By Peter Hamilton

The Vancouver Aquarium is seeking government money for its $120-million expansion at a time when the economy and wildlife protection are in troubled waters. Aquarium expansions threaten animals and Stanley Park land. Scarce funds must protect endangered species in the wild. Tax monies must not exploit captives for entertainment and as research “tools”.

Monies are desperately needed to hire conservation officers to enforce new wildlife regulations. For example, boat-traffic harassment of local orcas causes major stress and interrupts foraging. Orcas under stress are more susceptible to deadly health problems and extinction. It’s illegal but not properly enforced.

Captivity is cruel because it does not provide for natural social and behavioural needs. In the wild, animals enjoy a diverse, vast ecosystem with complex social structures. But now the aquarium plans to get more out of captives by also seeking lucrative government research grants. Test-tube studies do not represent the whole picture of life in the wild. Marine Mammals in the Lab: Tools for Conservation and Science, a report from a 2007 North Pacific Universities Marine Mammal Research Consortium workshop, hosted by the aquarium and UBC Marine Mammal Research Unit, included reasons why it is impossible to accurately compare captive animals to wild ones.

Aquarium experiments could be applied to controversial military purposes. At the 2007 workshop, the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program participated. Decades ago, the U.S. Navy did study the belugas at the aquarium and held some in Nanoose Bay. Since the ’60s, military experiments have mistreated animals as weapons of war. Presently, dolphins and sea lions are kept in child-like portable pools when not on patrols on U.S. bases and in war zones.

While the aquarium jumped onto the “green” bandwagon because it is good for business, conservation programs have been and will continue to be achieved without putting animals in captivity. Its anticonservation message irresponsibly urges all to “get up close with nature” by petting and training captives. The aquarium’s attempt to kill an orca for a model for a sculpture started the orca slave trade that led to the depletion of the now-endangered orcas. The blood of many dolphins is on its hands with captivity and continued business deals with Japan, notorious for whaling and dolphin slaughters.

Stanley Park has a diversity of natural fauna and flora. It is a free ecology classroom that should be protected. The aquarium expansion will consume 30 percent more public green space. It is subject to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, as was the 1990 beluga-pool expansion, but the aquarium then ignored the law. This must not happen again.

The public does not want captive B.C. species that can be seen in the wild in “Super, Natural B.C.” The public voted against a zoo in Stanley Park with river otters, beavers, and others now on the aquarium list.

More pools means more animals will be confined and suffer. There have been 33 deaths of dolphins at the Vancouver aquarium. Bjossa had three babies that died and that helped stop the captivity of orcas. Now Hana has had two babies die, and this must stop the import of more Pacific white-sided dolphins.

If breeding is successful, the families can be split up or warehoused out of public view under horrible conditions. The sea otter Nyac’s first baby was sent to a zoo. One beluga is on loan to SeaWorld San Diego, while two are kept in a 50-square-foot barren pool surrounded by caged sea lions and newly captured fur seals in Vancouver.

The last NPA park board overturned Vancouver citizens’ right to vote on aquarium expansions and watered down the cetacean bylaw that was to phase out dolphin captivity. If the aquarium expands again, cage-crazy animals will be pacing back and forth like the otters and polar bears in the past. Dolphins will endlessly swim around and around and around. The new park board must keep their election promises. They must overturn those conservation setbacks and stop this expansion.

Economics and ethics will eventually end the barbaric prisons and experiments at the Vancouver Aquarium. Instead of perpetuating animal cruelty, protecting the environment has greater public support. Funding habitat preservation not animal prisons will help people truly understand and respect wildlife. We must save the wildlife, not the Vancouver Aquarium.

Peter Hamilton is the founding director of Lifeforce.