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 There are facilities where outdated training methods are still used but these are not the places where Empty the Tanks are demonstrating in front of.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.
This is a video from the fb page run by the animal care team at Marineland Antibes in France. It made me happy and relieved and sad at the same time. These people are still here. Still doing their very best to take of their beloved animals, stuck in limbo for more than a year already. I so, so wish the best for them. I so wish Wikie and Keijo will be moved to Loro Parque, where they can be with other killer whales. I so wish their trainers will be involved in such a move. Wikie was one of the first Killer whales I ever saw for real; she was only 8 years old then. She, and this place, will always occupy a special part in my heart.
Look at them, look at these people who have never given up on them. Who still show up, despite their own utter uncertain future (and I guess very little pay). None of us should give up on these whales either. I so wish all of them the best.
UPDATE: a couple hours after writing this I JUST read the news that Wikie and Keijo will indeed be transferred to Loro Parque!!!! I am so very happy. I hope the transfer will go smooth and without much trouble for the animals, that they will be accompanied by their loyal staff and that they will settle into their new home well.
The French government is having another hearing on Monday to determine the fate of the orcas and dolphins stuck at Marineland Antibes.
Cetabase posted this link with contact information for both the French and Spanish governments. Please, if you can add your voice. Contact them and urge then to allow these animals to be transferred to other zoological facilities like Loro Parque. Do not allow them to be blocked yet again in a closed down facility, waiting for sanctuaries that have yet to be built (and likely won't be built), with the threat of euthanasia on the line.
The Jessica Radcliffe Orca 'Attack' Is AI-GENERATED.
I can't believe I have to announce this.
The infamous rumor/hot topic going around is that another orca attack and death after 15 years of peace has happened in Japan. This is CLEARLY AI-Generated. I have heard and seen many rumors. There are many videos, and each video is different, proving my point only further. And unfortunately, a lot of people believe it...
Jessica isn't real. Titan isn't real. It is all fake.
It is not real. Do your research, and especially in this day and age where AI videos look far too real now for the worst.
When horses end up with severe leg/hip injuries, they are almost always put to sleep. The odds of recovering full mobility from such injuries are slim and the odds of reinjury are high, so even if the horse is perfectly healthy in all other aspects, it is generally recognized to be more humane to put them down than to keep them alive just to live the rest of their lives limping around a small paddock or stall. A life for a horse in which s/he cannot gallop, leap, explore and play is no life at all. Why not apply the same logic to cetaceans? A life for a cetacean in which they can’t dive hundreds of meters, make meaningful autonomous choices (“should I play with the rubber ball or the puzzle feeder today?” is not a meaningful choice; research has shown that autonomy is crucial for animal welfare), echolocate and experience the rich biodiversity of the ocean is no life. I really don’t understand why it’s so horrible to think it more humane to euthanize a confused and sick orca calf if there is no chance of rehab and release than to take her/him permanently into captivity. It’s not disparaging or hateful to cetacean trainers to say so—I know they care about animals—it’s simply a logical ethical stance. Instead of searching in vain for orca conservation organizations that aren’t “radically anti-captivity”, maybe pro-caps should look inwards and ask themselves why all the major orca organizations (Center for Whale Research, Orca Behavior Institute, OrcaLab, Wild Orca, Orca Conservancy, Far East Russia Orca Project, etc.) as well as some cetacean organizations (ex. Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Cetacean Society International) oppose captivity. Is it because all of these esteemed groups, which if you look them up are all staffed by credentialed scientists, have been duped by the “animal rights agenda”, or could it be because maybe, just maybe, they know what they’re talking about? If captive orcas are so different from wild ones that wild orca biologists have no credibility to speak about their welfare, then that’s a clear indictment of captivity already.
Hi. I'm sorry for not answering right away, I was still at my externship when I got your ask, and I wanted to be able to sit down and give you a proper answer. So unfortunately, I don't think what I say will satisfy you. I don't expect to change your mind, nor is that my goal here. I only want to explain why I believe the way I do, so that you or others reading this can at least understand that it's not a position I take lightly, nor do I think it's infallible.
(Long post below the cut):
To start off, as an (almost) veterinarian, there are absolutely plenty of circumstances where I find euthanasia to be the correct decision. Euthanasia is our final gift to our patients, a swift and painless death in the face of prolonged suffering or poor quality of life. A large dog with debilitating osteoarthritis. A cat with terminal lymphoma. A down cow. A raptor with an amputated leg. Or like you mentioned, a horse with a fractured hip. These animals would live in a constant state of pain that they don't understand, and death can rightly be considered a kindness to them.
But an otherwise healthy orca calf? I would consider that a false equivalence. I agree that life in the wild should be prioritized whenever possible, and that captive orcas lead very different lives than their wild counterparts. But if that orca cannot return to the wild (orphaned and unable to be reunited with its pod, habituated to humans, non-painful disability such as deafness), and there is a facility willing to take it on, I do not think euthanasia is an appropriate option. In human care, that calf can still swim, breach, and dive, even if not to the same depths as the ocean (it's also worth noting that these are all costly behavior energetically and are not performed for no reason). It can still socialize and form family bonds with an adopted pod of whales. It can still (theoretically) mate and rear calves. It can still engage its big brain in problem-solving through training and enrichment in the place of hunting. And as a bonus, it will never go hungry and has access to veterinary care if ill or injured.
This is not a wild life. This is not the same life they would've, or should've known. A pool, no matter how well-appointed, is not the ocean, and we should not claim they're comparable. But I don't think it's a fate worse than death. I truly don't. But if it is... if freedom really is worth more than life, then all captive whales need to be euthanized. Even in a sea pen setting, they will not be free. They will not choose their food, their companions, their enrichment, their comings and goings. Those choices will still be made on their behalf by caregivers, and they will still have pretty much the same levels of autonomy as in their tank habitat. They will still be captive. (While some people do advocate for this, I don't think it's a popular outlook. Even SOS Dolfijn, a historically anti-cap organization, recently announced plans to build an aqauarium as a permanent home for non-releasable cetaceans rather than continuing to euthanize them).
Speaking of autonomy, yes, it is very important. But I truly don't think the orcas are distressed by the lack of meaning in choosing between enrichment devices. I think that's why we disagree on this topic... we have different worldviews. We both see orcas as beautiful, intelligent creatures, but I do not see them as people. They are animals, and for all their complexity, I interpret their behavior the same way I do any other species... they are motivated by food, reproduction, and (since they're highly social) companionship. Because of that, I still think we can give them a good life in human care, which is why it frustrates me to see the zoo community throw up their hands and give up rather than trying to improve our current less-than-ideal setups (*shakes my fist at the Blue World project*).
Now, I don't think it's wrong to be emotional about animals. I most definitely am! And it's very clear to me you love orcas and care about their wellbeing deeply. I admire that about you, and I appreciate your passion.
On to the next point... in the cetacean world, I've found that there is an unfortunate divide between researchers and caregivers who work with cetaceans in human care and those who study them exclusively in the wild. And that schism far predates the Blackfish era. Most of those organizations you listed are indeed legitimate, and I fully support their vital work and encourage others to do the same. A few of them, though, share things like this:
I think you can understand why this hurts me. And it's a lie. I've now interned at three aquariums (two of them AZA-accredited) that house various species of cetacean, and it's impossible for me to reconcile what I know and have seen to be true and what Whale and Dolphin Conservation wants the public to believe: that these unbelievably loved, vivacious animals are drugged and tortured by their greedy captors. It's not true, and I do not appreciate WDC for spreading this creepy artwork around. Nor do I think that fighting captivity is a beneficial allocation of resources when there is an overwhelming number of genuine threats to the survival of wild cetaceans.
Anyway, back to the scientists. Personally, I don't consider researchers who work exclusively with wild orcas to be either superior or inferior to those who work with captive whales. And sometimes I wonder how much of their position is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if someone opposes captivity on moral grounds, they won't work with captive whales, so they'll never get to know what their lives and care are like beyond maybe a single tour of the park or memories of how things were done in the 1960s (like Dr. Spong, who worked with some of the very first captive orcas at the Vancouver Aquarium).
I also don't think it diminishes the expertise of wildlife biologists to say that they are not experts on husbandry, training, or medical care... those are very different fields, and ideally, they should all inform each other. And of course, there are folks who work with both wild and captive whales. One of the reasons I linked SR3 in my previous post is they have staff with backgrounds in both managed care and research of free-ranging populations (I actually have no idea what the organization's official stance on captivity is, it's not something they address).
Maybe I'm wrong. I try my best to keep an open mind, but I know I'm also swayed by my own preconceptions and experiences. When I started this blog in December 2020, I was a first year vet student with minimal actual experience outside of domestic animals and some herps, and had only recently adopted the pro-captivity outlook. Now, I'm much more deeply involved in the zoo and aquarium world. These are people I know and respect, people who have written me letters of recommendation and comment on my Facebook posts, people I've had dinner with and showed up with after hours to care for a sick animal. And I recognize that biases me. The zoo world is often resistant to change, especially folks who have been in the industry for many years. And that doesn't do anyone, especially the animals, any good. I don't want to get stuck in an echo chamber, so I make it a point to read anti-captivity literature, even when it upsets me. If there is anything I can do to improve their lives, I want to learn about it, regardless of the source.
I try to adapt to new information. For example, in the past few months alone, I've become a lot more favorable toward the idea of sea pen habitats. My concerns about "sanctuaries" are more logisitical* and philosophical** rather than the idea that artifical habitats are inherently superior to pen habitats (they're not), especially when plenty of traditional facilites already make great use of ocean pens or enclosed lagoons. There are pros and cons to both, and a lot of it depends on the needs of the individual animals.
*funding; maintenance; lack of land-based backup pools and fully-equipped medical facilities; introducing immunologically naive animals to pollutants and infectious agents; disruptions to native wildlife; staffing activists and wildlife biologists rather than those with relevant husbandry experience
**villainizing aquariums; promoting the project as a "release to freedom" to the public when it's really another form of captivity; claiming the animals' lives will be "natural" when they will still require training, artificial enrichment, contraceptives, and social management if done correctly; downplaying or completely denying the very real risks of such a transition and insisting the animals will automatically be better off when Little White and Little Grey have proved that's not the case
If you made it to the bottom, thanks for reading. I wish all the best for you, and I mean that genuinely ❤️ even if we disagree, I hope you can appreciate our shared love for these animals and a desire for their wellbeing. Best of luck in all your endeavors!
If any of my whale friends (or people who like dolphins) are interested, I quite enjoy the Clearwater Marine Aquarium's dolphin live webcams! Seeing the dolphins swim around makes me very happy (especially since I cannot see dolphins regularly, due to being quite landlocked).
This is a view of the new Ruth & J.O. Stone Dolphin Complex, where our resident rescued bottlenose dolphins live together. The new complex h
