The chair of the park board has said that the city has no intention of backing down in response to a court challenge launched by the Vancouver Aquarium.

“At the end of the day, they are a tenant,” Aaron Jasper said by phone. “They are in a park which is governed by the park board and the City of Vancouver. And we will defend our right and our authority to regulate the activities that take place within our parks.”

On August 27, aquarium CEO John Nightingale held a press conference to announce his organization was requesting that the B.C. Supreme Court conduct a judicial review of park board motions passed on July 31.

That evening, Vision Vancouver commissioners voted in favour of four motions related to the aquarium, which sits on public land in Stanley Park. (Two Non-Partisan Association members were absent.)

They ordered staff to draft a bylaw that would ban the breeding of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (the ban includes exceptions, such as in cases where a species is endangered). The park board also provided for the creation of an “oversight committee”, and it called for the aquarium to submit biannual reports that describe the wellbeing of cetaceans in its care.

Nightingale has since argued that those directives exceed the park board’s mandate.

“Vancouver Aquarium objects to the resolutions on the legal grounds that the resolutions serve no legitimate municipal purpose and are beyond the jurisdiction of the park board,” states an August 27 media release.

According to the aquarium’s written petition to the B.C. Supreme Court, the park board’s actions will have “a significant, adverse, impact on the Aquarium”.

The aquarium argues that the park board is imposing substantial costs on the aquarium, that it is compromising the aquarium’s cetacean program, and that it is contradicting the terms of its licensing agreement.

That contract states that the park board shall “not interfere with the day-to-day administration of the Aquarium unless such interference is permitted or required by this Agreement”.

In those court filings, the aquarium maintains that the park board’s July 31 vote is “putting at risk the well-being of the Aquarium’s cetaceans by placing decisions related to their care in the control of those with no scientific expertise and imposing unnatural segregation on some of them”.

Nightingale expanded on that last point at the August 27 press conference.

“A ban on breeding cetaceans is both impractical and unwise from an animal care and animal welfare standpoint,” he said.

Fielding questions from reporters shortly after, Nightingale went further, suggesting that the park board was considering enforcing its breeding ban with invasive methods of contraception and even surgery.

Jasper described those arguments as a “red herring”.

“I think he throws these out to scuttle the issue,” he said.

Jasper explained that the park board’s motion wasn’t designed to stop incidental mating (of which there is very little in aquariums). He said that the intended target is organized breeding programs.

The Straight previously reported that the aquarium has been involved with one such program spearheaded by the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.

According to documents filed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Vancouver Aquarium assisted the Georgia facility with its efforts to obtain a permit to import 18 beluga whales previously captured from the wild off the coast of Russia. According to U.S. court filings, those animals were sought for the explicit purpose of expanding a cross-continent breeding program run by aquariums. (See “Vancouver Aquarium beluga whales used in cross-continent breeding”.)

In addition, an August 27 Globe and Mail report details how some of the aquarium’s seven belugas it currently has loaned to U.S. facilities have been used in artificial reproduction programs.

“Two of its males are believed to have sired at least a dozen calves – including several that were stillborn or have since died – since 2006 as part of breeding programs in the United States,” that article reads. “In one Seaworld study, semen was collected from Vancouver Aquarium beluga Nanuq 42 times and subsequently used for 10 insemination attempts with seven females. This resulted in two pregnancies, one of which was twin calves.”

Jasper said it’s those kinds of activities that the park board does not want to see continue.

“I think it’s been made very clear that they are participating in a breeding program, albeit with their whales in the States,” he said. “And I don’t think they made a strong case that the breeding of cetaceans is crucial to the research and to the educational components of their programing.”