Peter Hamilton: Baby beluga faces life in a toilet bowl at Vancouver Aquarium
By Peter Hamilton
Baby-beluga fans must get past the attraction of a new baby at the Vancouver Aquarium and remember the plight of marine wildlife in captivity. Baby animals are cute, but this doesn’t justify life imprisonment.
First, imagine spending your entire life in a bathroom. That’s a fair comparison for belugas imprisoned in an aquarium pool and deprived of ocean freedom. Then add to that cruelty that they will be swimming around and around and around in toxic feces and urine. It’s very sad that another beluga has been sentenced to life in a toilet bowl.
The aquarium’s imprisonment of dolphins didn’t teach people to respect marine mammals and to protect oceans. When the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned its first orca to use as a model for a sculpture, the orca slave trade began. It led to the decimation of orca populations. The aquarium’s captive dolphins and others continue to suffer and die prematurely. Presently, the porpoise Daisy is inhumanely kept in a tank awaiting her fate.
Nature films give people true insight into complex ecosystems, not barren aquarium pools.
What has the aquarium taught its customers? Judging by the oohing and aahing during the beluga labour, it is obviously not respect. It’s simply dominance over other species for their selfish amusement. The belugas didn’t even get privacy, as do other zoo animals during delivery. The aquarium dangled the birth in front of the public to pay and see. That is irresponsible.
More pools mean more captives. The next proposed aquarium expansion will cost $120 million. The aquarium gets government grants for all expansions. Let’s hope that politicians will see that more prisons and more captives aren’t necessary. Aquariums and zoo menageries are part of a speciesist past. We must use scarce funds to protect wildlife in their natural habitats.
The aquarium industry’s slick public relations and marketing are pressing all the green buttons in order to survive and not perish like their many captives. Education and conservation programs can be done without captives in aquariums and zoos.
The Vancouver Aquarium’s new “4-D Experience” film may be a step in the right direction to properly educate people about marine life in the wild. Let’s hope that it ends the inhumane captivity of belugas and others.
Peter Hamilton is the founding director of Lifeforce.
Comments
3 Comments
Tobius84
Jul 25, 2009 at 3:04am
I've learned a lot through my childhood visits to the aquarium. I feel I've gained by seeing them there. The dolphins there are not captured anymore so your slander doesn't hold true.
While you may object to aquariums why do you feel the need to villify educated an caring professionals who undoubtedly have helped preserve the marine environment than you as a high on your horse writer.
D. Radmore
Jul 27, 2009 at 2:04pm
Romanticizing one's exposure to animals in captivity as a valuable educational experience misses the point that such an environment is completely unsuited for a wild animal, and only illustrates human self-centredness and ignorance of what is in the best interests of the animal. It may be a tough pill for some people to swallow, but if we really want to preserve and protect wildlife for it's own sake, encouraging zoos and aquariums to display animals in such a fashion must not continue. Contrary to the opinion expressed in Tobius' post, I think holding people accountable for the animals in their care is exactly what activists like Hamilton should continue doing because 'the marine environment' requiring preservation is not an abstract construct. It is the HOME where these individualy unique and highly intelligent animals belong.
Wiggins
Jul 28, 2009 at 11:01am
The FACT is that over 95% of the creatures on display at the Vancouver aquarium are ones that have been taken in due to injury or disability that greatly reduces the chances of their survival in their natural habitat. I am extremely thankful for the Vancouver aquarium and other such facilities that take on the responsibility and caring nature that many organizations wouldn't bother to care about. This facility isn't even government funded which makes donations and tourist dollars essential to the survival and quality care that has been given since the facility first opened. I wholeheartedly support what the Vancouver aquarium does for these rescued creatures. Yes this new addition was not brought to the facility out of necessity and it was in FACT born there; but consider this; although no one would ever want to consider their life living in a "washroom" who would want to be given a death sentence by tossing this creature into an environment that it is not prepared to endure. It's chances of survival in the wild are very slim especially at this stage in it's life due to over fishing and poaching. Whales of all species are decreasing at such a rapid rate due to those very reasons. We as humans are extremely destructive and aggressive so how can we argue trying to counter act only a fraction of the damages we've done to that species in particular by providing it shelter from our own kind with impure intentions waiting for it to be released into the wild. It is sad to think that so many people refuse to consider ALL of the facts before passing judgement on an organization or team of individuals, merely trying to protect and secure many endangered marine species from extinction at the hands of greedy and manipulative people who dislike not being granted a cut of the funding used to support the cause. I truly wonder how many "free the (insert name of species) back into the wild" articles we'd see if these facilities were suddenly government funded and those who objected to this so called "cruelty" were getting a cut.