Morgan’s capture as a young whale was called a rescue, and she was indeed alone and underweight. But no attempt was made to rehab her with a view to finding her family and reintroducing her to the wild. Instead, she was shipped to a tropical zoo, thousands of miles away.

The news of her pregnancy, which is a violation of the conditions of her transfer, is the latest in a shameful series of travesties to which this helpless young whale has been subjected.

Here, in brief, is her story. It’s a tale of betrayal, of corrupt justice, and of corporate dealing that involves not only Loro Parque, but also SeaWorld.

And it’s a classic example of why it’s time to retire all whales and dolphins to seaside sanctuaries and bring an end to this moral stain on our humanity.

Morgan’s Capture

In 2010, a young female orca was spotted swimming alone off the coast of the Netherlands. Morgan, as she was named, was captured and taken to a local theme park under a “rescue, rehabilitation and release” permit issued by the Dutch government.

Rather than rehabilitating her, however, the Dolfinarium Harderwijk kept her in a small tank for 18 months and taught her to do tricks with a view to sending her to Loro Parque Zoo in the Canary Islands, off the west coast of tropical Africa.

Loro Parque had close ties to SeaWorld, which would regularly send orcas, trainers and veterinarians from its facilities in the United States on loan to its transatlantic cousin.

To protect Morgan from being sent to Loro Parque, a coalition of non-profits filed suit against the Dutch government (which would issue the permit to export her). And in August 2011, the Amsterdam District Court ruled that the young whale should stay at the dolphinarium while more research was being conducted to find a permanent solution for her.

The Solution: a Seaside Sanctuary

The ideal solution, presented by the Free Morgan Foundation, was indeed at hand: a seaside sanctuary in a cove in the Norwegian fishing village of Stø. The cove would have a net across its opening to the ocean, and there was a strong possibility that Morgan’s family would pass by there, enabling her to communicate with her pod and potentially to rejoin them.

The citizens of Stø were enthusiastic about hosting Morgan and helping to provide for her. “I am very positive about Morgan coming to our community,” the mayor said. “I will personally look forward to helping on her road to freedom.”

Morgan Loses Her Case

At the hearings that followed, Loro Parque argued that European wildlife trade rules that prohibit the use of orcas for commercial purposes did not apply. Life in the zoo’s display tanks, they said, would give Morgan a better chance, and she would serve “educational” purposes.

Experts said this could not possibly be the case. An officer of Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation told the judge, “It is agreed among the European experts that every zoo must be considered a commercial facility, in which research or education in most circumstances has either no priority or only secondary priority.”

The Dutch ministry that had authorized the move to Loro Parque admitted that it was relying on the word of Spanish authorities (the Canary Islands are a Spanish territory) that the zoo served conservation and educational purposes, even though it had no conservation program and its “education” program consisted of a few handouts and posters.

But the judge sided with the zoo and ordered that Morgan be flown to the Canary Islands 2,000 miles to the south.

Life at Loro Parque Zoo

Soon after Morgan arrived at Loro Parque, the zoo began talking about her as though she was being integrated into their orca “family.” But Morgan could never be part of their family. For starters, five of the other six orcas were born at SeaWorld parks in Orlando or San Diego. Three of them were fathered by Tilikum. Morgan’s lineage was completely different. She couldn’t truly fit in, and the other whales began ganging up on her.

Despite her trauma, Morgan was regularly put in the same tank as Keto, an aggressive adolescent male from SeaWorld who had already fathered two calves at Loro Parque. (Both infants were rejected by their troubled mother.)

Incredibly, the zoo is now arguing that being bred in captivity is “a natural right of each animal.”

None of this gave pause to the zoo’s owner, Wolfgang Kiessling, who expressed delight over his new acquisition. Morgan, he said, had been sent to him as a “donation from nature” and a “new blood line” for breeding. (No mention of conservation or education.)

Meanwhile, Morgan’s health suffered. A 2016 study detailed numerous health and welfare issues, including that she had frequently been observed chewing on the concrete edge of her tank. Photos showed one of her teeth to be fractured, and others chipped and worn to the bone.

Among many other concerns are videos that show Morgan ramming her head into the heavy metal gate of a small medical tank, and show her “beaching herself” on the side of the display tank after a show.

Morgan Is Pregnant

And now she is pregnant, probably by the aggressive young Keto.

How does Loro Parque explain this, given that European law prohibits the use of a captive whale for breeding purposes, that breeding Morgan is a violation of the conditions of her transfer and that there are chemical means of birth control?

Clothing itself, incredibly, as a defender of animal rights, the zoo is now arguing that being bred in captivity is “a natural right of each animal” and one that “cannot be repressed under any circumstances.”

To which one can only reply: What about Morgan’s right not to have to spend her life in a concrete tank thousands of miles from her home?

SeaWorld Stands Aside

And where is SeaWorld in this series of travesties by its overseas partner?

Rather than pressuring Loro Parque to do the right thing, SeaWorld stood aside while the zoo allowed Morgan to be impregnated with no regard for the law or for the young whale’s continued suffering.

And in response to the news of her pregnancy, SeaWorld has quietly ended its relationship to Loro Parque, along with any effort or influence it could have had to dissuade the zoo from breeding orcas.

And these are not just any orcas, but rather orcas who came from SeaWorld itself.

Certified Humane – Really!

Rather than being condemned universally for its behavior, Loro Parque is basking in the glow of being awarded the American Humane Association’s humane certification seal of approval.

The announcement reads: “American Humane is excited to recognize Loro Parque as the very first Humane Certified institution in Europe.”

And in a media release, AHA’s President and CEO, Dr. Robin Ganzert, states:

“American Humane Conservation’s Humane Certified seal of approval helps verify for the public that the animals living in these institutions are living under high standards of verifiable humane care. We are proud to congratulate each of the twenty-five world-class facilities that have continuously proven their dedication to the responsible, humane treatment of the remarkable animals under their care.”

The Time for Seaside Sanctuaries is NOW

Enough with the captures masquerading as rescues, and stunt-training in the name of rehab.

Enough with breeding whales in concrete tanks in the name of animal rights.

And enough with the certification programs.

Whales and dolphins do not belong in concrete tanks, being forced to perform for the amusement of ignorant audiences.

It’s time for all of us who care about the wellbeing of these animals, including the nation’s major animal welfare organizations, to come together and join the growing movement to retire all these magnificent creatures to seaside sanctuaries where they can thrive.

It’s the least we can do to make up for the decades of kidnapping, abuse and profiteering that have wrecked the lives of these icons of the ocean.

The post Morgan the Orca: a Tale of Betrayal appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

It’s coming up five years since the movie Blackfish premiered at Sundance. How has the landscape changed for whales and dolphins in captivity?

Jeff Beal, who composed the music for the documentary, has put together this short video including several of the people who appear in the film and were once trainers at SeaWorld. They talk about how public attitudes have changed, how the captivity industry has changed, and how their own lives have changed.
says that people who see the movie often ask her, “What can I do?”

“You can’t help but open your heart when you see this movie,” says former trainer Samantha Berg. “And when you start to think about the lives of the killer whales and the kind of suffering they go through in captivity … some part of you gets activated and you want to do something.”

So what can you do?

“Whatever you can do to get the message out, that’s what’s important.”

The answers is very simple, she replies. “What are you good at? Do that. If you’re good at posting on social media, do that. If you’re a writer, write about it. If you’re a dancer, bring that into your art. Talk to people about it. Whatever you can do to get the message out, that’s what’s important.”

Former trainer Carol Ray adds that “the recent announcement of the Whale Sanctuary Project is really exciting. With the development of sanctuary spaces, there’s going to be no more excuses for keeping captive orcas in tanks.”

And Dean Gomersall, another former trainer, notes that while orcas who have been living in concrete tanks can’t all be released back into the wild, “getting them into a sea sanctuary would give them the kind of space they need and the other benefits of being out in the ocean [like] hearing the ocean and feeling the ocean.”

Thank you, Jeff Beal, for putting this video together. It’s something worth sharing during Thanksgiving Week.

The post The Blackfish Effect appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite was interviewing some of us for a movie she was making, Blackfish, about the orca Tilikum who had killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau the previous year. When it was released, Blackfish would capture public attention and shake the captivity industry to its roots. And author David Kirby was also interviewing members of the group for the book he was writing, Death at SeaWorld.

After dinner, one evening, neuroscientist Lori Marino gave a talk about her research on the brains and cognitive abilities of whales and dolphins, and the discussion then turned to how good it would be if all the whales at marine parks (or “sea circuses” as the former trainers called them) could be retired to sanctuaries. After all, zoos and circuses were under increasing pressure to send their elephants and other large land animals to sanctuaries. Why not the same for whales?

At the end of the week, we agreed to stay in touch and perhaps to meet up again in the years to come. We’d call these get-togethers “Superpods” – the word scientists use for when multiple pods of whales meet up for their own social gatherings.

In the summers that followed, some of the group continued to meet on San Juan Island. And in July 2016, when hundreds of people from around the world gathered for three days of talks, movies and presentations at the local theater, Dr. Lori Marino announced the formation of an organization, the Whale Sanctuary Project, that was setting out to create a seaside sanctuary for captive whales.

The following posts make up a blog that I wrote during our five days on the island at Superpod One back in July 2011.

The post Superpod One – Where it All Began appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The society’s conference is held every two years. And what a difference two years makes! At the last conference, in San Francisco, the idea of creating a sanctuary for whales and dolphins who might be retired from captivity at marine parks and aquarium was met with considerable skepticism by many people.

This year, the workshop, entitled “Sanctuaries: The New Seascape for Captive Cetaceans,” was greeted enthusiastically in a packed room. And the three main speakers gave updates on three separate sanctuary projects that are making steady progress.

Concept drawing of a seaside sanctuary for orcas and belugas.

Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, explained some of the chief characteristics of a sanctuary:

• It’s about the wellbeing of the whales and dolphins; not for the entertainment or convenience of humans
• It’s a place where the residents can thrive
• It’s a place where we can model change – a change in our relationship with these animals
• It’s about giving back to them some of what’s been taken from them

Overall, at an authentic sanctuary, she said, there’s no exploitation, no invasive research, and no breeding.

While the Whale Sanctuary Project is exploring cold water locations in the Northwest and Northeast, the National Aquarium is planning to move their bottlenose dolphins to a warm water sanctuary they’re creating in Florida.

“The U.S. public has moved to a majority sentiment against keeping dolphins and whales in captivity.”CEO John Racanelli talked about the need to provide them with “a higher level to thrive than we’re able to afford them in a setting like [what we have] in Baltimore.” That setting is a 1.3-million-gallon tank that was state-of-the-art when it was built in 1990. “However, that era has passed, and we now need to do better.”

While the Aquarium moves forward with its plans, the dolphins are being prepared for their new life. Visitors are surprised to see algae growing on the walls of the tank. (Life in a natural setting, after all, doesn’t take place in sterile, manufactured saltwater!)

Racanelli also described the surveys the Aquarium has done to gauge public attitudes toward keeping dolphins in captivity:

“The U.S. public has moved to a majority sentiment against keeping dolphins and whales in captivity for any reason. Public interest in creating seaside sanctuaries is strong and growing.”

Colleen Weiler of Whale and Dolphin Conservation talked about the sanctuary they’re planning for beluga whales. It’s a joint project between WDC and Merlin Entertainment, one of the world’s largest operators of theme parks. Merlin recently took over a theme park in Shanghai that was displaying three beluga whales, and has partnered with WDC to create a sanctuary for them.

WDC’s preferred location is in Icelandic waters, in Klettsvik Bay on the island of Heimaey in the Westman Islands. This is the same location that was used for the rehabilitation of Keiko almost 20 years ago, as part of his reintroduction to the wild.

During the Q&A that followed the presentations, one of the questions was about what we mean by an “authentic” sanctuary. Dr. Marino talked about the fact that there are wildlife sanctuaries that do not have as their priority the wellbeing of the animals. Also, much of the “education” that’s offered at marine parks is designed to convince people that the animals are happy living in a tank and being trained to perform for audiences. By contrast, she said, we need to be fully transparent about the fact, for example, that whales belong in the ocean and that even a seaside sanctuary is still, however benign, a form of captivity.

At an authentic sanctuary, there’s no exploitation, no invasive research, and no breeding. Another question was about the cost of building and running a sanctuary. Shouldn’t that money be used for conservation instead? The answer is that there is no single “pot of money” that can either be used for a sanctuary or for conservation. People give to both causes, and to many more. More broadly, conservation programs are about protecting populations of animals; sanctuaries are about caring for them as individuals. Each complements the other.

Overall, it was heartening to have all three sanctuary organizations working together and sharing information. And it was clear to anyone who had attended the conference two years ago that there is now a growing movement toward retiring all captive whales and dolphins to seaside sanctuaries.

The next conference of the Society for Marine Mammal Biology will be in two years’ time in Barcelona. And perhaps, by then, the first whales and dolphins to have been retired from marine parks and aquariums will have moved to their new homes.

The post Sanctuary Groups Share Info at Marine Mammal Conference appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Marilyn Slett, president of an alliance of nine First Nations in British Columbia, has written to senators about the importance of protecting whales and dolphins “while keeping them in the wild where they belong.”

She adds that whale watching and ecotourism businesses provide “a compelling alternative vision for more respectful ways of appreciating and living with some of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet.”

“Why are whales and dolphins still forced to perform tricks for our amusement?”

The bill would amend Canada’s animal cruelty laws, but still allow for rescuing and rehabilitating injured whales and dolphins. It would also allow owners of currently captive whales and dolphins to keep them but not breed them.

The bill is strongly opposed by the captivity industry, in particular by Marineland in Ontario, which currently has one orca and 50 beluga whales, and the Vancouver Aquarium, which has one Pacific white-sided dolphin and one pseudorca, all of them languishing in concrete tanks for the amusement of visitors.

In committee hearings, Senator Don Plett has been leading the charge on behalf of the captivity industry. And while most of his arguments have been consistently refuted by expert witnesses, he has continued to claim that the bill is not in the interests of First Nations people.

But the Coastal First Nations have now come out firmly in favor of ending the use of whales and dolphins as entertainment.

Another senator, Elizabeth Hubley, has written a compelling op-ed for Canada’s Guardian newspaper, saying that it’s time for marine parks to go the same way as circuses that used to have wild animals performing:

“Many people believe that it’s unacceptable to make wild animals entertain us, forcing them to do stunts so far outside their natural behavior. We’ve gotten rid of the traditional circus as a result. So why are whales and dolphins still forced to perform tricks for our amusement?”

Sen. Hubley quotes Whale Sanctuary Project President Lori Marino, who testified at one of the hearings about having studied dolphins at an aquarium earlier in her career as a neuroscientist. While Dr. Marino learned a lot about their self-awareness and cognitive complexity, she said that more importantly this led her “to really think about what life would be like in a small, concrete tank, going around and around and around, if you were a self-aware being.”

As for the people who testified against the bill, Sen. Hubley writes that all of them had a vested interest in keeping whales and dolphins in concrete tanks:

“In the end, I could not ignore that the witnesses who testified against the bill were those working at aquariums, or with them to do research. Other well-respected researchers and experts in animal behavior and marine biology urged us to pass S-203. Thousands and thousands of Canadians from across the country sent me emails urging the Senate to pass the bill.”

The opposition continues to throw up roadblocks and other tactics to stall the bill. But Sen. Hubley concludes:

“Times change and the entertainment value of watching whales and dolphins swim circles in concrete tanks should be ending. Just like this legislative circus.”

The committee is due to meet again next week to consider the bill.

The post Will Canada Ban Captivity for Whales and Dolphins? appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

It’s already well-known that orcas in entertainment facilities wear down their teeth and break them by chewing on the concrete walls and on the gates that separate their pools. Eventually, these teeth have to be drilled out and then flushed daily to prevent infection.

For the new study, former SeaWorld trainers John Jett and Jeff Ventre and fellow researchers examined photos of the mouths of 29 orcas and scored the teeth for coronal wear, wear at or below the gum line, fractures, bore holes and missing teeth. Among their conclusions:

• Dental damage was commonly observed across all captive whale cohorts, with damage beginning early in a whale’s captive life.
• Forty five percent of whales exhibited “moderate” mean mandibular coronal wear, and an additional 24 percent exhibited “major” to “extreme” wear.
• Sixty-one percent of the orcas who were studied had endured a “modified pulpotomy,” in which a hole is drilled into the tooth and the soft pulpy tissue inside is removed in an effort to prevent a deadly abscess forming in the jaw.

 
Taima (left) and Corky, showing damage to teeth and jaw. Photos from Orca Project.

When humans have a similar procedure (a root canal), the drilled-out hole is filled and capped. But for the orcas, it’s kept open for the rest of their lives and requires daily flushing with chemicals to prevent infection.

“These fractured and worn-down teeth are indicators of serious, chronic psychological stress.”
– Lori Marino

The whole procedure makes the teeth weaker and subject to further fracture in the stressful conditions of life in a concrete tank.

The various pathologies begin at a young age and are likely the direct result of fighting and biting on the hard surfaces of their captive environment as a result of stress from their confinement.

Ventre and Jett say they suspect that two well-known whales, Tilikum and Kasatka, who were featured in the movie Blackfish, died prematurely due, in part, to antibiotic resistant infections brought on by the need for constant medication.

Neuroscientist and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project Dr. Lori Marino says that just as dental pathology is associated with increased infection rate in humans and all other animals, it likely contributes to the infectious pathologies and shortened lifespan that’s commonly seen in captive orcas. She adds:

These fractured and worn-down teeth are indicators of serious chronic psychological stress and pathology. So, above and beyond the physical problems associated with poor dentition, the condition of these orcas’ teeth makes it clear that there is considerable psychological stress in orcas held in entertainment parks.

The complete study is available with subscription or for individual purchase at Science Direct.

The post Dental Damage and Decay Among Orcas at Marine Parks appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

SANTA BARBARA, CA—July 19, 2017— Conservationist and author Carl Safina hopes to help write a new chapter in the care of captive whales, joining forces with The Whale Sanctuary Project to establish the first permanent whale sanctuary in North America.

“I am honored to be joining the board of the Whale Sanctuary Project and to help in whatever way I can,” said Safina, Ph.D., the author of seven books, including Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel and the founding president of The Safina Center at Stony Brook University. “This is about enlarging our circle of compassion to include lifetime care for captive or injured whales and dolphins.”

“We are thrilled to have the support and help of one of the top scientists in the field of conservation biology,” said Lori Marino, Ph.D., president of the Whale Sanctuary Project and herself an expert in animal behavior and intelligence, who founded the project last year with a group of other scientists, conservationists and advocates. “We are putting key building blocks in place to make the dream of a sanctuary a reality.”

Marino said part of the foundational work is the move by current board member Charles Vinick, a well-known executive and ocean and environmental policy specialist, to the role of executive director of the project.

“Charles not only has led not-for-profits and served as CEO of environmental technology companies, he’s been at the center of ambitious, visionary ocean-related projects,” Marino said. “For 25 years, Charles worked closely with Jacques and Jean-Michel Cousteau—father and son—helping them establish, grow and sustain multiple initiatives.”

Vinick served as director of the journey of Keiko, the whale of Free Willy fame.

The immediate focus of the Whale Sanctuary Project is on identifying sanctuary sites. Vinick said a team from the project is zeroing in on potential sites in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Washington state. The group plans to narrow its list to a handful of locations this summer, with a final decision planned for the end of the year.

An estimated 62 killer whales are living in captivity in marine theme parks and aquariums worldwide.

Simply releasing the whales currently in concrete tanks into the oceans is not an option; that’s why a sanctuary is needed, Vinick says.  Many of the whales were born in captivity and have never been outside the walls of tanks. The project would provide an oceanic enclosure that is as similar as possible to the natural habitat of the orcas, where the animals – while still receiving human care– would have expansive spaces to swim and dive, the chance to interact with their natural environment, and freedom from being forced to perform.

Marino said the sanctuary would be more than a retirement home for whales who have outlived their performing days.

“The presence of a sanctuary will serve to demonstrate how our relationship to these magnificent animals is changing, potentially enabling all captive whales to live in natural environments and –one day– ending the practice of theatrical performances,” Marino said. The sanctuary also would serve as a center for injured or sick free-ranging whales, she added.

Marino said the group is planning for a sanctuary that could be home to six to eight whales — ideally a cold-water inlet, bay or cove that would be big enough (around the size of an average city park) to allow the whales to swim and dive freely.  Sea nets would separate the sanctuary from the open ocean and provide any necessary separation within the sanctuary. An on-site and virtual education center is planned, along with fully-staffed veterinary and food storage facilities. The total cost is estimated at between $15 million and $20 million.

The project was launched in 2016 with an initial grant of $200,000 from Munchkin, Inc., the global baby products company. The company followed up with a matching grant of $300,000 this year, and has pledged a total of at least $1 million toward completion of the sanctuary.

To donate, go to www.whalesanctuaryproject.org/. The group aims to match the $300K Munchkin grant before the end of the year.

Munchkin founder Steven Dunn was moved to donate after seeing the documentary Blackfish and learning more about the lives of captive whales. The company has its own “Orcas Live in Oceans” campaign to raise awareness of the plight of captive whales and to support the Whale Sanctuary Project.

# # #

The post Marine Conservationist Carl Safina Joins the Board appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Marine biologist, explorer, author and lecturer Sylvia Earle is a tireless advocate for the oceans and all marine life. She has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998. She was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.

(You can see her 2009 TED talk about protecting the oceans here.)

Oceanographic explorer, environmentalist, educator, and film producer Jean-Michel Cousteau is the founder of the Ocean Futures Society, which documents the critical connection between humanity and nature, and celebrates the ocean’s vital importance to the survival of all life on our planet.

(You can see his 2012 TED talk about protecting the oceans here.)

As we go about creating the first seaside sanctuary in North America for orcas and belugas, the knowledge and experience of our two new advisors in relation to marine life and the oceans will be of enormous value. Many thanks to both for being part of this work.

The post Sylvia Earle & Jean-Michel Cousteau Join the Team appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Aquarium and zoo industry people don’t often get together with animal protection groups to talk realistically about the future. But it happened when Ron Kagan, Director of the Detroit Zoological Society’s Center for Zoo Animal Welfare, invited leaders from all animal-related interests and all parts of the world to discuss issues of ethics and the future of zoos and aquariums.

The panel discussion in this video included Lori Marino of the Whale Sanctuary Project, John Racanelli of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Courtney Vail of the Lightkeepers Foundation, and Naomi Rose of the Animal Welfare institute. Among the issues they discussed (along with their timings):

2:17 – Lori Marino talks about how the large and complex brains of whales and dolphins, with their extraordinary cognitive abilities and self-awareness, make them especially vulnerable to the stress of living in concrete tanks. They know who they are and they are fully sensitive to the artificial circumstances they are forced to live under.
They know who they are and they are fully sensitive to the artificial circumstances they are forced to live under.

3:35 – Naomi Rose and John Racanelli follow up by saying that certain marine animals can do quite well in captive habitats, including real kelp forests, that replicate their natural environments. By contrast, marine mammals do particularly badly since it’s impossible to replicate a natural environment.

8:10 – Racanelli says that while the very hygienic conditions of a concrete tank may keep whales and dolphins alive longer, it’s unnatural and not much of a life. There are many more variables in a sanctuary than in a sterile tank and that means more risk but a better life. Sterile, ‘clean’ tanks are not necessarily good for the animals. They need to be exposed to different elements.

Right now, in fact, the Aquarium is introducing some of those variables, like letting algae grow in the tanks (to the surprise of visitors!) to help the dolphins acclimatize to what will be their new surroundings.

9:32 – Courtney Vail notes that there are about 500 bottlenose dolphins at marine parks and aquariums in the United States. They’re not all going to be able to be moved to sanctuaries soon, and so the animal protection community and the zoo industry have an obligation to work together to come up with workable solutions for them.

13:48 – The panel discusses the “slippery slope” issue. (If it’s whales and dolphins today, will it be fish next and then shrimp, and then all the aquariums are closed?) The whole panel agrees that this is not the big issue it’s often made out to be. Racanelli notes that some animals do well in aquarium habitats. (Check out what he says about Calypso the sea turtle.) On the other hand, we’re learning a lot about octopuses that leads us to believe they don’t do well in a captive environment.

Marino adds that when we keep the needs of the animals as the priority, questions about who needs to be in a sanctuary situation begin to answer themselves. And Rose says she’s been very heartened, all through the conference, to hear the same kinds of animal welfare discussions going on within the zoo community that she’s more used to hearing in the animal protection world.

22:23 – The discussion moves on to whether you can do the kind of research at a sanctuary that’s typically done in close captivity. Marino says you can do very good observational research, which is critical, in any case, to keeping them healthy and helping others to create sanctuaries successfully. But, at a sanctuary it’s the nonhuman animals who come first, and so their wellbeing, not their availability for research, is the priority.
It’s “unconscionable” to continue to collect whales and dolphins from the wild.

29:03 – One area in which the zoo and animal protection communities are working hand-in-hand is in the last-ditch attempt to save the vaquita porpoises from total extinction in the Gulf of California thanks to illegal gill nets. Rose talks about how everyone is doing all they can, but she’s not optimistic about there being a good outcome.

44:15 – In closing comments, Racanelli says that knowing what we know about their cognitive capacities, it’s “unconscionable” to continue to collect whales and dolphins from the wild (like at the horrific Taiji dolphin hunt, just getting under way again at this time of year).

Marino says that the wider purpose of sanctuaries is to enable us to change how we relate to nonhuman animals, and to give them back something of what’s been taken away from them.

Rose focuses on the need for practical solutions that work for all parties: the whales, the general public and the zoo and aquarium industries.

And Vail says that while there are fears that the zoo and aquarium industries will become obsolete, there is a critical role for them. She says we can work collaboratively and that none of us needs to be afraid to speak our mind.

The post Conversations with Aquariums and Marine Parks appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

An interview with Charles Vinick, Executive Director of the Whale Sanctuary Project

In this video, Charles Vinick, our Executive Director, talks about how attitudes are changing toward keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.

Charles brings a wealth of experience to the Whale Sanctuary Project. He worked closely with Jean-Michel and Jacques Cousteau; he served as director of the Keiko Project to reintroduce to the wild the captive orca who was made famous through the Free Willy films; and he has extensive experience in ocean and environmental policy. (You can read more about him here.)

Charles addresses the charge, often voiced by marine parks, that whales and dolphins won’t be able to get the same standard of health care at a sanctuary that they receive in their concrete tanks:

“Why wouldn’t they be able to have the same level of care that they receive in a marine park while receiving it in a natural environment where their sounds aren’t reverberating back to them as they ricochet off the concrete walls, but rather are absorbed into nature?”

So, will they receive absolutely the best care possible?

“Of course. They’ll be under human care 24/7/365 for all of their lives.”

As to whether the Whale Sanctuary Project might ever partner with one of the marine park companies to care for the animals at a seaside sanctuary, he says “Absolutely, yes.”

“There could be nothing better than for the parks who hold orca and belugas now to decide that they want to create true sanctuaries and move all of their animals from concrete tanks to netted enclosures in habitats that are natural. We would applaud them, we would welcome them to work together, and we have already reached out to many of them.”

“The people who work at marine parks want what’s best for the whales. But they’re conflicted by the need for commercial gain.”

Charles talks about Corky and Lolita – the only two orcas captured from the Pacific Northwest who are still alive at marine parks in the United States – and whether they could be released back to the wild.

It’s certainly a possibility since we know the whereabouts of both of their families, but he notes that Corky and Lolita are quite old and have been in captivity for more than 49 years. So we need to consider what is best for their health first, and evaluate whether potential release into the wild is in their best interests.

He also talks about his experience as director of the Keiko Project: building the infrastructure, keeping the team together over many years of hard work, and creating a suitable environment for Keiko in a natural habitat before he was able to swim freely in the ocean:

“All of that is applicable to what we’ll do going forward. It is, of course, 20 years later, so, along with that prior experience, we’ll have the benefit of the best advice and knowledge and experience we can bring to bear on the new sanctuary.”

Finally, he talks about how he sees the captivity industry changing over the coming years:

“I think that the people who work at the marine parks sincerely love these animals, they care about them deeply, and they also want what’s best for them. But they are conflicted by the need for commercial gain.”

Change is already happening, however. One example of this is that the National Aquarium at Baltimore is creating a warm-water sanctuary in Florida or the Bahamas, and will be moving all their dolphins there.

“That’s terrific news that we should all applaud. That’s what we want to see other institutions doing, as well. And I believe we’ll continue to see that as the industry responds to public pressure and to how our relationship to these animals is changing.”

The video is also available on YouTube here.

The post Caring for Orcas at a Sanctuary appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Kasatka in 2001 with former SeaWorld trainer John Hargrove.

But Kasatka was never part of their family. Quite the opposite: she’d been captured and taken from her true family off the coast of Iceland in 1978 when she was about a year old and still just a baby.

During her life, Kasatka was transferred from one aquarium or marine park to another, and then to another, 15 times. Over the years, she was artificially inseminated, including from Tilikum, who, like her, was captured from Icelandic waters at a young age. She gave birth to two daughters and two sons, and she had six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The youngest of the grandchildren, Kyara, died last month when she was just three months old.

SeaWorld posted a memorial to Kasatka, calling her “The Matriarch.” If she had grown up with her family in the ocean, Kasatka might indeed have become the matriarch of her whole extended family, which, as far as we know, is still swimming the waters of the North Atlantic as a unified pod.
“If you truly love somebody, set them free.”

In the wild, an orca baby is surrounded by her family: her mother, aunts, grandmother and often great-grandmother, who play an active part in raising the calves and who carry the knowledge and culture of the whole social group. Instead, the family to which Kasatka gave birth in captivity is spread across three marine parks, separated by thousands of miles – an unnatural, indeed tragic, matriline.

Kasatka was first diagnosed with pneumonia in 2008, and was being treated for a recurring bacterial respiratory infection ever since. (Her last calf was conceived in 2011, when she was already suffering from this infection.) A recent photo on the Voice of the Orcas website shows a deformed lower jaw and some serious skin problems.

Kasatka’s trainers and caregivers talk and write about how much they loved her. But there’s little evidence that she felt loved or that she reciprocated their feelings. While she generally behaved as required in exchange for food, she sometimes fought back against her captivity, once attacking a trainer, Ken Peters, and dragging him to the bottom of her tank.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about that incident, however, is that, rather than drowning him, she let him up for air, took him down again, and then let him go. Apparently, she felt she’d made her point.

The saying goes that “if you truly love somebody, set them free.” So, if the people at SeaWorld truly love the whales in their concrete tanks, now would be a good time to take these words to heart. And while Kasatka’s family have never seen beyond the walls of their concrete tanks and cannot just be set free and released into the ocean, there is certainly a good alternative: retiring them to seaside sanctuaries.

Just as the National Aquarium in Baltimore is planning to retire its dolphins to a warm water seaside sanctuary, marine parks would do well to start the necessary planning for their captive whales to be retired to a cold-water sanctuary of the kind that the Whale Sanctuary Project is creating.

This would make it possible for them to live out their lives in an environment that’s as close as possible to their natural habitat while still receiving the very best of human care.

The whales have given their lives to entertaining people and bringing profits to the marine parks. It’s time to return the favor by giving them back as much as possible of what has been taken from them.

The post A Whale and Her Family appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

On a conference call to investment analysts, CEO Joel Manby explained the slumping attendance in San Diego as being due to what he called “public perception issues” driven largely by audience response to the movie Blackfish.

Two years ago, in response to those “public perception issues,” SeaWorld decided to stop breeding orcas, to begin replacing its Shamu theatrical shows with a new and more educational “Orca Encounter” productions, and to mount a major advertising campaign that it hoped would turn around the negative image.

But that hasn’t happened, and Manby explained on his conference call that the company had cut back on its advertising campaign too soon and is still being plagued by people’s negative view of keeping whales in concrete tanks.

“In a brand turnaround, we’ll continue to have to maintain a strong message about perception issues there that aren’t true that we need to continue to fight, and that’s what we had hoped to back off and we can’t now,” he said.

The numbers speak for themselves. For the second quarter, ending June 30, SeaWorld recorded a net loss of nearly $176 million. Total visitation for the first six months was 8.9 million, down from nearly 9.3 million in the same period last year. And Moody’s Investors Service has changed the company’s outlook from stable to negative.

In San Diego, the new “Orca Encounter” opened at the end of May, billed as the “world’s first live documentary,” an edutainment show surrounded by a Pacific Northwest-themed set featuring faux trees and man-made waterfalls.

But the L.A. Times called the show “boring, joyless and bogged down by scientific artifice.” Audiences seemed to agree: attendance is still down overall.

Virtual reality on the Kraken ride

Two new attractions have been doing well, however: Ocean Explorer, which includes a three-minute mini-submarine ride; and Orca 360, a stereoscopic video created for virtual reality.

Orca 360 allows up to 10 people at a time to enter the “Simlab”, a futuristic-looking laboratory with large, eggshell-shaped chairs that swivel and recline, and where visitors don virtual reality goggles and a headset to be immersed in a 7½ -minute movie about orcas.

SeaWorld is also experimenting with VR at its Orlando park, where it has transformed its Kraken roller coaster into a virtual reality experience.

With more and more people coming to understand that whales and dolphins cannot thrive in concrete tanks, the days of keeping them on display are clearly numbered. And SeaWorld appears to be seeing its long-term survival as depending on technology rather than captivity.

The post SeaWorld Attendance Still Falling appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Six team members of the Whale Sanctuary Project were invited to testify at hearings. You can watch the complete videos below.

March 3rd, 2017: Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project President, and Hal Whitehead, Professor of Biology, Dalhousie University:

Dr. Marino’s testimony focused on the false claims that research with captive dolphins and whales is necessary for conservation work. She also discussed her public findings showing no compelling evidence that animal displays in zoos and aquariums have educational value.

Dr. Whitehead spoke about the value of studies done with wild cetaceans, and he discussed a number of studies of behavior in wild populations and how these have more merit for conservation than studies in captivity.

April 4th, 2017: Naomi Rose, Marine Mammal Scientist for the Animal Welfare Institute, and Rob Laidlaw, Director of Zoocheck:

Dr. Rose offered science-based arguments that dolphins and whales cannot thrive in concrete tanks.

And Rob Laidlaw argued that the bill (S-203) merely codifies a trend away from displaying healthy cetaceans in captivity in Canada and will have minimal impact on conservation.

June 1st, 2017: Ingrid N. Visser, Founder and Principal Scientist of the New Zealand-based Orca Research Trust, and Kathryn Sussman, Consultant to the Vancouver Humane Society and to Zoocheck:

Kathryn Sussman countered the argument that since the bill would ban cetaceans from being kept in captivity, it would impact the rescue of stranded whales.

And Dr. Visser provided forceful scientific evidence that the welfare of cetaceans is severely compromised when they’re held in concrete tanks.

The amendment is currently at committee stage in the Senate of Canada and consideration will resume in September.

The post Canada Considers Ban on Captivity of Whales and Dolphins appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Under pressure from public opinion, the company announced in March 2016 that it would not continue its breeding program. But the death of the last orca to be born in one of its marine parks brings a sad and poignant end to this chapter in the history of treating these magnificent individuals as entertainment for tourists.

In comments to the CBS Morning News (in the clip above), Whale Sanctuary Project President Lori Marino said:

“What the death of this young calf tells us is that these animals cannot thrive in concrete tanks. This is about forcing these animals into a situation that they don’t have any adaptations to. And because of that you see them basically dying, left and right.”

SeaWorld wrote in a statement that their “dedicated team of veterinarians spent the last three days providing critical care to Kyara.”

But even the best medical care that the human world can provide cannot make up for what orca babies need most: the loving care of their own true families in their own true environment. In the absence of that, they are permanently stressed to the point where their immune systems are compromised, and they have no defense against the kind of infections that are common to orcas who spend their lives in concrete tanks.

For SeaWorld, Kyara’s death will be a bitter blow. But if it can help them to understand that it’s time to bring this form of “entertainment” to an end and retire their whales to sanctuaries, then Kyara’s sacrifice will not have been in vain.

The post Kyara’s Death a Tragic Irony appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Two major news items today: First, the renowned conservationist Dr. Carl Safina has joined the board of the Whale Sanctuary Project.

And board member Charles Vinick has accepted the position of Executive Director.

We’ve just issued a news release that you can read in full here.

Carl Safina is the founding president of the not-for-profit The Safina Center. He has long been a friend and colleague of Whale Sanctuary Project President Dr. Lori Marino, who describes him as “one of those rare human beings who understands that other animals are individuals.”

She adds: “He’ll be able to carry that message into the broader conservation world, and will provide a critical link between the work of the sanctuary and the preservation of the oceans.”

Carl’s work explores how we are changing the natural world and what the changes mean for human and non-human beings. He says we cannot preserve the wild unless we preserve human dignity, and we cannot conserve human dignity while continuing to degrade nature.

Carl hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean, and is author of the classic book Song for the Blue Ocean. His seventh book is Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel.

He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends.

Charles Vinick, our new Executive Director, is best known to supporters of the Whale Sanctuary Project as the person who directed the journey of Keiko, the whale of Free Willy fame, from 1998 to 2002.

For more than 20 years, Charles was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Cousteau Society and of Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society. He has been on the board of the Whale Sanctuary Project since its incorporation last year. And for the last several months, he has been working closely with Lori Marino in the work of site selection and building the organization. Most recently, they visited British Columbia together to explore possible locations for the sanctuary

We’ll be posting more about Charles Vinick and Carl Safina over the coming weeks. Their work on behalf of the whales is invaluable.

The post Carl Safina Joins the Board appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

First day out, while island hopping in the strait, they came upon the A30 pod, composed of about a dozen individuals, including an infant. When they stopped the boat to watch from a respectful distance, the whales decided to come closer.

Soon they were diving playfully back and forth under the boat, and were joined by a humpback whale.

It’s an awesome region, and Lori and Charles viewed several coves and bays that, although quite remote, would be well-suited for a sanctuary.

They also visited with Dr. Paul Spong, a neuroscientist who studies orcas in the wild and has a special concern for Corky, who was captured from the A5 pod in 1969 and remains on display at SeaWorld San Diego. Corky is the sole survivor of all the orcas captured from the “northern resident community” of British Columbia orcas.

Back in Vancouver, Dr. Marino spoke with various media outlets, including this interview with Breakfast Television Vancouver.

She gave a lunchtime talk to a group of faculty and students from the Animal Welfare Program at the University of British Columbia.

And in the evening, she spoke to a packed house at the Roundhouse Community Center, presented by the Vancouver Humane Society and the BC SPCA.

The theme of the evening was “Reconciliation,” and was introduced by Bob Chamberlin, currently completing his third term as Chief Councilor of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation.

Chief Chamberlin talked about his work in helping to bring about reconciliation between his people and European immigrants, and how, similarly, it is time to bring about reconciliation with our fellow animals and the natural world. He spoke about how the factory farming of salmon and the consequent poisoning of the once-pristine waters of the West Coast are devastating the marine life of the region.

Dr. Marino took up this theme, discussing how a sanctuary can give back to whales something of the life they’ve lost by being taken from their homes and families.

Our site search continues through the end of this week as we look at locations around Vancouver Island and the nearby Gulf Islands.

The post Exploring Locations for a Sanctuary in British Columbia appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Munchkin has offered the Whale Sanctuary Project a $300,000 challenge grant so we can complete our goal of selecting a site for the sanctuary by the end of this year.

In their video, the students write:

How would you feel if you were pulled away from your family just to entertain others?

You glance at the orcas, belugas and dolphins swimming in their tanks, unhappy like slaves.

They are forced to perform for food. How would you like to do a cartwheel for a hamburger?

SeaWorld is shallow. I also hope that Tilikum is the last animal to die at SeaWorld.

Thank you to Alivia, Deetya, Zahra, Elijah and teacher Rachel of Norton Creek Elementary.

Please help save the whales by giving to the Whale Sanctuary Project.

#OrcasLiveInOceans

A big thanks to all of you at Norton Creek Elementary from all of us at the Whale Sanctuary Project!

The post Fourth Graders Share Love of Orcas appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Merlin recently bought an amusement park in Shanghai, China, that has three belugas on display. But the company is opposed to keeping whales and dolphins in tanks and supports the development of retirement sanctuaries for performing animals. And so, it has been working with a small Icelandic town, Vestmannaeyjarbær, along with marine biologists, whale experts, agents from the local tourism industry and the British non-profit Whale and Dolphin Conservation, to create the sanctuary.

Ironically, Merlin Entertainment, which owns 100 parks in 25 countries, was owned until 2015 by the same giant investment company, The Blackstone Group, that owns SeaWorld, a company that’s fully invested in keeping whales and dolphins on display in concreate tanks. While Merlin has been thriving, SeaWorld has been struggling, to the point where, this week, shareholders reportedly voted board chair David D’Alessandro off the board.

According to the Iceland Monitor, the proposed sanctuary would be in Iceland’s Westman Islands, which also hosted Keiko the whale after he’d been freed from an amusement park in Mexico City. Keiko lived in the Westman Islands from 1998 to 2002, while he was learning how to care for himself before being released back to the wild.

A press release from Vestmannaeyjarbær town says that while this would be an animal welfare project like any other, the sanctuary would be very beneficial to local tourism. There’s a long way to go, however, and the group is still working on getting all the permissions necessary from the Icelandic government.

The news from Iceland is the third of its kind over the last year. Exactly a year ago, June 14th, 2016, the National Aquarium in Baltimore announced plans to build a seaside sanctuary, either in Florida or the Caribbean, and to move all seven of the dolphins currently at the aquarium to the new sanctuary by 2020. And a month earlier, the Whale Sanctuary Project announced plans to create the first North American seaside sanctuary for whales and dolphins who are retired from display in concrete tanks.

The post Merlin Entertainment Seeks to Move Belugas to Sanctuary appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

So, Catherine Kinsman, an expert in whale and dolphin behavior, was given approval from the Canadian government to watch over Wilma and other orphan belugas, and to research and minimize the dangers they were facing. Michael Mountain talked with her about her work with Wilma and other solitary belugas.

Michael Mountain: Tell us about Wilma.

Catherine Kinsman: Wilma was an orphan beluga whale who had been in the bay trying to make friends with fishermen and tourist boats for five years. And for all kinds of reasons, this really wasn’t a great situation. It was bad enough that she’d been injured several times by the propellers on the boats. But the other thing was that the whole nature of the relationship did not serve her psychological and emotional well-being, either.

MM: You mean how she was interacting with the people.

CK: Yes, belugas are highly social and cultural beings. There can be hundreds of them in their big extended families, and just like human children, they learn from their mothers and other pod mates how to communicate with each other and with their families and how to live as a beluga.

MM: And so, what Wilma was learning was how to live among a group of boats instead of belugas.

CK: Exactly. We would see people exploiting the deep need these animals have for social interaction and for acoustic stimulation. As solitary orphans, they’re missing all the sounds of their families and all the socialization and communication with other beluga whales. And they find themselves in the relative silence of the waters. They are very chatty animals, and in their families there can be constant chatter. And with their big brains that are designed for communication, taking in acoustic information and making sense of it, and then interacting with their environment, they begin to seek out anything that will fill that emptiness – that void.

Wilma was injured by being attracted to the sound of propellers.

Alone in the ocean, Wilma had no beluga friends whistling or responding to her calls, and so she gravitated to the sound of boats and propellers and people calling out to her. The trouble was that some people were exploiting her needs by using their boat motors to attract her. Solitary beluga whales like her will come right up to the boat motors and place their rostrums – their noses – just within inches of a propeller. And then they’ll follow the boat, so obviously if there’s any abrupt change in direction or speed, the whale can get injured.

Since I started working with these solitary whales, back in 1998, there have been at least 25 individual belugas who have become stray for whatever reason and are separated far from their natal group.

MM: What other problems were you seeing?

CK: People often misunderstood her behavior. They got in the water to swim with her, even trying to ride her. And they were offering her food.

Alone in the ocean, she gravitated to the sound of boats and propellers and people calling out to her.

But one thing we learned was that Wilma wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the food. What she wanted was the interaction and companionship – like she’d have had with her family. She wanted the eye contact and the physical contact. She liked being touched, and even let people put their hands in her mouth. And people took advantage of this and actually started to alter her behavior.

These are free-ranging wild animals, but the human activity they encountered was confusingly chaotic and inconsistent, often creating frustration for the whale. Too often, well-intentioned but misinformed people treated orphan belugas with the same kind of circus mindset that you see in captivity, which is totally inappropriate for wild whales. Instead of what these belugas would be learning from their real families, they learned behaviors in response to these surrogate human families.

Tourists were jumping in the water to swim with belugas like Lenni.

We met people who would be talking about them in trainer-speak and behaving that way as well. They’d been trying to control the whales and manipulate their behavior for their own entertainment. Wilma was inundated by thousands of tourists. She was just this one little whale out there by herself with people vying for her attention. Another sad thing was that people would think Wilma was playing when sometimes she was really warning them she wasn’t pleased with what was happening.

The years she spent in close contact with people had another unusual effect. She seemed to be mimicking the sounds of the boats. She was making two vocalizations that sounded like propellers: first the “vroom” of a motor, and then the high-pitched hydraulic whine of an engine being lifted out of the water or being lowered into it. And then there were so many people, especially children, calling out “Wilma” in a sing-song voice that she appeared to develop a vocalization that was like the vowel sounds of “Wilma” – a kind of “iii-aaa.”

MM: How do these orphans get separated from their families in the first place?

CK: We don’t know the exact reasons, but it’s usually when they’re two years old or less and still very much in their development stages. Maybe they were traveling with their mother or another adult in winter when they need to move further out to find food. And then through the movement of ice, they can get separated and they’re too far away to travel under the ice to the next breathing space.

People would think Wilma was playing when sometimes she actually was warning them she wasn’t pleased with what was happening.

Another possibility could be the noise of ships. The youngsters might get out of acoustic range because there’s a curtain of sound from the ships between them and the adults. And then maybe they find themselves on the other side of a peninsula and then they’re completely out of range. They travel in the wrong direction and aren’t experienced enough yet to know their way home.

MM: How many of these orphans have you been involved with?

CK: We and other researchers have documented 25 individuals who became sociable and all of them were young, which is a consistent trend. The solitary belugas we used to see were almost always adults, who would know how to get home. The mature whales don’t tend to approach boats so much, but nearly all the lost juveniles that are reported develop some degree of attraction to human activity.

MM: Is Wilma still around?

CK: No. When we came back after one winter, she was no longer there. During the winter, there’s far less boat activity, and belugas have to spend more time foraging. So, typically in the winter months they are less sociable and we often lose track of them for a few months. And one year when we lost track of her, we never saw her again. It was the same with several of the others.

MM: How would you recognize her?

CK: Unfortunately, it’s mostly from the scars from their injuries. Some organizations are doing biopsies, and we’ve occasionally helped them with that. But we don’t know where Wilma is now. We would of course like to think she found her own family, but even though she bears some unmistakable scars, she has not been seen.

She was the first orphan in that whole area, and we thought, when she disappeared, that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen again – at least not for several years. But every year since then there have been between one and four orphan belugas on the east coast of Canada.

MM: Have any of them been able to connect again with their own family?

CK: Last year there was a pair of very young belugas, two-year-olds, who’d gone astray togethet and had become sociable with people and were following boats, including a ferry boat. But they eventually disappeared from where the St. Lawrence researchers were observing them, and one of them was seen a few weeks later back in the company of a normal pod of females and juveniles. That was very exciting for us.

MM: There are people in the captivity industry who might say that orphan belugas would be safer in captivity and that they’d have a better chance there.

CK: A better chance at what? The Georgia Aquarium is* (see note at bottom) looking to bring in 18 healthy, wild-caught beluga whales. The likelihood of them living and breeding successfully and contributing to a wild population is a plan that is just full of holes. By their own admission, long-term captive breeding of belugas is a failed experiment.

Every one of them is a conscious, aware individual, worthy of respect.

In any case, I have a lot of trouble accepting the captivity industry has or will contribute in a meaningful way, to actual conservation. Has there been one beluga whale returned to the wild? They’ve spent years preparing for this capture and more than $2 million. Imagine if that kind of money were to be spent on research efforts to learn from and support the survival and thriving of solitary belugas who are wild and healthy but simply out of their normal range. Imagine the inroads we could make into conservation, supporting the lives of free-roaming populations in the wild.

It’s really time for us to move into a new paradigm in our relationship with wildlife, including solitary beluga whales. We should be letting go of what doesn’t work and exploring what we’re actually being shown by these whales in terms of their intelligence, sociability and what they need and what we can learn from them in the wild so we can support them there.

MM: What have you learned the most from your work in the ocean?

CK: I’ve learned to have some humility in the presence of these amazing animals. I don’t know everything about them, and there’s so much we humans don’t know. We make far too many assumptions. What I do understand is that the whales have shown me that every one of them is a conscious, aware individual, worthy of respect. We need to start looking at every animal who exists with that level of appreciation for what they’re contributing to the world as a whole.

Catherine Kinsman is the Director of the Whale Stewardship Project and the producer of the award-winning documentary “Where Whales and Humans Meet.”

* Note: This interview was conducted in 2012, when the Georgia Aquarium was seeking a permit to import beluga whales who had been captured off the coast of Russia.

Photo at top by A.Lyskin – IFAW.

The post When Belugas Learn to Say “Vrooom” appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, is a neuroscientist who specializes in the cognitive abilities of whales and dolphins, elephants, primates and other animals. Michael Mountain talked with her about belugas.

Michael Mountain: We’ve heard scientists talking about belugas as the canaries of the cetacean world.

Dr. Lori Marino: They’re always chatting, and they’re always singing. They make beautiful sounds, and they’re very sophisticated when it comes to their communication channels among one another. They have this incredibly sophisticated, sound-producing communication system.

You can compare them to other marine mammals in this video:

MM: What makes them so chatty and chirpy?

LM: Most likely it has something to do with the fact that they have such busy social lives in their large groups. They mainly live in areas where there’s pack ice and where one or more of the group can sometimes get trapped. So, they’d need to be able to communicate with each other about all the features of the ice that they’re dealing with.

The fact is we know very little about their whole communication system, but it seems to be very elaborate.

MM: How smart is a beluga?

LM: Very smart. When I studied the brain of a beluga whale who had died of natural causes, I found that the brain is just as complex as other cetacean brains. They have a highly convoluted neocortex – the part of the brain that’s involved in the brain’s higher cognitive functions. It’s an evolutionarily recent part of the brain. It’s what you see when you look at the outside of the brain – that whole outer wrinkly layer. If you were to unfold it, it would be a long thin sheet. The more folds there are, the more surface area there is for the brain to work with.

One way we measure the intelligence of animals is by the ratio of their brain size to their body size. We call that the EQ or encephalization quotient. The EQ of a beluga is roughly 2.5, which means that their brain is two and a half times as big as is normal for an animal of their body size. It’s about the same as you find with a chimpanzee. Bottlenose dolphins have an EQ above 3 but belugas are quite large, so that doesn’t necessarily reflect how elaborated the brain is. Overall, they just have very large brains for their body size.

MM: What else is distinguishing about them?

LM: As well as being intelligent, they have a very sweet nature. That’s probably because they’re so social and they have to look out for each other. They’re not top predators like orcas. They’re more laid back. They’re very alert and playful, but they’re not as “zippy” as dolphins. Dolphins are kind of over-the-top. Belugas are thoughtful. They have a good attention span and they’re very engaging.

“They’re very alert and playful, but they’re not as “zippy” as dolphins. Dolphins are kind of over-the-top. Belugas are thoughtful.”

MM: All of which makes them prime targets for the captivity industry.

LM: Yes. When they’re in marine parks and aquariums, they come up to the underwater windows and are interested in what’s on the other side of the glass. And their faces are so full of expression that people become mesmerized by them. Belugas can captivate people in a unique way. But this is very unfortunate because it’s how they evolved to be able to communicate with each other in the wild, not with humans when they’re in captivity.

MM: There’s an orphan beluga off the coast of Nova Scotia, whom people called Wilma and who’d learned to mimic the sounds of boat propellers and people calling out her name.

LM: Whales can’t do consonants, but they understand rhythm and emphasis and cadence. So, if I say “Wi-i-lma-a-a” in a sing-song voice, she’s going to come back with “iii-aaa” in a sing-song voice. They’ll mimic every element of the sound except the consonants.

There’s another well-known example from the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. The belugas there were held in a tank that was very close to the elevated subway. And some of them would make the sounds of the elevated train.

MM: Why do they do that?

LM: It’s play, it’s something interesting, it’s part of their way of communicating and engaging with their environment. It’s no different really from what humans do – how we learn language. They’re vocal learners, just like humans. When they’re learning to communicate within their own species, they use mimicry. Dolphins go through a period of babbling, just like human babies, so I wouldn’t be surprised if belugas do that too.

MM: What else do we know about them?

LM: The important thing is that there’s an awful lot we don’t know about them. So, when you take animals we just don’t know and put them in an unnatural setting, that puts them at the mercy of everything we do to them. At least with lions or giraffes, we know quite a lot about them from seeing them in the wild. But with belugas we know practically nothing.

Just for starters, the captivity industry is always trying to breed more belugas for their collections, but it doesn’t have a clue how to keep the babies alive. I saw photos of a baby who’d been born at the Georgia Aquarium, and the staff there had all just jumped in the tank, about a dozen of them. I’m convinced that that was a huge mistake. They wanted to help but it’s all so artificial. The mother was probably freaking out. And the baby died a few days later.

MM: And there was the baby at Marineland who was killed by two adult males.

LM: That’s another case of the people not knowing what they’re doing. I mean you just don’t put two males in with a baby. You don’t do that with any species. Young males are rough, they want to assert themselves, and babies are vulnerable and the mother couldn’t protect her.

In the wild that would never happen. The babies would be embedded in a social network with mothers, aunts, sisters, all watching out for her. But in this situation, you have two males who are already very frustrated because they’re in a tank with lots of pent-up energy, and suddenly they have the ability to take it out on this little baby, and it’s obvious what’s going to happen.

MM: You wouldn’t put a bunch of angry unsocialized boys in a room with an infant human, either.

LM: Exactly. And the same thing would happen with elephants, chimpanzees, so many.

MM: Why would people do something that’s so obviously wrong?

LM: They really don’t know anything about the animals they’re keeping, and they don’t bother to learn anything about them in the wild. And they have this attitude that they’re all interchangeable, and they have no appreciation of their social relationships. It’s a profound lack of interest in who these animals really are and what they need in order to thrive.

Photo in header by Sue Flood – WWF

The post Smart, Chatty and Chirpy – and That’s Their Problem appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

But there’s another group of marine animals we should also remember on World Oceans Day: those who belong in the oceans but who cannot experience them. They are, instead, held in concrete tanks, where they’re put on display in aquariums and marine parks across the globe.

Imagine having a nature made for a life in the ocean and not even knowing it exists.Some of them were taken from their natural home when they were children and have not seen it since. Most were born in a tank and have never seen the ocean. Imagine having a nature made for a life in the ocean and not even knowing it exists.

But this can change when we create seaside sanctuaries where they can experience the ocean for themselves. Seaside sanctuaries can give them back their lives and their autonomy, while enabling us to give them the care and attention they will still need.

Our mission at the Whale Sanctuary Project is to establish a model seaside sanctuary where whales and dolphins who are retired from concrete tanks in the coming years can live in an environment that’s as close as possible to their natural habitat.

With your help, and by the time next year’s World Oceans Day comes around, we will have chosen a location and will have begun to create the first seaside sanctuary.

Together we can give back to these magnificent creatures something of the world they have never known: their true world, the world of the oceans.

Thank you for helping make today and everyday their ocean and their future!

The post World Oceans Day and Captive Whales appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Samantha Berg worked with the belugas at SeaWorld in the 1990s. Today, she is an outspoken critic of the captivity industry and a frequent expert guest on radio and TV shows.

Whale Sanctuary Project: You worked at SeaWorld Orlando for three-and-a-half years, and much of that time was with belugas.

Samantha Berg: Yes, I was there from 1990 to 1993, and about half of that was working with the belugas. They are very gentle, very playful. They were my favorite animals. I thought of them as big Pillsbury Dough Boys.

My favorite was Shadow. I didn’t know until later that he’d been captured from his family in July 1987, less than three years before I started working with him. And he died after just 11 years in captivity. He lived a mere fraction of the time he could have lived in the wild.

WSP: How long do they live in the wild?

SB: In the wild they routinely make it into their 60s or older. Most captive belugas barely live half that. SeaWorld and the other aquariums and sea circuses try to breed them in captivity, but it’s rare for their offspring to survive.

All four of the belugas I worked with in the early 90s – Shadow, Spooky, AJ and Bandit – are dead now. Spooky gave birth to one stillborn calf and Bandit’s calf lived less than four years.

WSP: What’s it like for them at a place like SeaWorld or the Georgia Aquarium?

SB: Like all the other animals, belugas’ lives are severely deprived in captivity. They have a tiny fraction of the space they’d be used to in the wild; they have to eat dead fish which is limited in nutrients; and they have to perform as many as seven shows per day.

And because they’re so gentle, they’re very popular for guest interactions where you can “meet a beluga.” They’re often used for swim programs, too, and it’s highly stressful for them to have all those people getting in the water with them. They can’t get away if they don’t want the contact.

I didn’t realize how bad it was until years after I’d left SeaWorld. So, all my memories now of working with Shadow are bittersweet. In this photo, I’m leaning over to kiss him on his melon – that’s the top of his head, which all kinds of whales use for their echolocation. That photo used to make me smile, but now it just makes me sad.

“When they’d swim by you, you’d feel this overall buzzy feeling all over your body. It’s like they’re sorting out what you look like. It’s unique to belugas.”
WSP: What was it like being in the water with belugas?

SB: We used to call them buzzers, because you could actually feel the sensation of the belugas echolocating on you underwater. When they’d swim by you, you’d feel this overall buzzy feeling all over your body. It’s like they’re sorting out what you look like. It’s unique to belugas and quite a different experience from being in the water with other whales and dolphins.

WSP: Why so different?

SB: I don’t know exactly. But they’re arctic and sub-arctic animals, and they have this pretty amazing ability to find pockets of air under the sea ice using their powerful echolocation abilities. In an area that’s 96 percent covered in ice, they can find that one place where they can come up and take a breath.

WSP: You live in Alaska now, so you see them in the wild.

SB: I’ve seen pods of wild belugas in the Cook Inlet and in the Turnagain Arm just south of Anchorage. The Cook Inlet belugas are in decline. In 1970 there were about 1,300 whales there. Today there are only 280. The Cook Inlet belugas are a threatened species under the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

WSP: When did you become more aware of the plight of these animals in captivity?

SB: When I was working at SeaWorld, I saw a lot of things that I questioned. But it wasn’t until almost 18 years after I’d left that I really began to understand it all. It was when Dawn Brancheau was killed by Tilikum the orca.

Dawn had had 16 years of experience, and I realized at that moment that what happened to her could have happened to any of us. My first wake-up call was seeing what this was doing to the trainers. I saw that SeaWorld had lied to the public about Dawn, saying at first that she fell in the water. And only then did I really start thinking about the animals.

When I was still working there, I never even thought about how the animals had come to be there in the first place. I somehow thought that Shadow, for example, had always been there at SeaWorld. But now I started to realize that less than three years before I’d started working with him, he’d been swimming in the wild.

And it sounds strange, but I’d never really known that belugas don’t do well in captivity. I was always told they do really well.

“People are afraid that if they say something they’re going to lose their job.”
There’s this thing we talk about called cognitive dissonance. You see a lot of things that are disturbing to you, but you don’t talk about it and you try not to think about it because you still think you have the greatest job in the world and you want to keep doing it.

I’d seen bad things. I’d seen a dolphin starve to death because she had a behavioral problem and I was very upset by that, but I managed to put it out of my mind. And I’d seen a false killer whale die a horrible death. And I didn’t know that all the false killer whales came from the drive fisheries like the Taiji massacre in Japan. I didn’t even know what a drive hunt was. I was 22 years old when I got hired. I was busy making sure that I did my job well and that supervisors liked me. I was a good employee and I followed the rules so that I could do what I wanted to do, which was swim with the whales. And we all knew that we were expendable and that there were plenty of other people ready and eager to take our job at any time.

And for someone who’s been there a long time, they have a secure job and probably a mortgage to pay, and it’s not worth it to them to start making trouble. So, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s best not even to think about it. People are afraid that if they say something they’re going to lose their job.

You know, it’s still hard for me, 20 years later, to use the word “trick” to describe the things the whales are taught to do. We were trained to use the word “behavior.” Or to call it a sea circus, which is what it is, rather than a “marine park,” which is the word these places all use.

It’s like brainwashing. I know this is silly, but the first time I spoke out, after Dawn had been killed, was when I went on Fox News, and I was really nervous. I was afraid I might get sued, or even that a van from SeaWorld would come to pick me up and whisk me away!

WSP: Some people say that these marine parks and aquariums are a good way of teaching people about conservation. Like you see the whales close up and have a real experience of them.

“It’s just a tank with glass and concrete walls and a painted-blue bottom, and that’s all. It’s just flat and bland. I mean there’s nothing. Nothing.”
SB: It’s not a real experience. In the wild, these animals can swim 60 or 70 miles a day. Belugas live in pods of hundreds, even up to a thousand at breeding times. They’re incredibly social animals, so when there are only four of them together they must be incredibly lonely.

And a tank is so stark, so utterly different from anything an animal would be familiar with in the wild. They’ve got to be bored out of their minds.

And there’s no way even to have the kind of enrichment programs you do for land animals in some of the bigger zoos – like having a habitat that looks a bit like the wild. For the belugas and dolphins and orcas, it’s just a tank with glass and concrete walls and a painted-blue bottom, and that’s all. It’s just flat and bland. I mean there’s nothing. Nothing.

And then there’s the booming music. These animals use sound to navigate their world and to understand their environment. And here you have music and people banging on the glass windows or just the fact that in these small enclosures, sound is just going to bounce off the walls of the tank. It’s like if you were living in a small room that’s just made of mirrors.

They don’t ever get any peace, even if there isn’t a show going on. It’s a completely alien environment.

Unless the people who come to these shows are being told this, they’re not being educated. They’re just getting lies and propaganda.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A certified acupuncturist, Samantha Berg runs the Alaska Center for Acupuncture with her husband, Kevin Meddleton.

Coming Next: Visiting with Belugas in the Wild.

The post My Life with the Belugas appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

One day in 1861, 11-year-old Sarah Putnam wrote in her diary:

“I went again to the Aquarial Gardens and there we saw the Whale being driven by a girl. She was in a boat and the Whale was fastened to the boat by a pair of rains [sic], and a collar, which was fastened round his neck. The men had to chase him before they could put on the collar.” (the Massachusetts Historical Society)

What Sarah had seen that day was one of the first beluga whales to be captured and put on display in the United States.

Drawing of a performance at the Aquarial Gardens, 1861.

For several years, entrepreneurs and adventurers, including the infamous P.T. Barnum, had been scrambling to be the first to exhibit whales. Sarah had seen this beluga at the Boston Aquarial Gardens, which had opened in 1859. William E. Damon’s 1879 book Ocean Wonders: A Companion for the Seaside describes the same thing:

The first [whale] ever captured for such a purpose was secured by Prof. H. D. Butler, who brought it in perfect health to Boston, Massachusetts, where it was kept in an immense glass reservoir.

… It continued in good condition for more than a year, and became so perfectly acclimated to its new home that it actually showed some signs of intelligence. There was a nautilus shaped boat made, to which he was occasionally tackled and taught to draw. I fancy he was not very fond of being treated like a draught-horse; for when we wanted him to “hold up” to be harnessed, he just put on speed and went all the faster around his glass-walled circle.

He would, however, sometimes condescend to take a live herring or a squirming eel from my hand, and then, turning on one side, sail around and look for more of the same sort; and in other ways he would show that he was really becoming an intelligent Americanized citizen.

If the whale Damon wrote about really survived a year, that would have been a major success for the industry. Some of the belugas didn’t even survive a few hours. This one would probably have lived a few weeks or months, and would have been replaced by another, probably several others, as the year went on.

P.T. Barnum exhibited the first two belugas he’d captured in Boston 1861, and then drove them to the American Museum in New York where they died a day or two later. Barnum didn’t need to worry about the belugas dying; after all, there were thousands more to be found where these had come from in the St. Lawrence Seaway. He wrote:

Even in this brief period, thousands availed themselves of the opportunity of witnessing this rare sight. Since August I have brought two more whales to New-York, at an enormous expense, but both died before I could get them into the Museum.

A fifth living whale has now arrived here, and will remain in the Museum as long as he lives. Perhaps this will be but a few hours, but in order to prolong his life as long as possible, I have, at an expense of $7,000, laid a six-inch cast-iron pipe from the river to the Museum, through Fulton-street and Broadway, and by means of a powerful steam-engine working night and day, the whale is constantly supplied with pure salt water at the rate of three hundred gallons per minute.

This whale (some fifteen feet long) is undoubtedly the greatest “blower” in New York. I leave this monster leviathan to do his own “spouting,” not doubting that the public will embrace the earliest moment (before it is forever too late) to witness the most novel and extraordinary exhibition ever offered them in this City.

Over the next four years, at least nine whales were displayed at the museum. None of them survived long, and in 1865 the two remaining belugas died when the entire museum went up in flames.

More aquariums were now springing up, along with businesses that made their money by keeping belugas in holding areas in Canada so they could be quickly shipped down to the new marine zoos whenever one who was on display died.

In Appleton’s Popular Science Monthly (July 1899), Fred Mather writes about belugas at the Coney Island aquarium that he managed:

The management would keep whales penned up in the St. Lawrence River to replace those which died, and would never show more than two at a time, claiming that they were rare animals and only to be had at an “enormous expense.”

… It would never do to have the public know that they were common in the St. Lawrence in the summer, and when one was getting weak, another would be sent down, and the public supposed the same pair was on exhibition all the time.

Of one of the belugas who had died less than a month after arriving, Mather wrote that he sounded hoarse and had a kind of cough, and that his female companion “slackened her pace day by day to accommodate it to that of her constantly weakening companion, and as the end neared she put her broad traverse tail under his and propelled him along.” As soon as he died, his companion was sent across the Atlantic to the Royal Aquarium in London, where she died four days later.

A few years later, in June 1903, a beluga was taken captive off the northeast coast of England was taken captive after who having been caught in the nets of fishermen. The 14-foot whale put up quite a fight, towing two boats four miles out to sea before succumbing to exhaustion. Back on shore, the dead beluga was purchased by two people, who, in turn donated the skeleton to the Hancock museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but not before taking this photo of the dead beluga whale on a large metal-wheeled trolley with his head propped up on an upturned crate and his tail on a barrel.

Photo courtesy of @nee_naturalist, @gnm_hancock.

By this time, however, at the turn of the century, many of the aquariums were closing. Barnum and several of his competitors had died, and the novelty of seeing belugas in a tank was waning. And then came the Great Depression and the war years.

But in the late 1950s, the beluga industry began to pick up again. This time, Alaska became the favored place to capture belugas from their families, and in June 1958 two belugas, Louey and Bertha, were captured off the Alaska coast and put on a plane to New York. They died on the plane about an hour before landing.

But the captivity industry persisted, and a new generation of marine zoos and circuses, including SeaWorld and the Georgia, Shedd and Mystic aquariums in the United States, and Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada, found more successful ways to capture belugas, ship them to their display tanks, and keep them alive longer than P.T. Barnum had been able.

Regardless of the industry’s new techniques, however, today’s aquariums and marine parks continue to have serious problems keeping belugas alive and healthy. While a beluga in the wild can expect to live up to 60 years or more, few adults in captivity live beyond the age of 25, and baby belugas born in captivity often don’t survive beyond a few months.

– – – – – – – – –

For more history:

• Barnum’s Whales: The Showman and the Forging of Modern Animal Captivity an article by Amanda Bosworth that adds much fascinating detail to this post
• Captive Belugas: A Historical Record & Inventory, published by CETA Base, an online database of captive marine mammals.
• The Forgotten Aquariums of Boston by Jerry Ryan. Available free here as a pdf.

The post How the Beluga Business Began appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The plan was to keep some of the whales for themselves and distribute the rest among various other marine parks and aquariums in the U.S. With only 31 belugas (also known as white whales) still alive in captivity in the U.S. at that time, the display facilities were anxious to replenish their stocks of these gentle creatures.

Animal protection groups were equally anxious to stop them.

The Georgia Aquarium had arranged to have the whales captured from the Sea of Okhotsk on Russia’s west coast, and have them shipped to the Utrish Marine Mammal Research Station, four thousand miles away, on the Russian Black Sea coast. While the belugas were being held there, the aquarium would seek a permit to bring them to the United States.

Beluga whales are sweet-natured mammals. They also look cute, largely because of their widely spaced eyes and the bump on their forehead.

Thanks to the efforts of the animal protection community and the testimony of scientists, the permit was eventually denied. But while this was certainly good news in that it closed one door to importing whales for display, for the belugas themselves, once they’d been captured, there was never going to be a good outcome. Their actual fate was never made public, but most likely the contractors who had procured them for the Georgia Aquarium ended up selling the ones who didn’t die at the research station to marine circuses in China or some other country.

Beluga whales are sweet-natured mammals. They also look cute, largely because of their widely spaced eyes and the bump on their forehead, known as the melon, a bioacoustic “lens” that helps them to focus the sounds they use in echolocation.

Their natural homes are the oceans of the Arctic and sub-Arctic, where they travel in extended families of hundreds, sometimes up to a thousand. Much of the time, these travels take place under the ice. (Their amazing echolocation enables them to locate pockets of air and holes in the ice so they can come to the surface to breathe.)

Although there are beluga populations in U.S. waters, from whom aquariums and marine parks could theoretically capture individuals, many of these populations are now listed as endangered and are therefore protected from capture. Regardless, the captivity industry is leery of a potential public relations nightmare if people were to see video of these gentle creatures being wrestled from their families. As you can see, it’s not a pretty picture:

Better, then, as the captivity industry concluded in 2012, to get them from some faraway land where regulations and media interest are largely nonexistent.

Today, there are 28 belugas still on display in concrete tanks at aquariums and marine parks in the United States. And since the door is still closed to importing more, these facilities have been doing all they can to breed the belugas they still have. The results have been mixed. Infant mortality rate is high, largely due to the stress and inexperience of beluga mothers. (In the wild, newborns are surrounded by their families, and aunts and grandmothers play an active role in raising the young.)

But while belugas are in short supply at U.S. aquariums, their tanks can barely contain them in Canada. Marineland has 52 belugas, many of whom were captured in Russia and came through the same channels that the Georgia Aquarium was pursuing. Many are in declining health and there have been many deaths.

(Header photo: Delphinapterus_leucas_Bubble_Ring By Pagemoral – Wikimedia commons)

The post Beluga Whales – Cute, Curvy and Exploited appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Dr. Haulena’s comments are all made in reference to sanctuaries as “sea pens.” But, as he knows very well, the Whale Sanctuary Project is not planning to build sea pens, which are small enclosures entirely unsuited to the long-term care of whales and dolphins. A seaside sanctuary, by comparison, is a large, deep habitat, created by netting off an entire cove or bay, using well-established engineering methods. It does not, in any way, resemble a sea pen.

Regarding the other claims made by the aquarium:

Dr. Haulena: “You have no environmental control. You cannot control for harmful algal blooms.”

Variation in environmental factors, including changes in water temperature, oil spills and algal blooms, are factors that are being fully taken into account by our expert team of veterinarians, marine mammal scientists, ocean scientists and animal welfare professionals as we consider the many possible sites for a seaside sanctuary.

Dr. Haulena: “Nets are a threat themselves to wild species and ecosystems.”

Not so. The kind of engineering with netting we plan is used by the U.S. Navy and by many marine parks and aquariums without problems.

Dr. Haulena: Human contact and socialization is limited … At the same time, caring for a sick or injured animal is almost impossible.

Our animal care staff will nurture close relationships with each resident and will interact with them on a regular basis. We will be conducting the same veterinary care procedures (e.g., taking blood, checking dentition, assaying hormones, etc.) that are done at the Vancouver Aquarium and other facilities that house cetaceans. We will employ training to ensure that there is communication between each resident and the care staff, and we will have round-the-clock observational data on each resident every day of the year to ensure their health and safety.

Nor will socialization with other whales be limited. Quite the opposite. Residents will have the opportunity to see and hear other residents, and, where possible, swim together. They will also be interacting with fish and other sea life occupying their ocean space.

Mr. Simmons: Life in a netted cove would be one of “isolation and deprivation.”

Mark Simmons claims that netted-off coves and bays for dolphins and whales would deprive the residents of stimulation. The opposite is, of course, the case. The cetaceans at Vancouver Aquarium and other marine parks currently live in shallow, barren concrete tanks with little social stimulation and no contact with the natural environment they evolved to thrive in. In an authentic seaside sanctuary, the residents will have orders of magnitude more space to swim and, importantly, dive to depths not possible in concrete tanks but vital to their well-being. They will experience the natural rhythms of a dynamic and rich ocean environment.

Dr. Haulena: “It would become SeaWorld by another name.”

Again, the opposite is the case. In an aquarium or marine park, the wellbeing of the animals is never the priority since these facilities have to concern themselves with “visitor experiences” and “ticket sales.” In a sanctuary, the wellbeing of the animal residents is the top priority and the entire enterprise is focused on that goal.

The very purpose of a sanctuary is to restore as much as possible of what has been taken from these animals in entertainment facilities

The post Response to the Vancouver Aquarium appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

What’s the difference between a sanctuary and a zoo?

In this short video, excerpted from a talk she gave in Atlanta about the Whale Sanctuary Project, Dr. Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, defines a sanctuary as “a place of refuge” and highlights two key differences between sanctuaries and zoos.

Sanctuaries exist primarily for the benefit of the animals who live there, while zoos exist primarily for the entertainment of the people who visit them.

And sanctuaries never engage in captive breeding, since the last thing they want is to add to the number of animals in captivity.

Dr. Marino highlights the work of the Performing Animal Welfare Society as a model sanctuary for animals who have retired from captivity in zoos and circuses.

The post What Is a Sanctuary? appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Under the revised bylaw, “no person shall produce or present in a park a show, performance, or other form of entertainment which includes one or more cetaceans.”

Park Board commissioner Catherine Evans said the bylaw allows Vancouver to “catch up” in terms of the ethical treatment of animals.

“It’s not only can you do this, but should you do this,” she said. “And so, I think, yes we can keep cetaceans in captivity … but I think we have reached the point now where we know that we shouldn’t where there are other options.”

Whale Sanctuary Project President Dr. Lori Marino said that the Park Board’s decision will push the Vancouver Aquarium into a new future where dolphins and whales are respected for who they are.

“They will eventually realize that this new future is not an apocalypse, as they would claim it is, but an opportunity to continue to be a leader in authentic conservation and public outreach.” “No person shall produce or present in a park a show, performance or other form of entertainment which includes one or more cetaceans.”

The Park Board’s decision comes just a week after the government of France passed legislation that will end the breeding of all whales and dolphins in captivity and that requires captive facilities to make their pools and tanks “significantly larger.”

Other countries have passed similar legislation: In 2013, India banned cetacean captivity outright; Canada is currently considering doing the same. And in the U.S., the National Aquarium in Baltimore is phasing out its dolphin exhibit and planning to relocate the dolphins to a sanctuary.

Vancouver Aquarium CEO John Nightingale had argued that the board’s decision could be a death sentence for injured or sick marine mammals who the aquarium rescues and treats through its Marine Mammal Rescue Program.

But Park Board commissioners responded that the Marine Mammal Rescue Centre, is not in any way affected by the Park Board’s decision, since its facility, unlike the aquarium itself, is not on Park Board land.

And Park Board chair Michael Wiebe added that when it comes to rescues, cetaceans are best treated in their natural habitats.

Indeed, the board praised the work of the rescue program, noting that most of the 100-plus marine mammals saved annually are eventually released. Those kept in captivity are mainly harbor seals, who are not cetaceans, so the amendment will have little effect on the existing program.

The amendment that the board has approved was proposed on the heels of the deaths of the aquarium’s resident beluga whales last fall. Qila and her mother Aurora died in November of unknown causes. The aquarium wanted to replace them and to open a new $20-million beluga habitat.

At the Park Board meeting to announce the decision, commissioner Stuart Mackinnon took issue with various statements that had been made by aquarium CEO Nightingale, and spoke plainly in his response.

“It is a lie to say that the Park Board does not support the Marine Mammal Rescue Center,” he said. “It is a lie to say that members of this board favor euthanasia for other animals. And it has done a disservice to the marine mammal rescue center, to the aquarium and to this board to suggest otherwise.

Mackinnon acknowledged that he has personally long opposed keeping whales and dolphins in captivity. “It is not a secret … I have said so in elections.” But he said the other commissioners made up their own minds on the basis of the evidence and the testimonies presented at the hearings.

“We had two nights of hearings,” he said. I know that the majority of the commissioners had not made up their mind before coming to the board for those nights. They heard compelling testimony from citizens, and made up their minds for that.”

The post Park Board to Vancouver Aquarium: ‘No New Whale Displays’ appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

This was the topic of a hearing held by the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on Thursday, March 30th in Ottawa, regarding Bill S-203.

Whale Sanctuary Project President Lori Marino and Advisory group member Hal Whitehead testified about claims made by the captivity industry regarding the educational and research value of keeping whales and dolphins in concrete tanks.

In her testimony, Dr. Marino discussed her analyses of the research output of the Vancouver Aquarium and Marineland and summarized her conclusion that little-to-no research with captive dolphins and whales has made an impact on conservation research in Canada.

She also discussed her previous findings that there is currently no convincing evidence for the claim that seeing dolphins and whales on display in concrete tanks has any educational value.

Dr. Hal Whitehead is a University Research Professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University, whose research focuses on social organization and cultural transmission in deep-water whales, and on their ecology, population biology and conservation. He discussed the importance of research directly with wild populations of whales and dolphins and the many ways we can analyze their social behavior, culture, and communication systems non-invasively applying computer-modeling methods to data from free-ranging groups in the wild.

In answer to questions from the Senators, Dr. Marino also discussed the mission of The Whale Sanctuary Project and the fact that the search for a suitable sanctuary site includes many possible locations in Nova Scotia and British Columbia (as well as Washington State).

The complete video of the hearing is here. And you can download a transcript (lightly edited for accuracy and to remove procedural interchanges) here.

The post Canadian Senate Hearing on Banning Captivity of Whales & Dolphins appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Munchkin is well-known by parents everywhere for its innovative, modern and credible products for babies and children. And among the company’s social justice programs is its Project Orca.

Steven wanted us to know that the company is donating all proceeds from its sales through the end of this weekend to The Whale Sanctuary Project in memory of Tilikum.

Munchkin is already the principal sponsor of The Whale Sanctuary Project, and  is dedicated to seeing captive whales retired to seaside sanctuaries.

Many thanks to Steven and all his colleagues at Munchkin. It’s a sad day for all of us, but Tilikum will live in all our hearts as we work to create the first seaside sanctuary for whales and dolphins.

The post Munchkin Donation in Memory of Tilikum appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

We’re sad to report two deaths this week: This morning, SeaWorld Orlando announced that Tilikum had passed away from a serious lung infection.

And earlier this week, the Center for Whale Research confirmed that J2, who was affectionately known as Granny and has not been seen since October, is now officially considered to have died. Granny led generations of her extended family of Southern Resident orcas, the J Pod, through the waters off the coast of Seattle.

Tilikum was seized from his family in waters off the coast of Iceland when he was two years old, and was placed in captivity at Sealand of the Pacific, a marine park in Victoria, B.C.

Male orcas have an especially close bond with their mothers, and Tilikum did not fare well at Sealand living with two dominant females who regularly harassed him. To “protect” him, he was locked in a small dark tank at night.

In 1991, Tilikum and the two female orcas attacked one of their trainers, Keltie Byrne, and drowned her. Soon after, Tilikum was sold to SeaWorld. Eight years later, a man who had apparently sneaked into SeaWorld during the night was found dead on Tilikum’s back.

As the years passed, Tilikum was considered by many expert observers to have become increasingly depressed and unstable. And then, in 2010, came the most notorious attack of all. As guests dined on seafood, watching him being given treats by one of the trainers, Dawn Brancheau, he took her arm, dragged her into his concrete tank, mutilated her and killed her .

After that, Tilikum grew increasingly listless, spending most of his time floating in a small enclosure, ravaged by infections. In a statement, SeaWorld says he had been treated for “a persistent and complicated bacterial lung infection,” adding that:

“Tilikum’s veterinarians and caretakers delivered various treatment regimens over the course of this illness, which consisted of, among other things, combinations of anti-inflammatories, anti-bacterials, anti-nausea medications, hydration therapy and aerosolized antimicrobial therapy.”

From the day when he was abducted as an infant, Tilikum’s life was, by any standard, a misery. But it was not without meaning. He inspired the movie Blackfish, which has led more and more people to question the ethics of keeping these apex predators in concrete tanks.

Granny J2: Although we don’t know exactly when she was born, Granny is generally thought to have been well over 100 years old. As the senior female of the J Pod, she led her extended family of Southern Resident orcas through the waters off the coast of Seattle.

During the 20th Century, she would have seen a massive increase in ocean traffic: from fishing boats to whale watchers to ferries to cruise liners to vast container ships and tankers. And in recent decades, the J Pod (along with other Southern Resident families) has been struggling with the steep decline in salmon, which is the only food they eat, along with the ever-increasing pollution of the ocean.

The Southern Resident orcas are now listed as an endangered population, and without Granny J2 and her matriarchal experience and wisdom, their future is uncertain.

Together, Tilikum and Granny J2 poignantly represent two very different kinds of orca lives: Tilikum, sick, depressed and with violent outbursts, and now dead at age 36; and Granny, who lived to be over 100 and led her family through hundreds of miles of ocean as they navigated the authentic challenges that all wild marine animals face.

The mission of The Whale Sanctuary Project is to create the first North American seaside sanctuary for cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) who may be retired from concrete tanks in the coming years. Cetaceans born in captivity have never learned the skills needed to thrive in the open ocean. And even those who were captured from the wild may not be able to rejoin their families.

But seaside sanctuaries can provide them with the kind of life that’s as close as possible to what they would experience in the wild.

With your help and support, we are committed to giving them that opportunity.

The post Tilikum and “Granny” appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The Whale Sanctuary Project store is now open for your Holiday shopping, with T-shirts, mugs, bags and mouse pads.

So, go ahead and treat yourself, treat your family and friends, and help spread the word that we’re getting ready to build the first-ever seaside sanctuary for whales and dolphins who are being released from captivity.

Thank you for being part of The Whale Sanctuary Project, and a very happy Holiday season to you and yours.

The post Holiday Shopping appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Rather than fulfilling the “rehabilitation and release” part of the permit, the dolphinarium named her Morgan and put her on public display just weeks after her rescue.

Working with experts from around the world, a coalition of Dutch non-profit groups formed the Free Morgan Group and put together a plan to gradually reintroduce her back into the ocean.

They located an ideal situation for Morgan: a cove in the Norwegian fishing village of Stø. “I am very positive about Morgan coming to our community,” the Mayor of Stø said. “I will personally look forward to helping on her road to freedom.”

And villagers expressed delight about hosting Morgan and helping to provide for her.

The sea pen in Norway that was offered by the Mayor of Stø and the Free Morgan Support Group.

The cove would have a net across its opening to the ocean, and there was a good possibility that Morgan’s family would pass by there, enabling her to communicate with her pod. As part of her rehab, she would be electronically tagged and trained to follow a boat and to return to the boat when called so that she could get used to being in the open sea again. And if she linked up with her own pod or another, her caregivers would leave her to go with the pod while continuing to monitor her movements.

Meanwhile, the captivity industry had other plans for Morgan, pressing for her to go to Loro Parque, a Spanish amusement park in the Canary Islands. Loro Parque had four other orcas and was associated with SeaWorld. They argued that Loro Parque was best equipped to give her the care she needs. The Free Morgan Group argued that once the industry had Morgan their grasp, they would never let her go. Rather, she would simply be kept on permanent display.

At first, things looked good for Morgan. The Amsterdam District Court ruled that she should remain at the Harderwijk Dolphinarium while more research was being conducted to determine a long-term solution. Orca protection groups were delighted.

“This is the first time in history that the export of an orca has been blocked by a judge,” said Wietse van der Werf of the Orca Coalition of Holland. “It exposes the international trade among dolphinariums as a very lucrative industry.”

But two months later, a higher court ruled that Morgan should be taken to Loro Parque.

Hopes had been high that the judge would rule in her favor. For starters, European regulations prohibit the use of orcas for commercial purposes, the only exemptions being for captive breeding for conservation, scientific and educational purposes. And no independent evidence was offered that Loro Parque provides any education beyond a few handouts and posters. Nor did Loro Parque have a conservation program.

The sea pen in Norway that was offered by the Mayor of Stø and the Free Morgan Support Group.

But attorneys for the captivity industry argued that their interest was to give the whale a better chance, as well as for “educational” purposes. Their arguments prevailed, and Morgan was promptly flown to Loro Parque.

Morgan at Loro Parque

So, how’s Morgan doing since she arrived at Loro Parque in November 2011? Officials there say she’s integrated into their orca ‘family’ group. That would be hard at best, since her family is from Norwegian waters and the other whales are not related to her.

But it’s worse than that: Observers have repeated noted that Morgan is being bullied and attacked by the other orcas, who bite and hit her on a regular basis, and she has the scars to show for it. This is not normal orca behavior, and it is unnatural in the wild for males to attack a young female.

She has also been observed banging her head repeatedly into a metal grate.

The park’s owner commented that Morgan has been sent to them as a “donation from nature” and a “new blood line” for breeding. And Loro Parque started putting her into a tank with an adult male at an age, five-to-seven years old, that’s far too young for breeding. (Typically, in the wild, orcas become mothers for the first time at around 14 years of age.)

Perhaps most disturbingly, Morgan has been videoed beaching herself during a performance. In the video, you see her on the far side of the smaller pool. Eventually, one of the trainers coaxes her back into the water (at 9:15), but less than a minute later she beaches again.

It’s reasonable to wonder how often she does this, and why. The visitor who captured the footage comments:

Morgan hauls herself out onto the ledge of the tank. Her skin dries out while she remains in the sun. After being commanded to return to the water, she once again hauls herself out at the same location.

Morgan remains there until the end of the video. Loro Parque has stated on their blog that this type of behavior is “natural,” but anyone can see this is unnatural …

The video presented here clearly shows Morgan out of the water for at least nine minutes, followed by another bout of unknown duration.

There’s more information about Morgan at the Free Morgan Foundation.

The post Morgan: When Rescue Becomes Capture appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Video from the 1999 special “Baby Wild Films Presents: The Killer Whale People.”

People who saw the video on the news were appalled, and the outrage that followed led to the passing of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, banning the capture of marine mammals in U.S. waters. But SeaWorld continued to get “exemptions” for another four years until the company was caught in yet another scandal after they’d bought orcas who’d been driven into nets by having explosives dropped into the ocean all around them.

(And since SeaWorld and other circuses have agreements with marine entertainment facilities overseas, trading of wild-caught orcas and dolphins never stopped, including from the infamous Taiji massacres in Japan which continue to this day.)

Lolita during one of her performances at the Miami Seaquarium.

One of the orcas captured in that roundup was Lolita, who has been held ever since in a small pool at the Miami Seaquarium. Today, 42 years later, she is still performing tricks for tourists, and her only orca companion is is a plastic blow-up orca doll. Every day, when she’s left alone, she calls out to the family from whom she was taken and who live off the coast of Seattle.

During the 1970 Penn Cove roundup, four orcas drowned in the nets, and diver John Crowe describes how he was in charge of secretly disposing of the dead orcas to avoid them being counted in the “take.”

The man organizing the hunt was Don Goldsberry, whom you can see in the video saying how much he “loves” the animals he captures. In a 2010 article “The Killer in the Pool” in Outside magazine, Tim Zimmerman writes about how Goldsberry and Ted Griffin had started capturing orcas five years earlier, which led to the birth of orca entertainment industry.

In October 1965, Goldsberry and Griffin trapped 15 killer whales in Carr Inlet, near Tacoma. One died during the hunt. Another – a 14-foot female that weighed 2,000 pounds – was captured and named Shamu. In December, a fast-growing marine park in San Diego, called SeaWorld, acquired Shamu and flew her to California. Goldsberry says he and Griffin were paid $70,000. It was the start of a billion-dollar franchise.

Over the next decade, around 300 killer whales were netted off the Pacific Northwest coast, and 51 were sold to marine parks across the globe, in Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, France, and elsewhere. Goldsberry, who became SeaWorld’s lead “collector” until he retired in the late 1980s, caught 252 of them, sold 29, and inadvertently killed nine with his nets.

In August 1970, concerned about backlash, Goldsberry weighted some dead orcas down with anchors and dumped them in deep water. When they were dragged up on a Whidbey Island beach by a trawling fisherman, the public started to understand the sometimes-brutal reality of the “orca gold rush.”

Goldsberry went on to capture two-year-old orca Tilikum from waters off the coast of Iceland in 1983. Tilikum killed three people while in captivity, the last of whom was his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010. Goldsberry died in 2014. Tilikum died in 2017.

The post How the First Orcas Were Captured and Sold to Marine Parks appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Depending on the particular area, the question goes something like:

• “Why are you spending so much money looking after a few dozen elephants/ chimpanzees/ whales when there’s a more urgent need to protect their habitats in the wild?”
• “Why are you spending so much on these chickens/ cows/ pigs when we should be working to shut down the factory farms?”
• “Why are you spending so much to take care of a few hundred dogs and cats when we need that money for spay/neuter programs?”

As if, in each case it’s an either/or.

It isn’t. It’s not a zero-sum game in which the benefit to one group of animals means a loss to another group. Nor an argument over a finite sum of money and where it can result in the greatest apparent benefit. There’s a need for both approaches, and a win for one can be a win for the other.

As regards wildlife, the two approaches can be described as conservation and reparation.

Broadly speaking, conservation is about stopping things from getting worse: like protecting elephants and chimps in their native lands.

Reparation – as in caring for elephants from circuses or chimpanzees from laboratories – is about giving something back to these animals whose lives have been destroyed.

Conservation

Daphne Sheldrick at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, which combines a sanctuary with a conservation program by caring for orphan elephants and then returning them to their ancestral homes.

At its best, conservation helps protect our fellow animals from some of the worst atrocities that we humans are wreaking upon them.

But conservation is also often described as “management of natural resources.” And this kind of language that’s often used betrays how human-centered it can become.

Living creatures aren’t “resources” that need to be “managed.”

Living creatures aren’t “resources” that need to be “managed.” They don’t exist for human benefit; they exist for their own benefit. And euphemisms like “stewardship” (increasingly popular in the religious community as an alternative to “dominion”) carry the same arrogant belief that the rest of nature exists primarily for our benefit, while tempering this claim with the notion that we should treating the rest of creation “responsibly”.

Worse yet is when this attitude is used as a rationale for institutionalized abuse. Classic examples would be that sport hunting promotes conservation, and that circuses and “Shamu” shows are educational.

By contrast, many of the best conservation organizations now use the term “compassionate conservation” to emphasize that their work is not about, for example, “conservation of fish stocks,” but is about protecting the individuals who make up these populations.

Reparation

Reparation is a somewhat different concept: It’s about giving back to individual animals what’s been taken away, and thus making up, as best we can, for the damage and abuse we’ve inflicted.

One of the best ways of doing that is by providing them with a sanctuary where they can live in an environment that maximizes well-being and autonomy and is as close as possible to their natural habitat.

Lions rescued from circuses in Peru, now at the Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa.

Reparation can go hand-in-hand with conservation, like when you restore a damaged wetland in order to conserve a natural ecology and protect its inhabitants. But it begins with the recognition that nature and our fellow animals aren’t “resources” in the first place. As Henry Beston famously wrote:

“They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

Reparation is about doing what’s right for the animals themselves. We do it to make up for the wrongs we’ve committed against them; we do it because we can; and we do it regardless of the cost or the inconvenience to ourselves.

If there are additional benefits that serve a wider, perhaps conservation-oriented, purpose, that’s good, too. But the act of giving back is ultimately its own purpose – a true act of altruism.

Giving them their own sanctuary can help to heal the deep wounds we have inflicted upon the fabric of nature itself.

In the case of the Whale Sanctuary Project, we’re talking about animals most of whom were born into captivity and have never even seen beyond the concrete walls and squealing audiences that make up the only world they’ve ever known. They have never experienced the close family relationships that are the bedrock of life in the ocean; never eaten the food that’s natural to them; and never lived the life for which 50 million years of evolution had prepared them.

By any definition and by any standard, keeping these apex predators of the ocean in small, shallow tanks for the amusement of small, shallow people is more than just wrong; it’s a crime against each of them individually, a sin against nature, and a wrong that cannot be righted simply by conservation efforts toward others of their kind, fueled by notions of “better stewardship.”

Rather, it is a gesture, born of the recognition of human error, and an attempt to make up, if only in a small way, for the deep wrong that our own species has committed.

In creating sanctuaries that can make up for some of what went before, we offer the best we can by way of restitution. And even though we can never fully recompense them for what they’ve lost, giving them their own sanctuary can help to heal the deep wounds we have inflicted upon the fabric of nature itself.

(Photo at top courtesy of Farm Sanctuary.)

The post Sanctuaries, Conservation and Reparation appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The conference was designed to address two issues:

First, environmental, animal welfare and social issues related to marine parks. In this part of the conference, Dr. Marino laid out the mission of The Whale Sanctuary Project, and discussed the key differences between a commercial marine park and a sanctuary. The former is always primarily about the entertainment of customers; the latter is about the wellbeing of the animals. Dr. Marino also discussed the main criteria that any coastal sanctuary would have to meet.

The second topic of the conference related to how the tourist industry addresses these issues. Dr. Marino spoke about about Dolphin-Assisted Therapy, which is popular and profitable in Mexico thanks to the highly questionable claims the industry makes about the healing benefits of spending time in a pool with a dolphin.

The conference was held in Playa Del Carmen, Quintana Roo, which is currently one of the most popular locations in the world to swim with captive dolphins.

Dr. Marino was joined at the conference by Board member Naomi Rose, who spoke about the global dolphinarium business industry, and Advisory Group member and veterinarian Heather Rally, talked about swim-with-the-dolphins programs and their effects on the animals themselves. Our group met with passionate dolphin and whale advocates and made important connections with people in Mexico who are working for legal rights for dolphins and whales.

The post International Conference on the Captive Dolphin Industry appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The movie follows Steven as he prepares his first lawsuits to have chimpanzees recognized by the legal system as “legal persons” who have the right to bodily liberty rather than being treated as pieces of property.

The movie premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, and we returned to Park City, Utah, for this second showing, which was being promoted by Future in Review Films. (The movie will air on HBO in early 2017.)

After the movie, Lori and Steve answered questions from the audience, and Michael joined them for a Q&A session. Many thanks to Sharon Anderson-Morris and David Morris for hosting both events.

Steven is currently preparing a lawsuit on behalf of an elephant plaintiff, and is in the early stages of preparing a suit on behalf of a captive orca. Right now, there are sanctuaries to which chimpanzees and elephants can be sent when released from captivity. But the Nonhuman Rights Project can’t go to court on behalf of an orca until a sanctuary is ready to receive him or her.

The post Unlocking the Cage appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

But water along the coasts there is generally quite shallow, so the challenge is to find a location with water deep enough for orcas. The two we saw this time have water depths of at least 15 meters, which makes them strong possibilities. (We are also exploring locations in British Columbia, Washington State and Maine.)

While in Nova Scotia, Dr. Marino gave talks to undergraduate and graduate students and faculty at the Brain Repair Centre and in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University. Dalhousie is very strong in marine biology, and there was a lot of enthusiasm from students, several of whom want to work at the sanctuary when it is built.

Another highlight of the visit was a meeting with Chief Terry Paul of the Membertou First Nation. We are looking to the First Nations for their assistance and input in the process of site selection, and Chief Paul suggested a couple of potential sites on Cape Breton Island.

The post More from Nova Scotia appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

So, go ahead and buy something special for a youngster in your family, and you’ll also be helping to create the first North American seaside sanctuary for whales and dolphins.

And special thanks to Munchkin, principal sponsor of The Whale Sanctuary Project.

The post National Shamu the Whale Day appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The bill also bans the export of orcas, consistent with federal law, out of North America, thus taking a courageous first step toward a state and a nation that no longer hold orcas and other cetaceans in concrete tanks to the detriment of their well-being.

“An important feature of the bill is that it does permit the transport of orcas to other facilities in North America,” said Dr. Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project. “This will facilitate ongoing efforts to develop seaside sanctuaries for these animals as an alternative to living in tanks.”

Assemblyman Richard Bloom and Assembly Speaker Emeritus Toni Atkins

The historic bill was authored by Assembly Member Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who steered the bill through the Assembly without opposition from lobbying groups. It was approved on August 25th.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) was a co-sponsor of the legislation and played a key role moving the bill through the legislative process. Other co-sponsors were Samantha Berg, Carol Ray and John Hargrove.

The Whale Sanctuary Project also greatly appreciates the efforts made by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Speaker Emeritus Toni Atkins, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, Senator Mark Leno and Senator Benjamin Allen on behalf of the orcas.

The post The Orca Protection Act appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

They were joined by two expert members of the advisory group: Catherine Kinsman, who lives in N.S. and has extensive experience with whales, especially belugas; and Kathryn Sussman, who is part of Zoocheck and helped make connections with the various government officials with whom we need to be working. The executive director of Zoocheck, Rob Laidlaw, also came in from Toronto to advise and lend support during our meetings.

Nova Scotia is beautiful, with hundreds of coves, bays and inlets. Some of these had been highlighted by our Google Earth survey team; others were recommendations by Catherine and others. Some of them will be ruled out by the fact that coastal waters are too shallow for whales to be comfortable, but we have more exploration to do as we hone in on a few promising sites.

The officials we met could not have been more welcoming and helpful. In particular they believe that a seaside whale sanctuary would be an asset to the local community and its economy.

Over the next three months, we’ll be visiting three more regions: Maine on the east coast, and Washington and British Columbia on the west. And then we’ll be narrowing the list down to a small handful of sites that merit detailed environmental and physical oceanography evaluation, as well as more extensive engagement with local communities.

The post Site Selection Team Visits Nova Scotia appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

At least 75 belugas are currently held in captivity in the U.S. and Canada, and their wellbeing is just as poor as it is for orcas. In captivity, their lives are significantly shortened, and they have an especially difficult time breeding successfully because of their very specific social needs. For example, they need an intact social group, including family members, in order to choose mates and raise their young properly.  These conditions almost never exist in theme parks.

In the wild there are also belugas who live as “lone sociables” rather than in family groups, and they sometimes interact with people. In 1993, Catherine Kinsman was authorized by the Canadian government to watch over an orphan known as Wilma, who had been trying to make friends with fishermen and tourists for five years. Belugas like Wilma sometimes end up in need of special care, and a seaside sanctuary in Nova Scotia could be of benefit for them.

The post Belugas Are Whales, Too appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Among the presentations at this year’s Superpod conference on San Juan Island, WA, was an introduction to The Whale Sanctuary Project by Dr. Lori Marino, in which she described the criteria for an authentic wild animal sanctuary, the kinds of expertise needed to achieve our vision, and the cutting-edge visitor education center that will be part of the sanctuary.

This was the fifth annual Superpod conference. The first, in 2011, was just an informal meet-up of about a dozen animal protection advocates, scientists, authors, moviemakers, and former SeaWorld trainers, who got together for a week on the island. (One of those present, incidentally, was Gabriela Cowperthwaite, who took the opportunity interview many of the people who would feature in the movie she was working on at the time: Blackfish.)

On a whale watching trip one morning, we were privileged to see a superpod – a gathering of all three extended family pods of the Southern Resident orcas. In their honor, we humorously called our own group the “Superpod”, and the group has met on the island every year since then. By now it has grown into a veritable Superpod: This year’s gathering – Superpod 5 – had more than 250 attendees and took over the local community theater for three days of presentations on topics ranging from conservation of wild salmon (the southern resident orcas’ only dietary item) to advocacy efforts on behalf of marine mammals in captivity around the world.

The conference had a large student attendance, and Dr. Marino worked with conference organizers Kim Ventre and Jeff Ventre to offer a full day of talks and discussions about how college and graduate students can use their education, training, skills and credentials to bring animal advocacy further into the mainstream.

A web search on “youtube Superpod 5” will take you to many of the other talks and discussions.

The post Dr. Marino’s Talk at Superpod 5 appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

“First, most of the animals that people pay money to see — like elephants, big cats, and dolphins and whales — cannot thrive in these facilities.

“Second, most zoos and aquariums have failed when it comes to conserving endangered species and populations.

“And third, despite claims that they are educating visitors about conservation issues, there remains no compelling evidence that seeing animals on display promotes conservation values and behaviors.”

Zoos and aquariums are under growing pressure to make a choice between adopting a new model and becoming an endangered species themselves. That new model is to be found in sanctuaries. And what distinguishes a sanctuary from a zoo is that its priority is the well-being of the animals, not human amusement or diversion.

Some progressive zoos have already started making the change from entertainment and spectacle to restoration, education and conservation. In 2005, the Detroit Zoo closed its elephant exhibit and sent its two elephants to the Performing Animal Welfare Society sanctuary. The National Aquarium has relieved its eight bottlenose dolphins from performing in shows and is planning to retire them to a sanctuary. And the Whale Sanctuary Project has recently been formed to create seaside sanctuaries for formerly captive dolphins and whales, as well as injured or sick wild ones.

As they continue to face mounting pressure to shift their way of relating to the other animals, zoos and aquariums will eventually transform into sanctuaries — that is, centers of authentic advocacy and conservation, public education and engagement. Two examples of sanctuaries that put the animals first and are also highly successful at drawing visitors, volunteers and vacationers are the Marine Mammal Center in California and Best Friends Animal Society in Utah (now one of the state’s top tourist attractions). Unlike zoos and aquariums that cling to a relationship to our fellow animals that’s essentially one of exploitation, it is sanctuaries like these that are showing themselves to be the true model for the future.

The post Why Sanctuaries, not Zoos appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

This morning, the National Aquarium in Baltimore announced plans to build a seaside sanctuary, either in Florida or the Caribbean, and to move all eight of the dolphins currently at the aquarium to the new sanctuary by 2020.

This is a major decision and the first of its kind by an aquarium or marine park in North America.

While The Whale Sanctuary Project is focused on creating a cold-water sanctuary, suited to orcas and belugas, the National Aquarium’s sanctuary will be a warm-water facility, one that’s best for bottlenose dolphins. Taken together, these two projects will show that there is an alternative for the three cetacean species most favored by theme parks and aquariums.

In an op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun, John Racanelli, the aquarium’s chief executive officer, writes:

“Through feedback painstakingly gathered over 10 years, we have learned that the American public is increasingly uneasy with the notion of keeping dolphins and whales in captivity.”

Dr. Lori Marino, President of The Whale Sanctuary Project, said:

“In taking this major step forward, the National Aquarium is demonstrating a commitment to a new model for relating to dolphins and whales, one that transforms zoos and aquariums into centers of authentic advocacy, conservation, and public education and engagement.”

The Whale Sanctuary Project has told the National Aquarium that as we pursue our own mission to create the first cold-water sanctuary, we will share any knowledge and insights that may be helpful to them, and will support their work in every other way we can.

The post National Aquarium Plans Sanctuary for Their Dolphins appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

This year’s gathering, Superpod 5, runs from July 18th to the 22nd.

It’s open to everyone and you’ll be able to meet an international group of scientists, filmmakers, authors, journalists, former trainers, naturalists, orca advocates and people who want to see killer whales in their natural home.

From whale watching to socializing to presentations, it’s a full week that helps to protect orcas in their natural habitat and bring an end to cetacean captivity.

For details about Superpod 5, go here.

Scholar-Advocacy Conference

This year’s Superpod gathering includes an optional one-day Scholar-Advocacy Conference on marine mammals. If you’re a student or young professional working on marine mammal protection, conservation, welfare and rights by applying your education and skills in any number of areas from science to business to filmmaking, it’s an opportunity to share your work with others of like mind.

The conference is organized by Whale Sanctuary Project director Dr. Lori Marino. Check out the details and the call for abstracts here.

The post See You at Superpod 5! appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Whale Sanctuary Project to Create Seaside Sanctuary for Whales and Dolphins

WASHINGTON, DC, May 5 2016 – It’s the dawn of a new era for whales and dolphins retired by entertainment facilities or unlikely to thrive in the wild, thanks to a new, independent organization with plans to establish a model seaside sanctuary.

Launched today with generous support from Munchkin, Inc., The Whale Sanctuary Project is creating a seaside sanctuary where cetaceans – whales, dolphins, and porpoises – can live permanently in an environment as close to their natural habitat as possible and with full support for their well-being.

Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent animals who have complex social lives, and public opinion is increasingly opposed to keeping them captive in concrete tanks. The new non-profit fields a team of experts in marine mammal science and behavior, veterinary medicine, husbandry, engineering, law and policy, to lay the groundwork for the creation of permanent cetacean sanctuaries. This all-star team is tasked with producing a viable plan for construction and management of a North American sanctuary, and to select the most suitable location to ensure a better future for captive cetaceans.

The new non-profit organization is headed by Dr. Lori Marino, executive director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, Dr. Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist for the Animal Welfare Institute, and David Phillips, co-founder and executive director of Earth Island Institute and director of the International Marine Mammal Project.

“There are sanctuaries for other large, highly social, and wide-ranging mammals, including elephants and great apes, but there are none anywhere in the world yet for dolphins and whales,” said Marino, a neuroscientist and expert in animal behavior and cognition formerly on the faculty of Emory University. “Cetacean sanctuary initiatives are long overdue, and we now have the best possible team of experts to ensure an optimal quality of life and care for individual cetaceans.”

The planned sanctuary will primarily serve orcas, belugas and dolphins endemic to colder waters who are retired from entertainment facilities, and injured or ill animals rescued from the ocean. Rescued animals may be rehabilitated and returned to the wild, but those retired from the entertainment industry, who have never known life in the wild, are considered unlikely candidates for release and so would be given lifetime care. The sanctuary would be open to the public on a regularly scheduled basis, in a manner that avoids disturbing the animals, and would offer comprehensive conservation and education programs.

The Whale Sanctuary Project has received an initial donation of $200,000 from Munchkin, Inc., an award-winning, global baby product company. Munchkin, Inc. previously launched its “Orcas Live in Oceans” campaign to raise awareness of the plight of captive whales, and removed the orca toy from its popular bath toy collection. The company has also pledged a total of at least $1 million toward completion of the project.

“Munchkin has long favored a natural coastal ocean sanctuary as an alternative solution to maintaining orcas in captivity, so we are eager to support The Whale Sanctuary Project’s efforts on behalf of cetaceans retired from the entertainment industry,” said Steven Dunn, CEO and founder of Munchkin. “We are dedicated not only to these majestic mammals, but also to helping parents and children understand what they can do to help orcas and others live the rest of their lives happily and safely.”

Funds from Munchkin will be used for an extensive site search, which involves studying the unique geographic, oceanographic and anthropogenic conditions of a number of possible coastal locations, and a strategic plan for building and operating the sanctuary as well as transport and care of the first animals.

Staff, board members and advisors of The Whale Sanctuary Project represent some of the world’s most experienced scientists, clinicians, engineers, attorneys, business experts, and marine animal advocates. They include biologists, wildlife veterinarians, zoologists, university researchers and former trainers from marine animal parks.

###

The post News Release: Launch of Whale Sanctuary Project appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Grimm writes about the cognitive and social complexity of orcas, and about why advocates of sanctuaries “spectacularly unsuited for the relatively small, isolated tanks found in theme parks and aquariums.”

The article discusses the rehabilitation of Keiko from a Mexican theme park, beginning in 1998, and later release into the ocean near his birthplace off the coast of Iceland. Orcas who have been born in captivity, however, would most likely not be candidates for release, which is why there is such a need for sanctuaries – as is the case with elephants and great apes. As Dr. Lori Marino, President of The Whale Sanctuary Project, describes it to Grimm:

The enclosure would be “as open and naturalistic as possible,” she says. “It will never be ideal, but it will be enormously different from a theme park.” A sanctuary won’t be able to replicate orca social life, Marino admits, but at least the whales could communicate acoustically with wild orcas, as Keiko did.

Many thanks to Science magazine for this important article.

Note: The printed version of this article (not the online version) contains two mis-statements:

1: that the WSP “has begun pressuring SeaWorld to release its orcas.”
In fact, this is not part of the organization’s mission. We are focused exclusively on creating seaside sanctuaries for whales and dolphins who are retired from captivity or are rescued from the wild and are in need of special care.

2: that the WSP “envisions a sea cage for care and feeding.”
The term “sea cage” has been coined by SeaWorld to mischaracterize seaside sanctuaries by portraying them as being smaller than the concrete tanks in which they are currently housed. Sea cages will not be part of the sanctuaries that we’re developing.

The post Science Magazine Profiles Whale Sanctuary Project appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Virtually all of the larger captive cetaceans, particularly those from colder habitats (such as orcas and belugas), are held in concrete tanks, at least in North America. This type of wholly artificial enclosure appears to have significant negative impacts on the animals. For orcas, the impacts are especially overt and obvious: broken and worn teeth, diseases never found in free-ranging counterparts, shorter life spans, and most notably the collapsed dorsal fin seen in all males.

It’s very expensive to build a bigger tank, so ironically these largest of captive cetaceans are kept in comparatively tiny enclosures. And it should be intuitive to realize that these wide-ranging oceanic predators will suffer when confined in such small spaces. Aside from the physical and physiological damage noted above, captive orcas are also abnormal behaviorally and socially, in ways that are harmful to the animals in the long-term.

A seaside sanctuary can be larger – almost all sea pen dolphinarium facilities are much larger than any tanks, and a sanctuary will be larger still. In addition, a seaside sanctuary will be more natural for the cetaceans in them in so many other ways: acoustically, water quality-wise, in terms of other species (plant and animal) sharing the enclosure with them. In a seaside sanctuary, cetaceans will be able to swim in a straight line for some reasonable distance before meeting a barrier. (Even in the largest known tank, an orca can swim only a few body lengths before having to bank and turn along the outer wall of the tank.)

Artist’s rendering of seaside sanctuary as planned by the Whale Sanctuary Project.

They will also be able to dive deeper than in any known tank, which may be among the most important differences for them in a sanctuary. All cetaceans routinely dive below 30 feet in the wild, and most species might dive to more than 200-300 feet a few times a day. Yet no known tank is deeper than 30-35 feet. Given all the special adaptations these species have to allow them to dive so deeply, it should again be intuitive that never being able to dive as deep as they can will have negative impacts on the animals over time.

By their very nature, seaside sanctuaries are going to offer more choices, more challenges, and more stimulation to captive cetaceans. While cetaceans in sanctuaries will continue to be provided care, their human caregivers would, ideally, become less essential to their daily activities, simply because a seaside sanctuary will be more interesting than a barren concrete tank. I think what people often forget when considering the welfare and future of captive cetaceans is that in nature they do not need us. They are supreme in their natural habitat – top predators. We humans damage this independence and competence by confining these oceanic predators in tanks. Seaside sanctuaries cannot return that competence to them in its entirety, but they can give cetaceans an opportunity to regain some independence – or at least give them more control over their daily lives.

If seaside sanctuaries function as intended, eventually they will no longer hold any retired captive cetaceans. However, they will also serve as rehabilitation centers for stranded cetaceans, even during the period when they have ‘retirees’ as residents. And they will be able to serve this purpose in perpetuity.

We can’t undo all the harm we’ve inflicted on cetaceans by keeping them in captivity, but by providing them with seaside sanctuaries, we can improve their quality of life. That is our goal.

Naomi Rose is a member of the Board of the Whale Sanctuary Project.

The post The Benefits of a Seaside Sanctuary appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The meeting concluded with a first draft of the mission and goals for a future organization.

Public Workshop: In December, at the 2015 Society for Marine Mammalogy conference in San Francisco, Dr. Lori Marino, Executive Director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, and Dr. Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist for the Animal Welfare Institute, presented a day-long public workshop entitled Sea-Pen Sanctuaries: Progressing Toward Better Welfare for Captive Cetaceans.

The workshop focused on the key issues relevant to developing and maintaining a permanent seaside sanctuary in North America for formerly captive and injured/sick whales and dolphins. There are sanctuaries for other large highly social and wide-ranging mammals, including elephants and great apes, but there are none anywhere in the world yet for dolphins and whales.

The workshop included presentations from some of the most experienced scientists, veterinary clinicians, engineers, attorneys, trainers, business experts and advocates in this field.

Group Workshop: The following day, a group of 25 people with expertise of various kinds related to the creation of a seaside sanctuary met at the offices of Earth Island Institute in Berkeley, California, to discuss the formation of an organization and to agree on its mission and goals. There was discussion of legal and policy issues related to the location of a sanctuary and the best way to go about a comprehensive search in North America.

It was agreed that such a sanctuary would be primarily for orcas, belugas and dolphins being retired from entertainment facilities or rescued from the ocean. Rescued animals might be returned to the wild, but those retired from the entertainment industry, who have never known life in the wild, would be unlikely candidates for release.

The sanctuary would be open to the public on a limited basis in order to avoid disturbance to the resident animals

It was agreed that the next stage of the project was to begin an extensive site search that would narrow possible locations to three or four sites that would need detailed, on-site inspection; and to draw up a strategic plan for the building of the sanctuary, for the transport and continuing care of the first residents, and for the funding necessary to enable all of this.

Founding Donation: In March, 2016, we received a donation of $10,000 from Jan Pettifor, a passionate advocate for the retirement of orcas from captivity. This donation enabled us to incorporate and file for tax-exemption, set up the basics of the organization (including creation of this website), and begin the search for a suitable site for a seaside sanctuary.

Incorporation: In April, 2016, The Whale Sanctuary Project was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and applied for 501c3 tax-exempt status.

Second Founding Donation: Shortly after incorporating, we received a donation of $200,000 from Munchkin Inc., a company that develops innovative, modern, and credible products for babies and children. Among Munchkin’s social justice programs is its Project Orca. This donation will enable us to complete an exhaustive site search and create a comprehensive plan for the building of the first North American seaside sanctuary, transport of the first residents, and their continuing care.

The post Origins of the Project appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

In its national advertising campaign, SeaWorld has issued information that creates the misleading impression that there are only two options for captive orcas: concrete tanks or the open ocean. But many marine mammal scientists, marine engineers and experts on the maintenance of animals in captivity agree that the best solution to the stress and illnesses suffered by marine mammals at SeaWorld facilities is seaside sanctuaries.

Indeed, plans for the first such sanctuary in North America are already under consideration by the nonprofit sector. SeaWorld has chosen to label such sanctuaries “sea cages” when they would be, in fact, quite the opposite: the only situation where orcas can thrive in the enrichment and diversity of the sea, while still receiving care, feeding, and veterinary support.

By perpetuating an outdated model of captivity, SeaWorld is missing the opportunity to present to theme park visitors an altogether more expansive vision of our relationship to the world of marine mammals. Now is the time for the company to embark on a future of interactive entertainment and education that enables children and adults who visit its parks to connect with and learn about orcas and other marine mammals at seaside sanctuaries and to discover how they naturally communicate, hunt, socialize, and deal with conflicts and environmental challenges around them.

Critter cams are already among the most popular websites on the Internet. Seaside sanctuaries can expand this technology, enabling orcas and their caregivers to connect with SeaWorld visitors, as well as with schools and even people at home. In this way, SeaWorld would be offering a truly memorable educational experience of how whales live in the wild, rather than simply how they can be trained to entertain.

SeaWorld also incorrectly labels the Keiko project a failure. Keiko made a remarkable recovery from being a sick orca confined to a cramped, artificially salinated tank in Mexico City, to regaining his health and vitality during his rehabilitation in natural seawater at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and finally to living in the natural environment after returning to his native habitat in Iceland and Norway. Keiko lived five years in the ocean, where he demonstrated that he was in strong physical and mental health: alert, active and engaged, while always supported by his caregivers.

In summary, for many decades the psychological deprivation and physical stress of life in tanks have been shown to cause serious suffering and illness. Seaside sanctuaries can provide a spacious, enriching, dynamic environment to promote the health and well-being of orcas and other captive whales and dolphins.

SeaWorld has made important progress in recent months. We appreciate that progress and we call on them to take the next logical step and embrace seaside sanctuaries for their whales and dolphins so that we can all work together to provide a true quality of life for these magnificent animals.

The post SeaWorld’s Decision to Stop Breeding appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Day One: From Seattle to San Juan Island

July 11, 2011:  It’s all aboard the Victoria Clipper for a 7.30 a.m. departure. My dinky camera doesn’t do the Seattle skyline justice on a dark cloudy morning, but we leave Pier 69 for the three-hour journey to San Juan Island.

We’ll be meeting about a dozen of the world’s most knowledgeable scientists and whale watchers for an informal get-together. We’ll be tracking some of the orca pods (killer whales live in extended families called pods), both from the shore and on boats, and meeting up in the evenings to exchange knowledge and experiences about the orcas who live just off the coast of the islands, and about what we can do to help the ones who are held in captivity at marine parks like SeaWorld.

The ferry is full of local people and tourists, who crowd up onto the top deck at various times along the way for glimpses of dolphins, harbor seals, eagles and other animals, and then as we approach Deception Pass, where two of the many islands meet and a bridge connects them. Beyond lies the Pacific.

One of the crew, a conservation biologist, explains how this huge system of waterways, estuaries and basins that leads out to the ocean was carved out by glaciers about 15,000 years ago. The islands are all volcanic, all part of the Ring of Fire. And the whole region, including Seattle, is subject to earthquakes and eruptions like the famous Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980.

Waiting for us at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island is Candace Calloway, a marine mammal biologist with a passion for rescuing horses. It’s a short ride across the island to Snug Harbor, a small inlet with a marina and cabins, where several of us will be staying.

After a quick lunch we head over to the Center for Whale Research, where Ken Balcomb and his team of interns have been tracking various orca pods from his home and offices on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

Journalists David Kirby and Tim Zimmerman, researcher Dr. Astrid Vanginneken, Ken Balcomb, and documentarian Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

“Here they come,” shouts one of the team as she scans the water below through binoculars.

We’re about to see some orcas.

The post Off to the Island appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

While some of us spend the morning catching up on e-mail etc., others need to head out early. Samantha Berg and Kevin Meddleton are going home to Alaska, where they have an acupuncture clinic.

Samantha is also a former SeaWorld trainer, who appeared on several TV news shows in the days following the death of Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld Orlando last year. She and Kevin suggest we all meet again – perhaps next time in Alaska. We also talk about setting up an email group so we can stay in touch and share information. The group needs a name. I suggest “Superpod” in honor of what we’ve seen and shared over the week. It’s agreed.

Lori and head over to the Center for Whale Research, where I download some of the photos that ID the many orcas that are in Ken’s records. Then we collect David Kirby from Candace’s house, where he’s been out on the shore getting a final view of the orcas, and we drive over to Friday Harbor on the other side of the island.

Lori, David, and I meet Jeff Ventre and his wife, Michelle, on the Victoria Clipper for the two-hour voyage back to Seattle. Jeff and Michelle are headed home to New Orleans, David to New York, Lori to Atlanta, and me to Southern Utah.

As I wait to board my flight, I’m gazing out of the window at the giant planes coming and going from the gates.

But in my mind’s eye, I’m still seeing orcas.

Afterword: In the years that followed, some of the group would meet up again on San Juan Island. And in July 2016, when hundreds of people from around the world gathered for three days of talks, movies and presentations at the local theater, Dr. Lori Marino announced the formation of an organization, the Whale Sanctuary Project, that was setting out to create a seaside sanctuary for captive whales.

The post We’ll Meet Again . . . appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Day Five: Jeff Ventre has just picked up a report from the Toronto Star about the very unseemly custody battle going on between SeaWorld and the Canadian circus Marineland over orca Ikaika.

Jeff, a physician, was once a SeaWorld trainer, so he knows a lot of what goes on behind the scenes, especially the cover-ups that these facilities engage in. The article in today’s Toronto Star explains how, 10 years ago, SeaWorld and Marineland set up a mutual breeding program. And it gives some insight into the grotesque wheeling and dealing with the lives of animals whom they each claim to “own”:

Holer (owner of Marineland) wanted a male killer whale. But how much was one worth? About four belugas, which Busch (owner of SeaWorld) wanted. According to court documents, a beluga is worth $50,000. Holer only wanted to give up three. Busch demanded four, but would later toss in two trained sea lions. And the deal was done.

Then Ikaika is flown from SeaWorld Orlando to Marineland in Niagara Falls. He already has dental problems, most likely from chewing on the metal bars of his pool, and he needs daily treatment along with ongoing antibiotics and pain medication. (Such problems don’t exist in the wild.) At Marineland, Ikaika’s teeth just get worse, and SeaWorld thinks they can give him better care, so they want him back. But now Marineland doesn’t want to give him up.

As part of the pressure SeaWorld is putting on Marineland, they offer some unusually candid remarks about the dangers of keeping these huge animals captive. As the Star describes it:

SeaWorld continues to fret about Ikaika’s mental health. The whale has had to be separated from his female companion, Kiska, 37, because he would bite her.

Ikaika has a history of aggression, often of a sexual nature, which began with an attempt to breed a young calf at SeaWorld shortly before his transfer to Canada. SeaWorld’s veterinarians then sedated Ikaika twice daily with Valium to “try to mellow him out.”

“We’ve already seen some of the precursors (of a human attack) up there, meaning he’s grabbed boots, he’s grabbed targets, he’s grabbed an arm before,” Chuck Tompkins, a senior executive at SeaWorld and head animal trainer, said in an affidavit.

Those are signs Ikaika is testing his environment and seeing what he can do, Tompkins told the court.

“And if you’re not aware of all the little things that killer whales do, you can get somebody really, really hurt,” Tompkins said in his affidavit. “I’ve got grave concerns on the safety of the staff and inevitably the safety of the animal because of the lack of change.”

In all its public statements and PR, SeaWorld goes out of its way to say how safe the marine parks are. But to get Ikaika back to Orlando, they need to change their tune and explain what the real problems are – including that someone could get seriously hurt by an angry, frustrated orca with dental pain, who needs a constant supply of antibiotics and pain medication, along with sedatives to keep him from going completely ballistic.

(Photo of Ikaika from Toronto Star)

The post Custody Battle Over a Captive Orca appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Brainiest of Them All?

Scientists have several ways of measuring the size and complexity of the brains of different animals. Whatever way you look at orca brains, you have to conclude that these guys are super-intelligent.

After dinner, Lori Marino gives us a general intro to the brains and intelligence of orcas. Lori is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at Emory University, and the founder of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy.

Pound for pound, she tells us, the orca brain greatly outsizes the human brain. It’s the fourth largest brain of all, while humans come in 23rd. Where humans score highest is in the ratio of brain size to body size, as you see on this chart:

Another way of measuring braininess is surface area, which is very important. We humans have to pack a lot of brain into a space that can’t grow any bigger (otherwise we’d get stuck while trying to be born). So, the way we’ve expand our brains is by having more surface area – i.e. more folds and wrinkles.

Relative size difference of post-mortem killer whale brain and human brain.

Orcas have done the same thing, as you can see from the photos. They seem to be packing even more brain surface than humans into the available space in their heads.

Lori explains how their brains are organized quite differently from ours. Audio and visual areas are closer together than in our case, and this makes for faster and more complex processing power.

So, who’s the brainiest of them all? We don’t know for sure, but a case could be made for saying that many dolphin species (of which orcas are one) outdo humans in terms of the processing power of their brains.

Lori is co-author of the famous Mirror Self-Recognition Study, that showed how dolphins are one of the few species who can recognize themselves in a mirror. That’s one of ways that shows an animal as having a sense of self, meaning that they know who they are and can think about themselves objectively. It was as a result of doing this study that she concluded that keeping dolphins in captivity is completely wrong, and she has been speaking out against it ever since.

You can read about the study here, and check out an interview with Lori here.

The post Super-Intelligence appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Day Four: Further down the island, some of the J Pod are reportedly gathering for dinner. We’re all gathering for dinner, too, over at Candace’s house. But David Kirby can’t get enough of orcas and wants to go see them from the shore.

David Kirby (right) with Ken Balcomb

David is writing a book about orcas in captivity, SeaWorld, and the death of Dawn Brancheau. “They’re over at American Camp,” he tells me. “Want to come?”

American Camp is a grassy, mossy, rocky area of the island that looks out over several bays where orcas gather regularly to feed. In the 1850s, it was the site of a dispute that broke out between the Americans and the British, sparked by the shooting of a “British” pig by an American. The two countries almost ended up in yet another war before British Admiral Lambert Baynes advised the Governor of Vancouver Island that it would be unwise to “involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig.”

American Camp on San Juan Island

Orcas, incidentally, seem to have learned to settle their disputes without fighting each other. That’s in part because modern orcas have been around for about 15 million years, while modern humans only appeared about 100 thousand years ago and our culture is still quite primitive.

It’s raining when we get to American Camp and walk a half mile or so down to the ocean where the J pod was last spotted by one of the boats. We immediately spot about a dozen of them, so close to the shore you could almost wade out and touch them.

It seems like they’ve found a shoal of salmon and are focused on getting the 200 pounds of food they each need every day. Salmon – specifically Chinook salmon – is the only food that the resident orcas will eat.

The orcas surface for a few seconds, then dive, then we see salmon flying in the air to avoid them, then the orcas surface again, then dive, and on it goes.

The orcas surface for a few seconds, then dive, then we see salmon flying in the air to avoid them, then the orcas surface again, then dive back down, and on it goes.

Then, after one of their dives, they don’t resurface. Nothing. They’ve just vanished. Most likely, Grandma J2 has called them all back together. “Time to move on, boys,” she’s told them.

Time for us to move on, too. Dinner is waiting at Candace’s house.

Plus it’s still raining, and we’re absolutely soaked.

The post Orca Dinner Party appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The largest populations of orcas in the world aren’t here off the coast of North America; they’re in the Antarctic.

We’ve all gathered for dinner again at Candace’s home for an evening that includes a presentation about orcas in the Antarctic.

Ecologist John Durbin has spent time in the Southern Ocean, studying the various subspecies of orcas, along with the cultures and hunting practices of each of the different groups.

An Antarctic orca spy-hopping dinner for the family. Photo by Robert Pitman.

John explains that killer whales around the western Antarctic Peninsula are very fussy diners. They’re renowned not just for their cooperative strategies and hunting tactics in catching Weddell seals, but also for the fact that they will barely ever eat anything else but this particular species of seal. They occasionally treat themselves to breast of penguin, but they won’t eat any other part of the penguin. And when you bear in mind that they don’t have hands or paws, eating only very precise parts of an animal takes some skill in itself.

John and his colleagues learned all this by making careful observations during the Antarctic summer of 2009. They discovered how the orcas avoid almost all other animals who would be easy catches, including other kinds of seals, in favor of what are for them the yummier Weddell species.

The team has documented how the orcas work together to snag their prey. They start by scouting out their victims in what’s called spy-hopping: surfacing for a quick reconnaissance to spot Weddell seals resting on ice floes.

The orcas set up a wave to tip the seal off the ice floe.

Then, rather than killing the seal directly, members of the pack will pull her underwater repeatedly by her hind flippers, until she’s too exhausted to swim. After the kill, the orcas work together to ensure that the carcass is divvied up properly amongst pod members under the waves.

You can see in this video how the orcas line up together (including with their calves to teach them how it all works) and then create a very precise wave that will lift one side of the ice floe where the seal is resting, and so tip her into the water.

John explains how, at least once a year, the orcas take a break from the icy waters of the Antarctic and head up the coast of South America to the tropics for their equivalent of a spa treatment. They won’t eat while they’re away, and it’s a long trip, more than a thousand miles each way. And the reason they go is to be somewhere nice and warm where they can slough off the top layers of their skin, which have become tough and discolored. Doing this in the frigid waters of the Antarctic would not be a fun experience, so it’s worth the long trip.

There’s so much to be learned about these animals whom John refers to not simply as top predators, but rather “top top predators.” There’s simply nothing on the planet that can touch them.

Except, of course, for humans.

The post Orcas at the Other End of the World appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Day Three: It’s 11.30, and we’ve joined an expedition with Spencer, a young man with an engaging manner and a whale-watching boat. There are seven of us, and as we head out from the bay toward the open sound, Spencer is confident we’re going to see some orcas.

The whale-watching boats stay in touch with each other, sharing info on where the orcas are. I’m sitting up front next to Spencer, and soon I’m hearing crackling voices coming in on the radio saying that the K and L pods are heading south in our direction from Canada.

“That means we could be really lucky,” Spencer says. “The J pod is south of us near the point over there and heading up toward where the other pods are coming down. They may all be joining up for a superpod.”

Superpods are like orca conventions, with lots of excitement among the whales as they share information and learn about each other. Younger males and females get to meet their peers, and mothers encourage their sons to “go talk to that nice girl over there.”

We can make a few assumptions from all the splashing and frolicking we see in superpod meet-ups, but their cultures and customs have been developing for millions of years, and we have very little idea of what else they may be saying or doing..

The superpod meetup begins. Photo by the Center for Whale Research

Spencer shuts off the engine as the K and L pods draw close. About a half-dozen other boats have gathered nearby to watch them going by. “There’s one at 7 o’clock,” someone says as we start seeing the orcas surfacing, breathing, then diving again. … “Three o’clock.” … “Five o’clock.” We soon stop pointing them out … there are just so many of them … not crowded together … the expanse of water is huge and the orcas are dotted through it, a couple here, a threesome there. It’s a bit like when you’re watching a meteor shower and every few seconds another one flashes in the sky and disappears a moment later.

A photo ID of Mega (with notch on dorsal fin), L41, from one of the Center for Whale Research charts.

Scientists and orca protection people like Ken Balcomb, and whale watching pilots like Spencer, can spot many of the individual whales from the shape and markings of the dorsal fins.

“That was Mega,” Spencer says when an extra-large whale with a very large dorsal fin surfaces nearby. “He’s L 41.” He glances Spencer has a chart of orca fins compiled by Ken’s team at the Center for Whale Research, and he glances down at it to confirm what he’s saying.

A noisy nuisance

Noisy tugboat. Photo by Christina Becraft

About 10 minutes later, most of the K’s and L’s have gone by and are apparently now heading for a meet-up with the J’s. Spencer starts the engine and we follow the two pods from the north.

We slow down as a tugboat approaches, hauling an enormous container vessel. “These big boats are really hard on the whales,” Spencer says. “The noise of the engines is very deep and it travels for miles.”

The noise polluter chugs by and we’re on our way again. Soon we catch up with a half-dozen other boats who are gathering to see the superpod coming together, and just a few moments later we have J’s, K’s and L’s popping up all around us.

Coast Guard pulls up next to us to check our papers, which are all in order.

Among the boats is one from the Coast Guard, keeping an eye on the whale-watcher boats to be sure they’re all complying with regulations. They pull up next to us to check Spencer’s papers, which are all in order.

By law, all boats are required to stay at least 200 meters away from the whales, and the Coast Guard is often patrolling among the boats. But if an orca surfaces closer to the boat, that’s obviously up to them, and you get a lucky close-up. And that’s exactly what happens to us.

Meet Big Mama

Grandma J2 identifies herself with the small notch on her dorsal fin. Photo by the Center for Whale Research.

Suddenly, and completely out of the blue, an orca surfaces just a few meters from the port side of the boat. Spencer lights up.

“That looks like Granny!” he says, grabbing the dorsal fin chart to double-check. “Yes, it absolutely is.”

For those of us who’ve heard about Grandma J2, the matriarch of the J pod who’s estimated to be about 100 years old, this is the most exciting and memorable thing that could happen. For Grandma J2 to have surfaced just a few feet from our boat is like getting to meet your favorite celebrity on the red carpet at the Oscars. Priceless.

J2 pauses on the surface for a few moments more, as if to introduce herself, then dives and is gone. For our part, we’ve all gone silent, staring at the water where we saw her, and thinking of ourselves as the luckiest people alive. We’ve just met the most remarkable orca on record.

The missing family member

Lolita, kidnapped from the L pod, now at the Miami Seaquarium.

But the most poignant aspect of the trip is being among the L pod, and knowing that one of them is missing from the family group. Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the continent down at the Miami Seaquarium, Lolita has been held captive in a pool since she was abducted from her pod 40 years ago. While the rest of the L’s have each other for company, Lolita has simply a plastic blow-up whale toy in the pool with her.

Every day, she still calls out to her family, just as the other L’s do to each other as they migrate up and down the northwest coast. But instead of the great ocean with its rocky depths, tidal rips, and coastal shallows teeming with salmon and other animals, all she knows is the circular wall of the pool bouncing her echo-location calls back at her like a hall of mirrors.

The post Out on the Ocean, Surrounded by Orcas appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The story of Luna, the wayward orca, is well known. So, it’s not giving away the ending of this movie to say that his search for friendship among the humans he followed around came to a sad end one day, five years ago.

But the story of his life leading up to that fateful day is told poignantly by Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisolm in their movie, The Whale, which opens on September 16. They showed us a preview this evening.

The story begins in Nootka Sound (pictured above), off the west coast of Canada, in 2001, when the young whale became separated from his family, the L pod.

Nootka Sound is a remote waterway that winds its way inland from the Pacific to one of the old logging towns up the river and the L pod often hangs out there on their salmon fishing expeditions.

When the pod returned to Puget Sound without Luna and his uncle, Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research and other scientists speculated that the missing whales may have been fishing together when the uncle died. But no one really knows what happened.

Luna was only a year old, very young for animals who routinely live into their 60s or 70s and who don’t mature until they’re at least 20. What happened to him was like a human child finding himself alone and lost.

Fortunately for him, Luna had at least learned to catch his own food.

Orcas are social animals who need each other’s company. So, Luna did the next best thing to finding his own family: he started making friends with the humans who come and go on their boats in Nootka Sound.

Luna the celebrity

In the years that followed, the young whale attracted thousands of tourists who came to visit him. And he sparked a major dispute, involving the Canadian government, the whale protection groups and the marine circuses.

The government tried in vain to stop humans from accepting the friendship of Luna. The orca protection groups wanted to work with the young whale so that he would bond temporarily with them, enabling them to lead him back to his family.

And the marine parks came up with all manner of schemes to try to “save” Luna so they could put him on public display. As an already-friendly whale who would also have been good for breeding, he would have been a huge prize, and at a minimal price.

The dispute continued for about five years while Luna befriended different people and groups, only to be baffled when they would suddenly stop reciprocating his friendship because of orders from the government.

In the end, one day when Luna was frolicking around the back of a tugboat and trying to make friends with the people on board, he was injured by the propeller and did not survive.

An allegory of human behavior

It’s a story about a whale. But it’s also a powerful allegory about human behavior: the special interests with dollar signs flashing in their eyes; the government bureaucracies trying to protect their turf and play by their own rulebook; the orca groups and scientists who knew exactly what to do to get Luna back to his family but could never get the government cooperation they needed; the fishermen who were afraid that Luna would eat “their” fish; and all the tourists and other visitors who wanted to play with him and have their photo taken with him but who would then move on or be stopped by the government – all of them leaving one very confused young animal in their wake.

Mike and Suzanne are not simply the producers of the movie; they know the story intimately since they were also involved in trying to save Luna. But they don’t try to propagandize. They’re expert enough moviemakers to know that the story is far more powerful when just told straight. And the result is a movie that’s moving and memorable.

The post Luna: the Orca Who Wanted to Be Friends appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

As well as the “resident” pods – the J, K and L pods – who spend most of their time around the islands here, there are some “transient” pods, whose lifestyle is quite different from residents. They speak a different language from the resident families, eat different food, travel further afield, and have different family behaviors.

Transient killer whale pods generally consist of an adult female and two or three of her kids. And while resident orcas of both genders stay within shouting distance of their mothers their entire lives, only first-born male transients maintain such intense fidelity to their mothers. Optimum pod size for transients is three, so whenever a third calf is born, one of the siblings often leaves. The rule seems to be that the eldest son can stay, but all but one of the others, who are generally 5 to 12 years old, may have to go.

Residents and transients have figured out the best way to coexist, so they don’t fight when they meet each other. For example, while the residents only eat fish, the transients eat other marine mammals.

The team that was out in the morning happened upon a transient group that had just captured a porpoise. One of them was carrying the porpoise around on his nose and tossing him around — a bit like how your cat at home will play with a mouse. Why they play with their food is not entirely known, but these top predators of the ocean clearly love to play. They’re exuberant and fun-loving, and they love to hunt.

And if, understandably, you feel a bit sorry for the porpoise, bear in mind that the orcas will naturally go for the smaller and weaker animals, so the overall effect is to keep the porpoise population strong and healthy. It’s the role of the top predator in any natural system. The same goes for the resident orcas and the fish they catch. Residents prefer salmon, and on their long journey back from the ocean to the mountain streams where they were born and where they return to give birth to a new generation, the salmon have to endure a series of challenges – from the orcas in the ocean to the bears along the rivers to the rapids they have to leap over. Only the strongest and smartest will make it back, and their offspring will be strong and healthy, too. (That’s one reason why the modern factory fish farms, where the fish have no real life, are such an ecological disaster.)

Later in the afternoon, Mike Parfit and Suzanne Chisolm arrive at Snug Harbor in their boat from a nearby island where they live. It’s largely unpopulated by people there, so Mike and Suzanne’s boat is the equivalent of your car at home: They go shopping and do everything else by boat.

Tonight, Mike and Suzanne will be presenting a preview of their new movie The Whale, which will be premiered in New York and other cities on September 16. But we have a couple of hours to spare, and they invite me and Lori Marino for a quick spin to see if we can catch up with the transients.

We go out for about an hour, and Mike radios some of the other boats that are out to see who’s seeing what, but the orcas have moved on and are too far out of range. That’s the way it goes. You’re out in their territory, and there’s no guarantee they’re going to perform for you.

Back at Snug Harbor, Ken Balcomb gives us a lift to Candace’s home, where a couple of dozen people will be gathering to watch The Whale and for a talk by John Durbin about the orcas in the Antarctic.

The post T Is for Transient appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

So, how do they know she’d just turned 100? That’s one of the questions on my list for Ken Balcomb. Ken is Founder and Principal Investigator at the Center for Whale Research and one of several orca experts who are getting together this week.

We’ll be learning as much as possible from these great folks, and hoping to see some of the orcas as they pass by the center on one of their fishing expeditions most afternoons. (Keep your fins crossed that they’re hanging out there this week. It all depends on where the fish are.)

One of the people locally who study orcas sent an e-mail last week with some of the latest news about the three Southern Resident pods:

L pod and the rest of K pod came in yesterday. Now all three pods are all here and the superpod antics have been amazing. Apparently all 88 are present and accounted for.

And there’s a new baby in the past few days, K44.

There should be some excellent orca action out there next week, unless they run out of Chinook salmon and have to head back out.

We had a great 100th birthday party for J2 at the lighthouse and at the Center last weekend. Actually played some volleyball for the first time there in over ten years. Are you all ready for some volleyball?

Yes, indeed! Tomorrow, we head out to the islands.

The post Grandma J2’s Birthday Party appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

A half-dozen kayaks are also in place, hoping to see some action. Ken Balcomb, who runs the center, passes around a few pairs of binoculars. The interns take up their cameras with long telephoto lenses. And almost immediately, dorsal fins are popping out of the water. You see them for just a second or two as the orcas come up to breathe.

“There’s one!” calls one of the interns, pointing.

“Another at 11 o’clock,” shouts another, pointing half left.

“Three o’clock,” says another, pointing right.

These students are not just tourists taking photos to send to their friends. This is serious business. They’ll be analyzing every photo to identify who the orcas are, which pod they belong to, and who they’re traveling with.

“That was J2 with one of the younger ones,” says Ken, as two orcas dive back underwater. J2 is the famous “Grandma” whose 100th birthday the team celebrated a few days ago.

“How do you know she’s 100 years old?” I ask.

Orca males are mama’s boys. They rarely leave the side of their mothers.

“It’s a rough guess,” Ken says, “but we learn a lot simply by watching who she’s with. She used to travel a lot with J1, who was in his 60s. And we know that because we know who his children are. So, we’re guesstimating that J2 was born around 1911. J1 rarely left her side, and he died recently.”

Orca males are mama’s boys. They rarely leave the side of their mothers. Their moms teach them everything, including pointing out nice potential girlfriends. But their sons always come back after mating.

I learn that not long ago, a mother whale beached herself, and her son was obviously distraught. He wouldn’t stay in the ocean. Some rescuers pulled him back out to sea, but he kept coming back and beached himself next to his mother, refusing to move for two days after she’d died. The rescuers were finally able to tow him back out to the ocean to save his life. And this time he went on his way. But we don’t know what happened after that. Some of the male orcas who lose their mothers become depressed and don’t live very long after.

Grandma J2. By the Center for Whale Research

Grandma J2 is the matriarch of the “J” pod. She’s considered to be a wonderful grandmother. She knows where the salmon are, where they hide in the ocean, and where the clan needs to be at any particular time of year.

What I’m hearing reminds me of the stories of elephant herds in Africa, where the matriarch holds all the knowledge and wisdom of the family. She knows the best watering holes, what trails to avoid, how to protect the calves from predators, and she guides the whole extended family.

She knows where the salmon are, where they hide in the ocean, and where the clan needs to be at any particular time of year.

All the orcas we’ve seen this afternoon are from the J pod. Two other pods, K and L, are in the vicinity, but they haven’t shown up today.

It’s now 5.30 p.m. and we’ve driven over to Candace’s home, a mile or two down the coast. One of the group is gazing out of the big window. “Well, we didn’t see any whales breaching today,” he says. Breaching is when a whale launches her whole body out of the water — for fun, for display, for whatever reason.

At that moment, and within a stone’s throw of the beach, an orca breaches.

Soon, about a dozen more people arrive for dinner — scientists and families and friends.

One of the group is Samantha Berg, who, when she was in her 20s, spent several years as a trainer at SeaWorld.

“It wasn’t until years later that I realized that it was like being part of a cult,” she says. “They persuaded us that everything we were doing was right — that it was good for the orcas. But it wasn’t. They told us how to think. It’s only now that I understand how wrong it is to take these animals away from their homes and families and use them to entertain people.”

In some ways, when you go to a marine park like SeaWorld, you see a lot more than what I saw today. You see orcas really close up and you can watch them twirling and slapping their tails and racing around the small pools they’re made to live in. Compared to that, I just saw a few glimpses of orcas as they surfaced for a second or two at a time in the distance. Often, it was nothing more than a fin.

But while you can see the body of a captive orca close up at a marine circus, you see nothing of the true life of an orca. You understand nothing of what it means to be an orca, or of who they really are.

And while what I saw today was just glimpses of orcas surfacing, I saw far more of their lives than I could ever imagine at one of those circus shows. With those brief sightings of orcas in their home, traveling together in pods led by a wise matriarch, comes a far deeper understanding of who and what they are: magnificent, intelligent creatures with rich lives, held together through deep emotional bonds.

Ken tells us about a young whale who recently gave birth to a son. He watched from his boat as she nursed the calf along, lifting him to the surface to teach him how to breathe and coaching him as the pod made its way through the waters. Then she suddenly changed course and steered the calf over to Ken’s boat. “She turned him on his back and lifted him out of the water so we could see his underside. She wanted to show him to us.”

Why did she want to introduce him to some humans?

“Perhaps because she was proud of him and was showing him off to us.”

Ken pauses, and adds as an afterthought: “Then again, maybe she was showing us to him to teach him about the kinds of animals that it’s good to avoid.”

The post First Sighting appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.