cal🫍

[cemetery-driv33]

• 19, they/them

•orca / cetacean special interest

zoo/aquarium supporter, animal lover, hobby photographer, movie enjoyer (letterboxd here!), everything enthusiast.

@oceanicorca is my lovely lovely partner💫

~i also go by @/orcaflukez on most other platforms

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Empty the Tanks protests are happening this weekend. So here’s a few reminders (based on scientific research and my own experience as a former dolphin trainer/working in dolphin welfare):

No functioning “sea sanctuary” currently exists for cetaceans. No sea sanctuary is currently being utilised by dolphins or whales. If you "empty the tanks" there is no where for these animals to go, which is why we have two shutdown facilities with dolphins and whales living in limbo: Marineland Antibes and Marineland Ontario

"Tricks" are just learned behaviours, which the dolphin or whale only chooses to do because there is a reinforcing outcome for them. If the behaviour was uncomfortable or caused them pain, they simply don't have the incentive to do them.

Dolphins and whales in accredited facilities are not being "made to perform" or "starved". If that was the case, you'd be seeing it in their body condition and behaviour. There are facilities where outdated training methods are still used but these are not the places where Empty the Tanks are demonstrating in front of.

"Shows" are basically high energy exercise sessions put to music and the animals can always choose not to participate if they don't want to. You being entertained by an animal is not inherently unethical if their welfare is prioritised. The animals don't care whether a show is "educational" or not. Or if they're doing "natural" behaviours.

Dolphins and whales in human care are all individual animals with individual personalities, learning histories, genetic histories ect. There is no one size fits all solution to welfare.

Just "make the tanks bigger" or "put them in the ocean/sea sanctuary" are not viable or reasonable welfare solutions. And the Empty the Tanks organisers are not qualified to assess cetacean welfare in any meaningful way.

I have personally witnessed poor welfare in a sea pen habitat in bottlenose dolphins - welfare issues do not go away in a sea pen. In fact, sea pens create a lot of other stressors and uncontrollable environmental factors such as pollution/oil spills, weather/currents/tides ect.

If you have any questions or concerns about the welfare of cetaceans in human care, you're welcome to message me questions or have a chat to trainers and caretakers at your local zoological facility.

Genuinely we would not be working minimum wage jobs and sacrificing financial security to scrub buckets and be elbow deep in frozen fish at 5am if we didn't care about these animals.

[oceanicorca]

@callovesorcas & I 🖤🤍

[cemetery-driv33]

little clown whale🎟️🎪🍥

[oceanicorca]

Tuar!!!

[the-cetacean]

Killer Whale: Killer Culture (BBC)

[cemetery-driv33]

cetacean dividers i’ve collected𓇼°˖

credits/made by: @orcinusmeridionalis @genderlesspersonx @animatedglittergraphics-n-more @sisterlucifergraphics @i-collect-shiny-stuff @cheezitofthevalley @sweetsparadise

[cemetery-driv33]

i bet it’d feel so good to breach

[oceanicorca]

Takara thrasher (normal speed & fast speed)

[daz-e]

[cemetery-driv33]

i highly recommend making jelly and cutting it into cubes so you can eat it and feel like a killer whale

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

If you’ve been told that “scientists disagree with cetacean captivity”, please know that this assertion is being drawn from a small handful of papers written by a small group that does not represent the entire cetacean science community.

These papers are also designed to market sea sanctuaries as a solution to the welfare issues they claim exists - but they do not acknowledge the significant conflict of interest that exists as Lori Marino gains a decent salary from the Whale Sanctuary Project.

Dr. Jason Bruck wrote a great summary of this - and links to papers and videos:

These are the many papers now challenging Marino review papers (that have no data to back their claims- Lori does not collect data for herself. She misrepresents what other studies say to fit her narrative).

Her paper: https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Chronic-stress-captive-orcas-Marino-et-al-2020.pdf

Her paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34534428/

Response papers:

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/7/1118

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/13/17/2707

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cj9473p

Hence there are no data to back up her claims and there is quite a bit of literature pointing out that not only are marine mammals starting to outlive their wild counterparts dramatically.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/290/2009/20231895/104384/Survival-improvements-of-marine-mammals-in

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mms.12601

But that they actively anticipate participating in training sessions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.21400

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159118300352

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6688123/

And that not allowing calving has negative welfare implications for the whole group…especially older animals.

https://www.animalbehaviorandcognition.org/uploads/journals/7/06.Hill_etal_FINAL.pdf

Finally, not one but two peer reviewed papers have outlined how GFAS sanctuaries can be detrimental to the welfare of cetaceans.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/14/2/335

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-5636/6/1/4

As for the conservation implications of losing these animals- where do you think we ground truth and test new technologies to help protect wild animals?

Finally here is an in-depth systematic takedown of Marino’s last peer reviewed paper.

View the review history for An update on captive cetacean welfare

[cemetery-driv33]

my account getting banned and having to start again has made me lose interest in this app so i might start trying to post more to get myself back into it… need more ceta mutuals

[consolehigh]

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Any time I see someone worshipping Ingrid Visser I remember the time her organisation, under her advice, kept an orca calf on a mattress in a horse trailer overnight because they wanted to “rehabilitate” him/put him in a makeshift sea pen to treat like a pool toy until he died.

I remember when videos showed up of newly named Toa vocalising (usually a sign of stress) and her cooing and making nonsense noises at him. And the comments were like “she’s talking to him!!!”

Ingrid also insisted of making Toa interact with people despite him being a very sick baby orca who was slowly dying.

This was later confirmed by people who were there:

I remember when untrained volunteers were crowding this stressed sick orca calf, bragging about swimming with him and bonding with him and ignoring advice to stop habituating him.

They had young kids in with him that didn’t know better and were told by Ingrid to interact with him like this. They were also laughing about how he “snored.” (Cetaceans don’t snore - anything that sounds like snoring is respiratory distress).

(Funny how waterwork is only okay when they do it with the stressed and dying orca calf but not in SeaWorld.)

The pathetic attempt to rehabilitate this dying calf by treating him like a pet, putting him in a tub of freshwater that quickly became toxic with ammonia. Signing off feeds with belly rubs and formulas changed behind the backs of the actual experts from Wellington Zoo and the experts consulted overseas who actually have successfully rehabbed calves.

How Whale Rescue (Ingrid’s organisation) lied again and again about Toa’s health and chances to be rehabilitated and released. How they misrepresented information about habituation when rehabbing whales and how Ingrid wanted to “train” Toa, despite plans to release him. How they demonised SeaWorld and claimed they weren’t involved despite records showing that SeaWorld and Loro Parque vets had provided their formula recipes and calf rearing protocols.

None of this is true - Ingrid has never rehabilitated any whale from a marine park. All the information she was getting was from DOC and the advisory group team

I could go on but I hit my image limit.

Basically: Ingrid’s “expertise” misled the New Zealand public, bullying out the actual experts so she could play orca trainer with her new pet.

[calsfinalproject]

mine and twin’s orcas👻throwing these here b4 i sleep! mine is the one with the notched fins, his is the other cutie @fisheatingorca @oceanicorca <3

[calsfinalproject]

three cheers for sweet revenge x chip and midnight ocs belong to me and @fisheatingorca / @oceanicorca