#blackfish

[girlancelot]

brynden is helping stoneheart/brotherhood! he is going to join the wall! he is in the greywater watch/the neck! he is gathering allies in the vale! meanwhile this is him

[proceduralbob]

These whales live lives of quiet desperation and intense boredom. It is the kind of ennui that can be fatal - to both whale and human.

Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish, John Hargrove with Howard Chua-Eoan

[agentem]

If Brynden Tully never stabs an Other with the obsidian "blackfish" that he uses to fasten his cloak, I will be so mad.

Because you made it obsidian, George. It could've been onyx. You started this.

[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 There are facilities where outdated training methods are still used but these are not the places where Empty the Tanks are demonstrating in front of.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.

[cetuselena]

CA216C1 “Frosty / Frostbite”

I never thought I’d draw both sides but here it is.

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Just wanted to say I love your blog!! I’ve learned so much valuable insight about cetacean welfare and SeaWorld from it and have actually changed my view on some things. But I don’t want to rely solely on Tumblr blogs for my knowledge yknow? I’m not really sure how to start finding reliable sources.. is google scholar any good? Do you have any recommendations? Thank you for for what you do :) <3

Hi there! I'm really glad you've found my blog helpful and I commend you on wanting multiple sources, especially for such a complex topic.

Google scholar does work, I just looked up "orca welfare" and "cetacean welfare" and it looks like actual welfare papers are available. There's still some lobbyist white papers floating around in there and The Jett and Ventre longevity paper still persists - but I'd recommend looking at Dr. Kelly Jaakkola and Dr Grey Staffor's rebuttal of it.

When looking into journal articles, I recommend assessing the journal its published in and whether it makes sense for the paper to be published there - is it a legal journal? Zoological? Nature?. I want solid welfare data, not opinion pieces. So I'm going to look for studies that have been conducted with the animals themselves. I'll also read the methodology of the study. For example, if a study is discussing findings in welfare, they should be using previously established welfare assessments.

The most well-known is Dr. Isabella Clegg's C-Well Assessment for cetaceans. Dr. Isabella Clegg is also a good resource for general cetacean welfare work.

This paper is a good case study example of how to assess apparent "welfare" studies. All of these authors are actively involved in both wild and captive cetacean research.

If a paper is using inflammatory and emotive language, claiming a source supports them when it does the opposite and/or makes widespread blanket claims about entire populations from a small data set or no data set... it's probably not a very reliable source.

I also recommend checking out this letter to the editor. This letter was directed towards the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour, who published what amounted to an opinion piece about orca welfare and refused to accept any criticism towards Marino et. al. 2019, despite egregious errors.

Be wary of review papers that are trying to push a specific belief system without any citations or data. Just talking about the existence of the HPA axis and terrestrial animal studies are not enough to say chronic stress is happening in an unrelated species.

Most papers are going to be reviews of existing data, testing of methodology in measuring welfare and using those methologies to collect data and make conclusions based on that data.

It's a little bit of a minefield out there when it comes to cetacean welfare science but hopefully that helps to get an idea of how to assess papers for legitmacy and go "do your own research" while being aware of these potential traps.

[jonmesseatingglass]

Super new to BlueSky, hubs told me about lists, so I'm prepared in advance.

[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