned to life in the wild. (The captive-born Hoaka, on the
other hand, is a less ideal candidate for reintroduction to the
wild.)
Summerlee's hopes, however, came face to face with a harsh
reality: At present, there are no sanctuaries for "retired"
captive cetaceans. Marine mammals, cetaceans in particular,
have highly specialized care requirements, and are expensive to
maintain; to date, no one has been able to establish a
financially sound sanctuary with sufficiently qualified
husbandry staff.
Still, summit discussions were promising, but it remains to
be seen if the animal-protection community can offer captive
dolphins a truly solid alternative to a lifetime of
performance-based public display.
Going in Opposite Directions
Summit participants also examined the vastly contrasting
trends in marine mammal captivity between the developed world
and the developing world. While marine parks close in the
former, they just as quickly open in the latter.
In the United States, Canada, and the European Union, a
growing public appreciation for the intelligence, social
complexity, and self-awareness of cetaceans has cut down on
attendance at marine parks. Many older facilities have closed
for financial reasons, and the handful that remain, such as
Marineland Ontario and the Miami Seaquarium (which came under
attack last year for numerous building-code violations), are
becoming more isolated from the rest of the marine park
community.
Even the big name facilities—SeaWorld, with its facilities
in San Diego, San Antonio, and Orlando, and Six Flags Marine
World in Vallejo, California—are feeling the pain: SeaWorld
sold its Ohio property recently to Six Flags Theme Parks, and
Marine World has shifted its focus away from animal exhibits to
thrill rides.
Despite the promising trend in the United States—including
the fact that no cetacean has been captured in U.S. waters
since 1993—the situation globally does not provide much cause
for optimism.
The signs are seemingly everywhere: Swim-with-the-dolphin
exhibits are popping up all over the world, stocked largely by
wild-caught dolphins—there is even a "swim with false killer
whales" attraction in the Philippines. Entrepreneurs looking to
make a buck off wild cetaceans have financed captures in the Solomon Islands
and apparently have tried to do the same off the coast of
Guinea-Bissau in West Africa in early 2004. What's more, the
global trade in orcas may recommence, with Russia apparently
determined to make the Kamchatka district a
primary source of animals. The marine park industry is
powerful, with a tremendous amount of money backing its
political clout.
What is the solution? If the efforts to impact the supply
side of the marine-park industry are too often ineffective,
then we must address the public demand for captive marine
mammals.
One such avenue is to educate the public, especially
children, about the sad truth behind the captive dolphin's
smile. This can be done through, for example, advertisements,
media stories, web sites, outreach (e.g., lectures, public
presentations), and literature. We can also approach
communities with captive facilities (which bring revenue into
the area and employ local residents) with alternatives such as
sustainable whale- and dolphin-watching. We can even engage
directly with the sponsors and companies that support captive
facilities (such as cruise lines).
Cetacean-protection advocates need to teach people who love
dolphins that the desire for close encounters, while
understandable, can lead to violent captures, deaths, and
suffering. Even when a marine park is state-of-the-art and has
only captive-bred dolphins, its success provides the incentive
to developing world entrepreneurs to capture wild dolphins and
start up poorly conceived and inadequately staffed attractions.
We need to look at the practice of maintaining cetaceans in
captivity as a whole—the "good" parks inspire the "bad"
ones.
In the end, we need to look at captivity from the cetaceans'
point of view. They do not volunteer to live in tanks or
pens—they are drafted. They do not choose to entertain us—the
choice is taken from them. We have taken advantage of their
benign nature for too long. It is time to stop being selfish
and do what the old adage says: If we love them, we should let
them go.
In the stories below, you can get a snapshot of the current
state of cetacean captivity around the world and the laws
designed to protect the animals. Check back next week for even
more stories on captive marine mammals.
Dr. Naomi Rose is the marine
mammal scientist for The HSUS.
