All this in spite of his former statements and the position he outlined in the meeting held in Paris in February. So now mother and son will shortly be trafficked to a concrete tank in a zoo in the Spanish Canary Islands with a poor animal (and human) welfare history and characterized by unwise husbandry decisions, lack of transparency, and the death of four young orcas in the past five years.

Had the Minister kept his word and supported his own nation’s law to ban cetacean captivity for entertainment and breeding, Wikie and Keijo would have had a different future – a much brighter future. Now they will never know what they came so close to having.

Mother and son will shortly be trafficked to a concrete tank in a zoo in the Spanish Canary Islands.
The time, expense, and amount of work it takes to create a coastal sanctuary for whales is not for the faint-hearted. And we would not have been ready to receive Wikie and Keijo immediately. But we are getting there and we think that it was well worth the government waiting for – for the sake of these two individuals who have been through so much. Nothing worth doing is easy and quick, but the result is life changing. The marine parks and zoos know all too well that the first cetacean sanctuary will sound a death-knell for their cruel industry. And they have fought tooth-and-nail for years to prevent this new future for captive cetaceans from coming to fruition. They fought hard to deny Wikie and Keijo the chance for a better future in sanctuary and refused to even engage in discussion with us. And so, they get to further ruin the lives of two more intelligent, sensitive beings who should be in the ocean living as orcas, not as circus clowns.

But the captivity industry should be on notice that we who are engaged in creating this seismic shift in our relationship to cetaceans will not give up. Just as there are already sanctuaries for elephants, great apes, big cats and other animals, we will create cetacean sanctuaries and children will finally learn why these creatures can only thrive in the ocean. In the longer future, there will be little need for sanctuaries because authentic sanctuaries do not allow breeding and therefore do not perpetuate captivity. Wild animals like dolphins and whales will live where they are supposed to live: in the wild and in control of their own lives.

We are so grateful to everyone who, in so many ways, supported our efforts to bring Wikie and Keijo to sanctuary. Please know that we will continue our efforts to rescue captive whales from the impoverishment of concrete tanks and bring them to a well-deserved life under human care in a natural ocean setting.

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The post On Losing Wikie and Keijo appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

In the early 1980s, when Kenya the African elephant was four years old, she was transferred from a zoo in Germany to the Mendoza Zoo in Argentina. For the next 40 years, she lived alone in a dusty, barren enclosure, her only companion being a painting of an elephant on the surrounding cement wall.

Argentina began closing its zoos in 2016, and Kenya was the last surviving elephant in the country. The zoo, now renamed Mendoza Ecoparque, agreed to send her to the Global Sanctuary for Elephants expansive natural habitat sanctuary in Brazil (Elephant Sanctuary Brazil.)

When she arrived at the sanctuary, her health was, by any standards, severely compromised. As founder and director of the sanctuary Scott Blais described it:

“All four of her feet had severely overgrown nails, pads, and cuticles, and she had osteomyelitis (diagnosed through radiographs), which can be fatal in elephants (and in humans is usually treated with amputation). She was also coated with thick layers of dead skin, which had accumulated over years due to lack of a proper bath or anything to rub against to exfoliate.”

Although she was responding well to her treatments, Kenya became ill at the end of 2025, had trouble breathing, and a few days later, on December 13th, she died. A full necropsy is being conducted, but preliminary reports, shared with a large animal vet, point to tuberculosis that was very progressed, with granular infiltrates throughout both lungs as well as alveolar collapse. These were chronic issues that she must have been living with for considerable time before coming to the sanctuary.

Elephant Sanctuary Brazil is a 2,800-acre natural property in Brazil, currently home to five elephants rescued from zoos and circuses in South America. They have room to roam, are fed and cared for by expert veterinarians, and can regain their mental and physical health after years of neglect and abuse. With the exception of Guillermina, who is 27, all are older animals, and all over 58 years old.  None of them arrive in good health. But they get to live out their lives in a natural environment that, along with the expert care they receive, plays a large part in the healing process.

From this:

Kenya at the Mendoza Zoo

. . . to this:

Kenya at the Elephant Sanctuary Brazil

And watch her taking a refreshing mud bath at the sanctuary:

Sanctuary as hospice

Part of the role of any sanctuary is to provide hospice care to older animals who have spent most or all of their lives in captivity. Another elephant, Pupy, who had suffered from morbid obesity at the Buenos Aires Zoo before being transferred to the Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil in April 2025, also passed away recently. Her preliminary necropsy, too, revealed a seriously immunocompromised body.

We mourn these deaths, but we understand that their time at a sanctuary, long or short, is a blessing to be treasured, one that helps make up for whatever went before.

But in the wake of Kenya’s death, the anti-sanctuary machine has rolled into action, exploiting her death as “evidence” to promote false claims that the sanctuary is incapable of caring for its residents and, as Scott Blais wrote to me in an email, is killing them. He added:

“Suggesting that the sanctuary causes the deaths of elephants who arrived in compromised health after decades in zoos is as absurd as blaming an elderly care facility for a loved one passing in their 80s, after they were sent there for end-of-life care.”

Nonetheless, a complaint has been filed against the sanctuary, and Scott notes that one of the groups reportedly involved in filing the complaint is the Association of Zoos and Aquariums of Brazil (AZAB), a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), a trade organization for zoos and aquariums. The industry’s false narratives have led to the temporary suspension of the sanctuary’s license to accept new residents until the matter is resolved.

A campaign to sow doubt and mistrust

Developments like these are calculated to sow doubt among those who support wild animal sanctuaries. And those of us who are establishing these sanctuaries are being subjected to increasingly vociferous and aggressive tactics by the corporations that own the parks, the trade associations, the scientists whose livelihoods are supported by the industry, and other groups that are opposed to ethical societal change.

Part of the role of any sanctuary is to provide hospice care to older animals who have spent most or all of their lives in captivity.Here at the Whale Sanctuary Project, we, too, are subject to similar tactics by the anti-sanctuary machine. Most recently, upon learning that the French government intended to work with the Whale Sanctuary Project to bring the two surviving orcas at Marineland Antibes to sanctuary in Nova Scotia, the European Association for Aquatic Mammals (a pro-captivity organization) released a statement claiming that animal protection organizations are involved in “misinformation, emotional manipulation and coercive lobbying,” calling them “amateur, self‑proclaimed experts.”

In another example, scientists who are considered to be allies of the captivity industry went far beyond the standard peer-review process in trying to block publication of a fully peer-reviewed scientific paper that documents how, even in fully accredited facilities, serious welfare challenges persist for captive cetaceans, especially for orcas and belugas. Other opponents of the growing movement to retire whales and dolphins to sanctuary have resorted to spreading rumors and fake stories on social media. (I personally have encountered the ludicrous claim that, as president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, I am getting so wealthy from my work that I have two – count them! – apartments in Paris.)

Stay the Course

While efforts like these to discredit the sanctuary movement are certainly destructive to the cause, they also indicate that pro-captivity advocates are becoming increasingly desperate. Public opinion is less and less supportive of the exploitation of whales, dolphins, elephants, great apes and other wild animals. The industry is seeing the proverbial “writing on the wall,” and its recourse is increasingly to go low and to go negative.

As a new ethic of respect and compassion takes hold, the Global Sanctuary for Elephants is creating and promoting a model of how to care for elephants who are rescued from life in a small and impoverished enclosure of a zoo. Please visit their website and their social media, learn about their work, and support their cause.

And while we navigate this opposition, we must remember that it means we are, in the long run, winning.  And we are in good company. We have seen the same aggressive tactics with regards to slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage, gay rights…and so on. There is always resistance to such change. But we will stay the course because the only priority is the health, well-being and dignity of our fellow animals.

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The post The Last Stand of the Anti-Sanctuary Machine appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

You have probably already read the French government’s groundbreaking decision for Wikie and Keijo to come to the sanctuary in Nova Scotia in 2026, subject to our raising the necessary funds to complete the sanctuary by the end of summer.

We tell much of their life story – both were born in the small concrete tank at Marineland Antibes where they are still languishing – in their bio here.

Wikie has seen her entire family destroyed as she clings to her life with Keijo.But my work as a neuroscientist at the Smithsonian Institution and at Emory University, where I studied the brains and fossilized remains of hundreds of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), gave me an invaluable understanding of their remarkable evolutionary history: as land animals who returned to the ocean; whose intelligence and brain capacity evolved in ways that both parallel and exceed our own; and as individuals, whose lives are as meaningful to them as ours are to us.

Wikie (born in June, 2001) and Keijo (born in November, 2013) are mother and son. Orca mothers and sons tend to bond closely, and we can only hope these strong ties have fortified them throughout their ordeal. Their story, like all other captive orcas, is one of families being ripped apart, illness, and premature death. And to recognize how much their lives have been ruined by their captivity and the abnormal circumstances they face, we need to understand what their lives would have been like if they had lived undisturbed in the ocean.

Their forebears walked on land

Cetacean ancestors evolved from land-dwelling animals over 50 million years ago. Orcas are, in fact, the largest species of dolphin, growing to 25 feet long and weighing 4-6 tons. After a long pregnancy of 18 months, mothers give birth to an infant who will take more than 15 years to mature.

Males and females can live well into their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and older. They live in strongly bonded family groups called pods. Every pod has its own cultural traditions (dialects, eating habits, etc.) passed on through the generations by learning. Relatives and friends help raise the youngsters, share food, and assist each other when in trouble.

Their brains are over-sized and more convoluted – meaning that they have more surface area and more neocortex relative to the rest of their brain – than we humans have.

Their communication system is so complex that we have yet to decipher it.

They grieve the death of loved ones and live by a code that prohibits them from ever harming a human being in the wild.

The life they might have lived

If Wikie had been born in the ocean, she would have grown up in a close family group, being cared for by relatives and learning their culture, just as we do. As an adult, she would have chosen a time to become a mother and raise her children to become parents, in turn, and to continue the lineage.

Wikie’s two sons, Keijo and Moana, would likewise have been born into this natural community and, as male orcas often do, might have stayed close to their mothers their whole lives, riding the waves together, meeting hundreds of other species, and exploring many landscapes in their travels. They would have all had a sense of identity that provided the emotional foundation of a good life – a life that would have been shaped by their own choices.

But that was not the life that Wikie was fated to live. She would be born in a concrete tank, and the plan was for her to die in that tank.

Her mother, Sharkane, and her father, Kim 2, were captured at different times in Icelandic waters and held for a short time at a small facility in Iceland before being sold to Marineland Antibes. Some of the other whales among the two captured pods were also sold to Marineland. Others were sold to entertainment parks in Japan, the United States and Spain. The close family bonds were shattered.

In 1993, Sharkane would give birth to Shouka, in 1999 to Inouk, and in 2001 to Wikie. In 2002, Wikie’s sister Shouka would be shipped to Six Flags in Ohio and then to Six Flags California, where she would live for 10 years before being transferred to Sea World San Diego, where she is still alive.

Freya, who came from Kim 2’s group and was mated with him, would give birth, during her 12 years at Marineland, to four stillborn calves and to one survivor: Valentin.

Kim 2 would die of pneumonia in 2005 at the young age of 24. Valentin would survive another 10 years. He was Wikie’s half-brother and is generally assumed to have been the father of Wikie’s second son, Keijo, who was born in 2013.

Two years later, in October 2015, Valentin’s life would end horribly when violent storms swept through Southern France, flooding the marine mammal tanks and leaving the whales nowhere to go for protection. Photos showed all five orcas swimming around in muddy waters. The following week, Valentin died, apparently from twisted intestines.

Left to right: Inouk, Keijo, Wikie, Moana, Valentin, Freya.

In 2011, Wikie gave birth to a son, Moana, sired through artificial insemination by Ulises, who lives at SeaWorld San Diego. It was the first artificial insemination of a whale in Europe.

Moana died in 2023, aged 12, from acute bacterial sepsis. And more tragedy was to come. Early the following year, Wikie’s brother Inouk perished from subacute fibrinous enteritis peritonitis, leaving Wikie and Keijo as the sole survivors of their family at Marineland.

Wikie has seen her entire family destroyed as she clings to her life with Keijo. But since the bond between mother and son is exceptionally strong, perhaps his presence is a comfort as this tragic pair pass their empty days together – lone survivors of a destroyed family.

Giving them a better future

The story of Wikie and Keijo and their family is typical of captive whales around the world.  The specific details may differ, but the outcome is always the same: families torn apart, loss of choice, and premature illness and death.

But with the French government’s decision that Wikie and Keijo should come to the sanctuary in Nova Scotia, this sad story may have a different ending. Wikie and Keijo now have a chance to experience life in ocean waters, exploring the sea grasses and chasing the birds. It is their one remaining chance for a life that can begin to make up for the suffering they’ve endured.

We shouldn’t need sanctuaries at all, but, for those like this mother and son who have spent their lives in concrete tanks, sanctuaries are the best way we can tell them that we are sorry and that we are working to give every captive whale a new and better future.

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The post Who Are the Mother-and-Son Orcas Wikie and Keijo? appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Marineland Antibes in France has closed and leaves several bottlenose dolphins and two orcas languishing in crumbling tanks.

Marineland Canada has gone out of business as well and has no plans for what to do with 30 beluga whales (plus other animals) at their facility except to threaten to kill them all.

The Dolphin Company’s recent filing for bankruptcy may necessitate the re-homing of 295 bottlenose dolphins from their 25 facilities across seven countries.

The responsibility for the predicament that cetaceans find themselves in lies solely with the captivity industry itself.And now there is the challenge of where captive dolphins and whales should spend the rest of their lives if and when they are retired from entertainment parks and zoos. Sanctuaries are the obvious answer, but the sanctuary movement is still in its early days and cannot provide for the 3,600 cetaceans held in captivity around the world.

The captivity industry and its followers want to pin this problem on those of us who are against keeping cetaceans in concrete tanks. They want to control the narrative by claiming that it is the fault of the “animal advocates” that there is no place for retired cetaceans to go. They argue that advocates are putting the lives of dolphins and whales at risk by working to get them out of concrete tanks.

But let’s get the narrative straight. The responsibility for the predicament that cetaceans find themselves in lies solely with the captivity industry itself. They alone captured and bred these animals into confined impoverished settings for entertainment. They alone profited from this. They alone want to maintain the status quo. And they alone are still exploiting these animals for their own gain.

Animal welfare advocates, governments, the general public, and the media should reject the narrative that they are to blame for the current problems facing captive dolphins and whales. These problems were caused by an original wrongdoing whose only solution now is for us all to work together to set it right.

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The post Let’s Get the Narrative Straight appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Three days ago, we heard that Naya’s calf had died at the Moskvarium, and now it is being reported that J-60, too, has passed away. It is a truly sad moment. And as our thoughts go out to the two mothers as they mourn the loss of their calves, it is worth reflecting, too, on the striking contrast between grief in the wild and grief in captivity – and on how the difference between a natural free-ranging life and one spent in captivity once again becomes apparent. 

Newborn J-60 with his mother. Photo above and in the post title by Center for Whale Research.

In the ocean, J-46 will be receiving the support and assistance of a close-knit family group to help her through this difficult time. I am reminded of another mother, Tahlequah (J-35), who gave birth to a daughter named Tali in July 2018. Shortly after she was born, Tali passed away, and for the next two weeks, the world watched, transfixed, as Tahlequah, in what could only be interpreted as a display of profound grief and loss, carried the lifeless body of her daughter along the shoreline of Puget Sound on her rostrum. Her family followed along, and when, from time to time, the body slipped away from her, she or other family members would dive below the surface to retrieve it.

Photo of Naya and her calf by Moskvarium.

At the Moskvarium, by contrast, Naya is left to cope with her calf’s death all alone. There are no other orcas in the tank with her, no one to ease her pain, and nothing to relieve the stark suffering of the loss that has befallen her.

At no time is the cruel difference between solitary captivity and a natural life more salient than when tragedy strikes and the need for comfort is at its peak.

It is a fact of life that, whether in captivity or in the ocean, infant mortality among whales is high. And yes, it is appropriate to ask why it is just as high in captivity – an ostensibly “safe” environment – as it is in the wild. But right now, in the immediate aftermath of these two losses, we should perhaps simply pause to reflect on how we would feel if, as a grieving parent, we found ourselves either all alone in a barren concrete tank or, instead, had the succor of a large family to help us cope with life’s inevitable hardships.

The post The Passing of Two Orca Calves Prompts a Moment for Reflection appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Officially designated J-60, the newest member of the J pod of the Southern Resident orcas will soon receive a proper name courtesy of the Whale Museum on San Juan Island, which gathers votes from the local whale lovers.

Photo of J-60 by Maya Sears under NMFS Permit 27052

Scientists are celebrating the news of the birth cautiously: Many baby orcas do not survive long due to toxic pollution and a lack of chinook salmon to eat. J-60’s mother is believed to be a first-time mother, which would mean her mother’s milk may have accumulated a significant dose of pollutants over the course of her 19-year life. But she’ll also be getting a significant dose of love and support from her family members, who will be guiding her through everything she needs to know about caring for her newborn. Orca life is all about family.

The same is not the case on the other side of the world at the Moskvarium Aquarium in Russia, where 11-year-old orca Naya has just given birth to a daughter. According to a post on the Moskvarium’s Instagram:

“After 10 hours of hard labor … our specialists delivered Russia’s first killer whale birth in an artificial habitat. It was not easy, but thanks to teamwork everything ended well … Now the main task is for Naya to recover from difficult birth, to establish milk feeding, and the cub to develop without abnormalities and get stronger.”

Photo of Naya and her daughter by Moskvarium.

Life has already been hard for Naya. Last year, her two tank mates, Narnia and Nord, died early deaths. The Moskvarium then announced they would no longer participate in the capture of marine mammals from the ocean:

“Employees of the Moskvarium Center for Oceanography and Marine Biology, as the country’s leading experts in their field, took part in the development of draft law N40333-8 “On Amendments to the Federal Law in Fisheries and the Conservation of Aquatic Biological Resources”, advocating a complete ban on the extraction (catch) of marine mammals for cultural and educational purposes.”

Neuroscientist Dr. Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, notes that neither the newborn nor her mother will have the kind of loving family support that J-60 and her mother are experiencing in a natural environment, surrounded by their large extended family.

“The little orca in Puget Sound came into a world filled with love and support from his mother and relatives, a large extended family. He will enjoy being part of a vibrant Southern Resident orca community. He will learn how to be an orca amidst the safety of his social group, and he can look forward to being part of a multi-generational population of orcas who will travel together, play together and help each other.

“Naya’s daughter will have none of that. She is born into an impoverished empty world with only her young inexperienced mother as support and nothing to do and no one to play and socialize with. She and her mother have a bleak future unless they are transferred to a sanctuary.”

We wish both newborns good health and long life. And our special wish for Naya and her daughter is that as the sanctuary movement spreads around the world, they will both have the opportunity to be retired from the misery of life in a concrete tank.

The post A Tale of Two Baby Orcas appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

The concept of flourishing is key to understanding the argument for recognizing that dolphins and whales have clear and inalienable rights.

Tom was the guest of Dr. Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project, in a webinar on September 1st, 2022.

Below is a transcript of Dr. White’s comments, edited for length.

Lori Marino: In your experience, Tom, what’s the difference between seeing dolphins in captivity and seeing them in their natural habitat?

Thomas I. White, Ph.D.

Tom White: The difference is enormous. The best simple phrase I’ve heard is from scientist Denise Herzing, who says a dolphin in captivity is “a shadow of a dolphin.” And when you first experience what they’re like in their natural environment, it’s a huge difference. It’s a reminder that any animal (including us humans) is the way they are because of an evolutionary history and how they have progressed over time and have adapted to an environment to be able to survive and to lead a full life.

Flourishing is simply a shorthand way of talking about this. When we talk about the conditions necessary for flourishing, we’re talking about the conditions necessary for a being, given its evolutionary history, to be able to have even a rudimentary opportunity for a successful life as the member of that species.

The notion of a “right” is simply a shorthand way of referring to conditions that are necessary for beings to thrive and flourish.There’s no way that dolphins in a tank can live a full, satisfied life because that’s not where they evolved. In the same way, the kinds of conditions that we humans need in order to grow, to develop and to have some sense of satisfaction in life is all defined by our evolutionary history. And this is a way of talking about ethics that gives it a biological foundation.

Speaking very practically, if an action advances the likelihood that members of our species are going to be able to have a fuller and satisfying life, that’s a long way of saying something is right. And if an action is going to get in the way of your being able to flourish, then it’s wrong. The notion of a “right” is simply a shorthand way of referring to conditions that are necessary for beings to thrive and flourish.

The point here is that this takes us out of the realm of opinion. People like to say that ethics is a matter of opinion most of the time. No, it’s not. We can define and identify the conditions that have to be met under which human beings grow and develop emotionally and intellectually in order to flourish, to have a full and satisfying life, and to have an opportunity to be successful as a member of that species. And that’s all empirical.

LM: Is it the case that animals can never flourish in a situation to which they are not adapted?

TW: When you talk about adaptation, think of the amount of time it takes for adaptation to take place. Every now and then people will ask whether a dolphin can adapt to captivity and how long it might take. And my answer is maybe a million years, maybe just a hundred thousand years. Evolution moves slowly. Think of all the ways in which humans still possess traits that were once adaptive but are now maladaptive. One of my favorite examples is diet. We evolved in a way to like stuff that was scarce at a certain time, but that we can have all the time now. So, now it’s maladaptive to have fat and sugar as central parts of our diet. Adaptation moves really slowly.

LM: People sometimes argue that when dolphins are born in captivity, they are adapted to captivity. But the science tells us that they do just as poorly, if not worse, than those who were captured from the wild. There’s no such thing as a domesticated dolphin. These animals are not adapted to living in captivity. They don’t live very long. Their quality of life is very poor. And what they suffer in terms of behavioral disorders etc. all points to the simple fact that this is not an environment that allows them to thrive or flourish.

TW: We’re talking about beings with self-awareness and self-consciousness. They’re individuals. And individuals count. It isn’t just populations. It isn’t groups. It’s individuals.

Bodie at Dolphinaris, a failed swim-with-dolphins facility in Scottsdale, AZ.

This is really important. It relates to when people say, for example, that dolphins live reasonably long in captivity. Now it’s true that dolphins, in some ways can adjust to bad circumstances in the same way that human beings can adjust to bad circumstances. It’s true that human beings can adapt to servitude for a while, but one of the things that human beings have evolved to like is individuality and making choices.

That’s why we always make a big deal about freedom. And the need for freedom and individuality is such a deep need that eventually people in servitude get so angry that they will revolt. They will put their lives on the line to get this need. They can adjust for a certain amount of time, in some cases even for their whole life. And they can adjust to poor conditions. But just because they are adjusting to poor conditions doesn’t mean that it’s consistent with the kinds of needs that have to be met in order to grow and develop. And exactly the same thing is true of cetaceans.

LM: At a meeting that you and I attended in Helsinki that was hosted in 2010 by Whale & Dolphin Conservation, the group established a Declaration of Rights for cetaceans. Five of those rights are:

• The right to life and bodily integrity – not to be subjected to invasive treatment of any kind;
• The right to bodily freedom within your natural environment – not to be subjected to captivity or servitude
• The right not to be owned – not to be the property of any human individual, group, state or corporation;
• The right to protection of your natural environment;
• The right to protection of your culture.

TW: When we talk about their rights, we’re really just talking about anything related to the fact that dolphins are individuals. They are self-aware with the kind of sophisticated intellectual and emotional capacities that have them being autonomous. They make their own decisions. They make choices in the same way that human beings do.

But let’s skip down to Number Five on your list, the issue of culture, because that becomes extremely important when you’re talking about beings like dolphins. The point of culture is to transmit information. Culture gives us a sense of belonging, a sense of community. And most importantly from an evolutionary standpoint, culture transmits information from one generation to another about how to survive.

When we talk about flourishing, it’s about how, as an advanced, sophisticated being in a particular environment, do you manage to stay alive? How do you manage to function in your group? How do you make it possible for your children to survive and for your species to continue?

Culture transmits information from one generation to another about how to survive.Well, one of the most important ways is through information that can be transmitted from one generation to another. With humans, we do a lot of that through books. And that depends on the kind of human language that we have.

Dolphins have their own way of transmitting information. Hal Whitehead has documented the fact that one of the consequences of whaling was that an area of the Atlantic got so wiped out that the whales who carried the information about how to survive were hunted to the point where the information never got passed on about how to live successfully in that part of the ocean. That means when you talk about whales being killed, you have to appreciate the fact that part of the ethical significance of this is that you also kill off the ability for the information to be transferred.

So, we’re talking about generational consequences, long term consequences. And one of the things people have sort of resisted is the notion of the culture of cetaceans. People get okay with understanding personhood. “I can understand health and safety and emotional wellbeing. I can understand family. But culture? Isn’t that kind of just a nice add-on?”

No, culture is absolutely central. So, one of the most significant things of the document we put together in Helsinki was to appreciate that one of the long-term consequences of human behavior toward whales is the question of the harm we can’t undo because we didn’t know we were doing it.

And from an ethical standpoint, if you do that kind of harm, don’t you have some responsibility to try to try to make it right? In the past, we had this bias that we were the only complicated animals on the planet. But it’s just not the case. And that’s the kind of work that scientists like Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell are doing to recognize the significance of culture and the complexity of other beings and the kind of harm that goes with depriving beings of that kind – individuals and groups – of the conditions that they need, not just for them to survive now, but for their children and grandchildren to survive.

Dolphins surfing, by David O’Brien via Shutterstock.

LM: And then there’s the issue of what we’re doing to the planet. Climate change is making it pretty impossible for generations, human or non-human, to flourish in the future. Traditional conservation is just not enough – this notion of numbers. You can’t just wave off the problem by saying that these animals are plentiful around the world. That’s not the issue. Orcas in the Pacific Northwest are a different culture from those off New Zealand or Iceland. The bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Florida are a different culture from those off the coast of Australia.

It’s not enough just to count the numbers. If you wipe out a particular community of dolphins or whales, it’s cultural genocide. You’re wiping out an entire culture that can never come back.

TW: So, from an ethical standpoint, we need to talk about the conditions that beings of this sort need in order to grow, develop and have healthy, happy, satisfying lives, or at least an opportunity for that. We need to identify those conditions. And we need to ask how do we prevent harm from happening? How do we prevent harm from continuing in the future?

Group of southern right whales with mother protecting calves. Nullarbor, Australia. By Wildestanimal via Shutterstock.

It’s not a matter of how many are there out there. You wouldn’t say that about humans. You wouldn’t argue that we have plenty of humans. And the reason we don’t say that is that we have this attitude that we’re “different”. And in certain ways that’s true. We’re special in certain ways, as all beings are. We’re unique in the sense of being human, but we aren’t unique in having individual consciousness and the ability to control our actions.

An argument can be made that cetaceans have a kind of intelligence that’s different from ours and that in some ways they are more intelligent than humans.

LM: What kind of intelligence would that be? How do you define intelligence?

In some ways they are more intelligent than humans.TW: My definition of intelligence starts with: Can you identify problems that are threats to your survival? And can you provide solutions that make it more likely you’re going to survive?

When you look at our behavior as humans, you’re looking at global warming, trashing our own environment, overpopulating, killing one another on such a regular basis. And then you look at whales and dolphins. They’ve been around a whole lot longer than we have, so we don’t know what they did in their history. But you’re looking at a species that came up with solutions to their problems and threats. And looking at human behavior, you’d have to say we’re not doing that. We’re just exploding the planet.

LM: That’s not intelligent and it gets to the question of the changes that we’ve made by being such an invasive force on the planet. What are some of the elements of cetacean culture that are particularly affected by human activity?

TW: Communication is one thing and social bonding is another. Noise pollution affects being able to make your way through the ocean and avoid ship strikes. Scientists are telling us stories about how noise pollution dramatically affects what used to be an easy way for whales to communicate basically halfway around the globe [with their low-frequency sound waves].

We’re learning that whale song isn’t just the smaller rituals of social interaction, but a primary way of being connected with others. With humans, it’s mainly visual. But if you’re a whale and you’re designed to be able to communicate with folk halfway across the planet, what happens when that goes away because of ship noise? What is the psychological experience then of your identity, how you bond and feel some kind of social belonging? They’re social animals.

LM: So, where do we go from here?

TW: From an ethical standpoint, I’m a fan of saying let’s just start with “Do No Harm.” If we can just do that, we’re a long way down the road.

LM: What do you see as being the way forward for captive whales and dolphins? Going back to those fundamental rights, perhaps we should be thinking about concepts such as reparation. Creating a sanctuary is a form of reparation. It’s not full restitution because we can’t ever give back what we took. But we can make reparations.

TW: At this point, the only ethical thing to do is to put them in a situation where they can have the closest thing that is practical at this point to a decent life. And that’s what you’re working on with the sanctuary. If, for whatever reason, you can’t transition them into a natural habitat, you can still put them in a situation that’s closer to a natural habitat where they can have a better life.

And overall, it’s true that humans didn’t know enough about dolphins and orcas when we got into the business of captivity. But you’re responsible for the consequences of your actions. So, when you finally get the information about what the consequences are, you have a moral obligation to act appropriately. You just can’t say, “Oh well, we didn’t know. And we’re just going keep on going.” Well, we didn’t know before, but now we do.

LM: And that’s an excellent message to end the webinar on. Thank you, Tom.

TW: Thank you, Lori.

LM: And thank you, everyone. Be well!

The post Five Fundamental Rights of Whales & Dolphins appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

On August 5th, SeaWorld announced that “Every attempt was made to save his life. Veterinarians and health specialists had been actively treating an infection, but aggressive therapeutic and diagnostic efforts were unsuccessful.”

Photo of Nakai from Creative Commons by Zaleem324

Nakai’s mother was Kasatka, who died in 2017. Tilikum, who lived at SeaWorld Orlando, was his father by artificial insemination.

Nakai’s half-sister Kalia was fathered by Keet, who has lived at SeaWorld parks in San Diego, San Antonio and Ohio.

One of his half-brothers, Makani, was fathered through artificial insemination by Kshamenk, who lives in an amusement park in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His other half-brother, Ikaika, was fathered by Tilikum. Ikaika spent several years at Marineland Canada, as part of deal between SeaWorld and Marineland with the aim of breeding Kiska and alternating ownership of the calves between the two companies. But in 2011, a custody battle erupted. SeaWorld won the case in court and Ikaika ended up back in San Diego.

If this piece of family genealogy seems a bit confusing and convoluted, that’s because it is. It does, however, give the briefest glimpse into the breeding and interbreeding of whales for profit among amusement parks around the world. In one of many other examples, the orca Keto lived at every SeaWorld park in the United States before being transported in 2006 to Loro Parque Zoo in the Canary Islands, where he killed his trainer, Alexis Martinez, on Christmas Eve 2009. He went on to father Ula, the daughter of Morgan, which was a violation of the conditions of her transfer from a dolphinarium in the Netherlands.

Nakai in 2012 after he had sustained an injury to his jaw. Photo By Ingrid Visser.

In 2016, SeaWorld made a pledge to stop the breeding of orcas at its facilities and to begin replacing its circus acts with “new, inspiring orca encounters” and more naturalistic presentations.

The whales, however, continue to live in totally unnatural conditions that subject them to chronic stress, leading to immune system dysfunction and high morbidity and mortality. (Nakai’s death comes less than a year since the demise of six-year-old Amaya, also at SeaWorld San Diego, about whom the company wrote that “her death was sudden and unexpected.”)

The conditions they’re kept in also lead to violence. The same week we learned of the death of Nakai at SeaWorld San Diego, the animal protection group PETA posted video of another of the orcas there being attacked by tankmates. You hear the voices of horrified young children, and an eyewitness writes: “We all immediately saw blood soaking the water, which triggered my nine-year-old daughter to start crying.”

As we post this account, we have not heard anything from SeaWorld about that incident. But it is now way beyond time for the company to follow the lead that was set earlier this year by the Miami Seaquarium in charting a new course for captive whales. On March 23rd, the new owners of the Seaquarium announced a level of public transparency about the health, welfare and care of the orca known as “Lolita.”

In Nova Scotia, the Whale Sanctuary Project is pioneering a gold-standard sanctuary where orcas and beluga whales can be retired. More sanctuaries will be needed for the many whales in captivity at home and abroad. This first one is being created as a model for others to follow.

What’s needed now is the willingness of the marine mammal entertainment industry to end the shows, to adopt a new level of transparency regarding their health, to begin the process of preparing the animals for retirement, and to join our existing donors in providing the funds for the construction of this first-of-a-kind sanctuary and the care of the whales who will live there.

As world-renowned oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau has noted:

“The time has come to see whales in captivity as a part of our past, not a tragic part of our future. Let’s end the shows now and retire these intelligent, social, complex animals to seaside sanctuaries.”

What you can do:

• Ask SeaWorld for a transparent accounting of the death of Nakai and of the violence that was witnessed in one of its most recent shows;
• Invite the company to support the Whale Sanctuary Project, to work with us toward completing the sanctuary, and to move ahead in giving captive whales a new and better future.

Public opinion clearly indicates that it is time for a new relationship to these magnificent and emotionally sensitive animals. Together with the generosity of our existing supporters, the support and cooperation of the marine entertainment companies themselves is the next step in bringing it about.

The post The Death of Nakai and the Future of Captive Whales appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Lori’s special guest was Dr. David Celiberti, Executive Director of the Association for Science in Autism Treatment.

In this post, along with the full video of the webinar, Dr. Marino offers some background to DAT:

Over the past 40 years, dolphin assisted “therapy” has become a major branch of Swim-with-Dolphins programs, which are, in turn, a lucrative component of the overall whale and dolphin entertainment industry.

Many people describe their in-water encounter with a dolphin, whether captive or free ranging, as one of the most exhilarating and transformative experiences they’ve ever had. Some report feeling a sense of euphoria and intimate kinship with the dolphins; others assert that dolphins are aliens or angels with special healing powers. But none of these feelings have anything to do with real therapy.

In 1971, educational anthropologist Betsy Smith let her mentally disabled brother wade into the water with two adolescent dolphins. She noted that the dolphins treated him tenderly, and believing that they understood his situation, she established therapy programs at two facilities in Florida that she offered, free of charge, for many years. But she later concluded that these programs were ineffective as therapies and were exploitative of both the dolphins and the human patients. In 2003 she publicly denounced them, calling them “cynical and deceptive.”

The idea, nonetheless, had caught on, and the concept of Dolphin Assisted Therapy (DAT) was soon being promoted for profit at facilities around the world claiming to treat conditions of all kinds, in particular depression, motor disorders and, most notoriously, autism.

The use of dolphins in Dolphin Assisted Therapy and other Swim-with-Dolphins programs is contrary to our vision of a world in which cetaceans are no longer subject to any form of exploitation.Several peer-reviewed scientific papers have shown that there is no evidence that DAT has any therapeutic impact. Yet, it continues to be marketed to desperate parents and people seeking relief for the conditions that impact them. Families continue to visit these facilities and to accomplish little that they could not have gained from a change of scenery, from the close personal attention they receive from the people at these facilities, or from interacting with a puppy.

In our webinar, Dr. Celiberti, a practicing clinical psychologist with a focus on autism spectrum disorders, explained how parents of children with autism are presented with a dizzying array of pseudoscientific practices, DAT among them, all claiming to be therapeutic. Parents are often unable to distinguish real evidence-based therapies from quack practices, and the ensuing lack of results can be devastating for the parent and the child in need.

While not always promising a cure, DAT facilities clearly market themselves as offering real therapy as opposed to simply recreation. And even those who are skeptical of DAT’s scientific validity often just shrug and say “What’s the harm?” if a child who typically knows little enjoyment and accomplishment in life can find a few minutes of joy in riding or hugging a dolphin, even if the enjoyment fades away after returning home.

But there is real harm in that vulnerable patients and parents are led to believe in something for which there is absolutely no evidence: DAT’s therapeutic effectiveness. At best, there might be short-term gains attributable to the feel-good effects of being in a novel environment, along with the placebo boost of having positive expectations. But any apparent improvement in children with autism, people with depression and other medical conditions is as much an illusion as the ‘smile’ of the dolphin. And the harm can include severe injury to a child placed in the water with a wild animal who is being coerced to let that child touch and ride on her with food. Several young children have been severely injured by captive dolphins. One was almost drowned by two dolphins in a tank in Mexico.

Equally sad are the lives of the dolphins themselves. They spend their lives under tremendous stress as they struggle to adapt to an environment that, physically, socially and psychologically, is drastically different from the wild. (Even if born in a tank, they are not domesticated and are not adapted to a life in captivity.) The results are devastating: Chronic stress leads to infectious diseases, abnormal behaviors, and hyper-aggression. Most of these dolphins are medicated with anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs in order to control them.

For this reason alone, the use of dolphins in any kind of Swim-with-Dolphins program is contrary to our vision of a world in which all cetaceans are treated with respect and are no longer subject to exploitation.

During the webinar, we showed clips from a DAT session with a young child with autism, in which you can see how both child and dolphin are being coerced to participate despite the protestations of the child and the fact that the dolphin is “managed” by a trainer – neither having much interest in the other. At one point the child is made to put her hand inside the open mouth of the dolphin – a recipe for disaster that should never be promoted in a professional setting.

Dolphin Assisted Therapy is a classic example of the intersection between the exploitation of children and the abuse of dolphins. I urge anyone who is seeking help for a person with autism to visit the Association for Science in Autism Treatment for further guidance on authentic therapies.

And for our peer-reviewed papers and other information on Dolphin Assisted Therapy, go to the Deeper Dive section of the Whale Sanctuary Project website.

The post Dolphin Assisted Therapy, Autism and Pseudoscience appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Drone footage of Kiska shown here with permission.

These kinds of repetitive, abnormal behaviors are called stereotypies, and they are common across a wide range of species, including humans, in situations that lack physical or social stimulation, choice and variety. A classic example of an animal in an impoverished environment is the rat in the laboratory, singly housed in a small plastic cage with only some food pellets and a water bottle. We know from decades of well-controlled studies that rats, fish, dogs, mice, monkeys, birds and even invertebrates tend to exhibit stereotypies when confined to impoverished environments.

Early in my work as a neuroscientist I learned that stereotypies are evidence of severe chronic stress, psychological disturbance, and dysregulation in the circuits within the brain that control these kinds of behaviors. Last week, my co-authors and I published a peer-reviewed paper in Reviews in the Neurosciences, in which we outlined the brain mechanisms underlying stereotypies in captive cetaceans and elephants and provided evidence that their brains are affected by living in zoos and marine parks.

There are many parts of the brain that become disturbed in impoverished environments, resulting in stereotypies. It appears that stereotypies involve several structures and circuits.  Traditionally, the basal ganglia has been implicated, but more recent research suggests it may be more complex than that. As we continue to learn about the specifics, it is clear that that the occurrence of stereotypies is a result of dysregulation in the brain.

We can empathize with how Kiska is feeling because we know how we would feel in similar circumstances.While different species can react in different ways to impoverished environments, there are also fundamental similarities due to evolutionary continuity across species. All vertebrates possess basal ganglia (invertebrates have similar structures) and they respond to impoverishment and stress in similar ways. So, whether it is a dolphin swimming in circles, an orca grating her teeth repeatedly on the tank surfaces, elephants in amusement parks swaying back and forth, mice in lab cages running in circles, or human patients in mental health care endlessly rocking from side to side, they all indicate the same thing because we all share the same basic brain mechanisms involved in responding to stressful situations.

That is what makes Kiska’s behavior so painful to watch. We can empathize with how she is feeling because we know how we would feel under similar circumstances. And that is why, she deserves to recover in an environment that provides as much as possible of what she is missing. When elephants go from zoos to sanctuaries, their stereotypies tend to lessen or even disappear altogether. And their entire demeanor changes as they engage with their new and more stimulating environment. We expect Kiska will also blossom if she is allowed to go to sanctuary.

The post Of Mice and Orcas appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

• In March of this year, 17-year-old orca Skyla died “suddenly” at Loro Parque zoo in the Canary Islands;
• In July, a newborn beluga passed away at Georgia Aquarium;
• In that same month a second orca at Loro Parque, two-year-old Ula, died after a period of “ill health”;
• In early August, Mystic Aquarium announced the death of a juvenile male beluga who had been transferred from Marineland Canada;
• This past week, Amaya, a six-year-old orca at SeaWorld San Diego died “unexpectedly”;
• And on the heels of the first beluga death, Mystic Aquarium has just announced that another of the very young belugas from Marineland is “seriously ill”.

A beluga whale swims past tourists at Mystic Aquarium. (Photo by Pako Dominguez via Alamy)

In each of these cases, the marine parks and zoos who hold these individuals claim to be surprised and dumbfounded at the losses. SeaWorld said of the death of Amaya in an email to McClatchy News: “Her death was sudden and unexpected.” And, of the death of Skyla, Loro Parque said she was “in perfect condition until yesterday.”

Cetacean health and well-being is seriously compromised in marine parks.But these deaths are no mystery. There is substantial scientific literature on the welfare of captive wild species from birds to mammals. The clinical profiles of different species in zoos and marine parks correlate with their adaptive traits – characteristics that have made them successful as they evolved. The larger the gap between the evolutionarily adaptive characteristics of a species and the captive environment, the lower the welfare. For instance, animal welfare scientists Ros Clubb and Georgia Mason found that carnivores with naturally large home ranges tend to have poorer welfare in zoos than those with small home ranges. These and other findings make it clear why cetacean health and well-being is so seriously compromised in marine parks.

Beluga whale at Mystic Aquarium. Photo by Carol A. Highsmith, Library of Congress.

The evolutionary history of a species shapes its modern nature – those characteristics that need to be expressed in order for members of that species to flourish. Most cetacean species kept in aquariums evolved over tens of millions of years in an ocean environment that affords opportunities for wide-ranging travel, social complexity, and the psychological stimulation of hunting, escaping dangers, and exploring. In the absence of any of these inputs, chronic stress leads to psychological and physical disorders well-documented in the scientific literature for other species. As an example, monkeys confined to impoverished, unstimulating and small environments show more behavioral abnormalities than those in a natural or enriched environment. The parallels with captive cetaceans and free-ranging cetaceans are apparent.

Animal welfare science has a clear message that is being ignored by marine parks and zoos: Square pegs do not fit into round holes.

So, when the entertainment parks claim to be flummoxed over the deaths of young whales, they simply need to pull down the nearest marine mammal biology textbook from the shelf to find out why these deaths are no mystery.

The post Why Captive Cetaceans Have Been Dying appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

A couple of years ago, my friend Lauren sent me a photo from her vacation abroad. It was of herself and her family riding an elephant at a place that billed itself as an animal sanctuary.

A few months later, when she asked me whether she’d be able to visit the whale sanctuary at Port Hilford, I felt the need to explain that the place she’d visited on vacation is not, in fact, an authentic sanctuary. Just for starters, the elephant who was giving rides would have suffered a long period of rigorous, painful training before she would obey commands and submit to tourists sitting in a carriage on her back.

Lauren told me she’d been having doubts herself about the experience. So we talked some more, and I told her the four basic questions I always ask about any facility that calls itself a sanctuary:

• Does it engage in performances, demonstrations or displays?
• Are visitors allowed access to the animals for commercial purposes like rides, petting pools and up-close photos with the animals?
• Does it allow breeding?
• And overall, does it have any priorities other than the well-being of the animals?

If the answer to any of those questions is “Yes,” then it’s not an authentic sanctuary.

Photo by Global Sanctuary for Elephants

A sanctuary is by definition a place where the wellbeing of the residents is always the priority.

There are hundreds of first-class sanctuaries all over the world: for elephants, big cats, bears, great apes, dogs and cats, koalas, parrots, and other animals of all kinds. And while visitors can usually take a tour, there are no rides and no close-up experiences, and everyone stays at a respectful distance from the residents.

These top-of-the-line land-based sanctuaries are an inspiration to all of us who are creating seaside sanctuaries for whales, dolphins and other marine mammals. And our bottom line will always be the wellbeing of the animals who live there.

Right now, we’re witnessing a fundamental change in public opinion regarding how people relate to whales and dolphins.

Whale sanctuaries are just in their formative years. And so, as we design this sanctuary for captive whales in Port Hilford, Nova Scotia, we intend for it to set the gold standard for what can then be, in years to come, many more such sanctuaries all over the world.

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

The new show has been playing at SeaWorld San Diego for two years, and soon after it opened, it was filmed by “Behind the Thrills,” a website about theme parks and attractions. Parts of the show have been revised since then, largely because many SeaWorld aficionados complained that it was dull compared to the old show. But the video below is still essentially what people will see when it opens in Orlando (and soon, according to SeaWorld, in San Antonio).

Here’s the complete show. It runs just over 25 minutes:

Behind the display tank where the orcas perform, you see a large projection screen picturing an ocean scene with orcas swimming close to shore. It’s designed so that the display tank almost looks connected to the ocean scene. And as the screen shows orcas breaching, spy-hopping and working together in the ocean, the whales in the tank are trained to display similar behaviors.

Discussing the opening in Orlando, SeaWorld’s chief zoological officer Chris Dold writes:

“Guests will learn about killer whales’ role in the ocean ecosystem, behaviors the animals exhibit in the wild, the importance of conservation to their habitat and animal welfare practices at SeaWorld. This educational presentation reflects our company’s mission to inspire people and protect the animals and wild wonders of our world through education, research, animal rescue and conservation.”

But however much the display tank is designed to look like an extension of the ocean background, it’s still nothing more than a small space that the captive whales can circle in just a few seconds. And you can’t help but notice that the second whale to go around the pool has a collapsed dorsal fin – a common condition among captive male orcas. (It’s caused by the fact that they spend most of their lives simply logging on the surface of the water for hours and hours with nothing to keep that dorsal fin from eventually collapsing.)

As for education, the projection screen tells you some facts about orcas around the world, but the orcas in the tank can tell you nothing about life in the ocean. Instead, you can only imagine what it must be like being confined to a barren, claustrophobic tank where their primary form of communication – echolocation – just bounces back at them from the smooth, deadening walls of their prison.

For the orcas on display, nothing has changed.And while SeaWorld touts the new show as being educational and promoting conservation, the one thing the company does not address at all is whether or how their new show has made life any better for the animals themselves.

But it’s all plain to see from the video itself: Very simply, for the orcas on display, nothing has changed. They’re still totally captive in a concrete tank performing tricks in exchange for being fed. It’s a life of utter tedium, as described in this article by Lori Marino, Founder and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project and a leading expert on the brains of whales and dolphins:

“The chronic stress of trying to adapt to such a barren and artificial environment leads to psychological and behavioral abnormalities that eventually wear down the whales’ immune system, resulting in increased infection rates and early death.

“Common behavioral problems include stereotypies – repetitive actions without purpose, e.g. endless circling of the tank, grating the teeth on tank walls and gates. The result of the latter is that 61 percent of captive orcas have dental pathology so that their teeth must be drilled out and then rinsed daily to try to prevent infection.”

For the orcas, then, what’s new is old: an endless repetition of the same daily routine in a small, empty world devoid of the rich experiences and complex relationships they would have known in the ocean that’s portrayed on a two-dimensional screen behind them.

And what of the young people being “educated” by this show? What are they actually learning? Primarily, and regardless of whatever other messages may be being displayed, that it’s OK to treat our fellow animals this way and that they exist for our benefit and entertainment.

Basically, it’s a message of dominance and power. And in particular, when the victims are orcas, it’s a message to young people that we are superior even to the capstone species of the ocean. “You orcas may be the kings and queens of the ocean,” we learn as we leave the stadium, “but when all’s said and done, the fact is you’re the ones who’ll be staying here in the tank.”

More than ever, we need to be offering our children a different kind of education: one that demonstrates a more authentic and humble relationship to our fellow animals; one that would promote an attitude of redress and reconciliation and that would give back to them, in the form of a seaside sanctuary, something of the life that’s been taken from them.

The post What Does SeaWorld’s New “Orca Encounter” Teach Us? appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Along with six other belugas, Skyla and Orion had been seized from their families in the Sea of Okhotsk and sold to Marineland Canada, an entertainment park in Niagara Falls. Over a period of nine years, another 24 would be captured from the Sea of Okhotsk and sold to Marineland.

Today, the 87 belugas and 10 orcas currently being held at the so-called “whale jail” on Russia’s Far East coast come from that same region. The plan for them, too, was to sell them to entertainment parks – in their case in China, where business is booming in trafficked whales and dolphins. (The Animal Welfare Institute estimates that China has at least 76 dolphinariums and marine parks, with at least 25 more planned over the next few years.)

No orca or beluga should ever have to suffer what happened to Skoot. But in the face of worldwide protests sparked by Russian animal protection groups, the Russian government is considering returning them to open ocean waters.

Marine entertainment parks are notoriously secretive about what goes on behind the scenes, and even more so in China where animal welfare laws are practically nonexistent. But what happened to Skyla and Orion offers some insight into what life is like for whales and dolphins who end up at these facilities.

Neither these two belugas, nor the six others who came with them, would ever know what it’s like to grow up with their families in the ocean. Instead, upon arrival in Toronto, they would be loaded onto trucks and driven 80 miles to their new “home” at Marineland: concrete tanks and a life to be spent entertaining tourists. Ten of them would die before reaching adulthood; others would give birth to children who, if they survived, would never see anything beyond their crowded tanks.

Like other marine entertainment parks, Marineland guards its secrets. But occasionally news leaks out, as it did in August 2012 after the untimely death of Skyla’s infant daughter, Skoot.

Skyla and her baby, Skoot. (Toronto Star)

Baby Skoot was less than a year old when, one evening, Orion cornered her in the “Arctic Cove” pool. What followed is even more distressing given that Orion and Skyla may well be brother and sister. But in the confined, totally unnatural conditions of life in a concrete tank, the social norms that beluga whales learn in the ocean growing up with their families are lost. Instead, and because the animals are in claustrophobic spaces, tension and aggression build up, just as they do among humans in close quarters. And if an older male starts to behave aggressively, infants like Skoot have nowhere to go to get out of the way.

On this occasion, Orion had teamed up with an older male, Andre, and now baby Skoot’s fate was sealed. They chased her around the pool, bit her, spun her about, and slammed her into a rock wall to which, according to a tour guide who was the only human present, she became literally stuck.

Charmin being moved at Marineland.

Skyla tried desperately to save her calf, “bashing Orion away,” as the tour guide described it, and looking up at the human as if she were pleading for help. When two trainers finally arrived and pulled Skoot from the water, the baby beluga had a series of convulsions and mini seizures and then died in their arms.

Today, Skyla and Orion are still captive at Marineland, where Skyla has had two more calves. Her heartbreaking story is by no means unique. (Check out, for example, what happened one day when Charmin and Tofino, also captured from the Sea of Okhotsk, were being moved from one display tank to another and things went awry.)

There are currently more than 55 beluga whales at Marineland, along with the lone orca Kiska, who came from Iceland. But if the Canadian Parliament passes Bill S-203: the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, it will be illegal to add to their numbers. And the best future for those now in captivity there will be to retire them to seaside sanctuaries modeled on the one that the Whale Sanctuary Project is planning.

Meanwhile, for the 10 orcas and 87 beluga whales captured last year from the Sea of Okhotsk and currently languishing in sea pens in Srednyaya Bay, an even better option is taking shape. Members of our team who visited them two weeks ago at the invitation of the Russian government are confident that, given the right kind of care, all of them can be returned to the ocean. That’s because, unlike the whales at Marineland, they have not been in captivity very long.

If this is the direction that the Russian government decides to take, we at the Whale Sanctuary Project will continue to help in every way possible. After all, no orca or beluga should ever have to suffer what Skyla and Orion continue to endure on a daily basis, let alone the horror of what happened to Skoot.

It will be a long-term project requiring significant time and funding as each of the whales at Srednyaya Bay learns, at his or her own pace, the essential survival skills they will need such as how to catch their own food.

But what a day it will be when we know for sure that these orcas and belugas have the kind of future that nature intended for them.

The post From the Sea of Okhotsk appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

I, too, hope that Mauyak gives birth successfully. But while free-ranging beluga whales can live for 50 to 60 years, captive belugas routinely die before the age of 30.

Mauyak (right) and Kimalu at the Shedd Aquarium. By Chicago Tribune

Mauyak was captured in 1982 in Canada’s Hudson Bay when she was just two years old. And while marine display parks like to refer to their captive whales as “our family,” Mauyak has not seen her own family since she was taken. Instead, since she has been shuffled around from one aquarium to another: first to Point Defiance Zoo, then to Shedd Aquarium, then to Mystic Aquarium, and finally back to Shedd in 2009.

Of the four calves to whom she has given birth, just one, her six-year-old daughter Kimalu, survives. Of the three others, one was stillborn, one died the same day he was born, and another died at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut at the age of nine. This history is typical for belugas who are born in concrete tanks. The Shedd Aquarium has had nine beluga deaths in the past 29 years; about one death every three years. This is the depressing reality behind the captive beluga industry anywhere you go.

The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta

At the Georgia Aquarium, six belugas have died since the facility opened just 13 years ago. None of them lived beyond age 26. One of them, a female named Maris, lost two calves in the span of three years and then died in 2015 at age 21, five months after the death of her second calf. The cause of her death has never been explained.

In Canada the situation is no better. At the Vancouver Aquarium, five young belugas have died in the past eight years, including a mother and daughter, Aurora and Qila, who died nine days apart and for whom cause of death has never been determined. Their lives were marked by suffering. Aurora lost three calves before she was 29 and her daughter Qila also lost one.

Most notorious among North American marine display parks, Marineland Canada currently holds about 58 belugas (it’s hard to be precise since births and deaths are so frequent) with at least 36 beluga deaths to their name since the early 1990s.

Belugas being unloaded from Russia at China’s Huangzhou Polar Ocean Park. (Xinhua/Wang Dingchang

The record abroad, particularly in China, is not well documented but probably much worse.

So, while we all hope that Mauyak’s calf is born healthy and lives beyond infancy, we must face the sober truth that belugas and concrete tanks do not mix. Moreover, captive belugas often exhibit abnormal behavior, like stereotypies (repetitive behaviors with no clear purpose) and other signs of chronic stress.

Yet the captive entertainment industry continues to confine these whales to tanks and force them to breed under unnatural circumstances leading to death, suffering and loss. No wonder the Shedd Aquarium, Georgia Aquarium and SeaWorld were part of an attempt in 2013 to gain a permit from NOAA to import 18 beluga whales caught in Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk.

Belugas are no more suited to living in aquariums than orcas are.This was the first application for a permit to import recently caught wild marine mammals in more than 20 years – an effort that went against the decision the marine mammal captivity industry in the U.S. had made in the wake of public anger when news footage was shown of similar captures in U.S. waters.

This application was denied, in part because NOAA determined that many of the 18 belugas were only about a year old and still nursing at the time these facilities wanted to set them on the long journey from a crowded holding pen in Russia to be distributed among the U.S. aquariums. (The aquariums may still attempt to overturn the NOAA permit denial in the future and we should be ever-vigilant and prepared for this possibility.)

Captive belugas are sending a clear and powerful message to their captors with their poor welfare, short lives and high numbers of deaths. They cannot thrive, let alone survive for very long, in concrete tanks. So, while the public may understandably, be more focused on orcas and their plight in and out of captivity, we should be ever mindful of the continued suffering of captive belugas, who are no more suited to living in aquariums than orcas are.

Let’s remember the words (yes, words) of a beluga named NOC, who was kidnapped from his family in 1977. NOC mimicked human speech during his 22 years of confinement in a concrete tank by the National Marine Mammal Foundation. Among his first words heard by a diver cleaning his tank were the most telling of all: “Out, out, out!”

We hope that Mauyak’s baby will have a different fate than NOC’s and live her life in a seaside sanctuary where she will know better what it is like to be a beluga.

The post When Captive Belugas Give Birth appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Scarlet was one of the endangered Southern Resident orcas in Puget Sound, a population that has been ravaged, first by captures by marine entertainment parks in the 1960s and 70s, and now from toxic waters, acoustic pollution and lack of food.

Only a few weeks ago, when Scarlet was already fighting for her life, the world had a front row seat to another orca’s suffering, Tahlequah, a mother who carried her dead baby (who lived only 30 minutes) for 17 days in what was described as a “tour of grief.” All this took place from July through September. And now there are only 74 Southern Residents left.

All of us who were involved with Scarlet – NOAA, local organizations, wildlife veterinarians (including from the captivity industry), the Lummi Nation, and the Whale Sanctuary Project – were faced with an unprecedented situation:

What do you do about a little whale who is sick and rapidly getting worse? Do you “let nature take its course”? What does that even mean in a world where we ourselves have created the conditions for extinction? Do you pick her up and treat her even though this could traumatize her family? Can you mitigate any such trauma by waiting until she becomes separated from her family? And what would constitute her being separated? How many miles between her and them and for how long?

We should never forget that it is these personal struggles that make up the extinction process.

And while we all spent days discussing these issues, she slipped through our fingers.

In the wake of this emotionally grueling situation I’ve been struck by a statement made by Ken Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research, who has studied the Southern Residents more than anyone. When asked for his comments on Scarlet’s demise, Ken said: “This is what extinction looks like.”

And with that statement he brought reality into clear perspective. Extinction is a term we hear all the time nowadays, as in “We’re in a Sixth Mass Extinction” and the latest news on how this species or that is going extinct. But extinction is not some abstract textbook concept at the level of species and populations; it is a loss of individuals like Scarlet and like Tahlequah’s infant. It is personal. It’s about loss and suffering on the part of families and social groups. It’s about a mother carrying her dead child for 17 days. It’s about a little whale who tried to live despite all the odds.

It is these personal struggles that make up the extinction process, and we should never forget this when we are trying to decide what to do.

Extinction is not a cold calculus about the numbers of breeding females and the degree of genetic diversity. Extinction is blood, guts and last breaths of individuals who wanted to live and who lost that fight, one by one by one, until, like Scarlet, they are all gone.

The post This Is What Extinction Looks Like appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

On July 25th, Tahlequah, known to scientists as J35, gave birth to a daughter who lived for only 30 minutes. The outpouring of sympathy is natural and understandable. Who among us has not lost someone very close to us? And who among us does not relate to the extreme stress and grief associated with a mother losing her child? Motherhood and loss are universal.

Tahlequah carries her dead calf through the busy waters of the Salish Sea off the coast of Victoria BC. Photo by Soundwatch/NMFS

With help from other members of her family, known as the J pod, Tahlequah has been keeping the dead baby afloat as the pod continues to ply the waters of the Salish Sea, off the coast of Seattle, in search of an ever-diminishing supply of food in what is an increasingly depleted, noisy and polluted environment.

As she has struggled to keep the infant body afloat, Tahlequah has sometimes fallen behind her family. Recently, however, she has been seen back together with them. And sometimes she has been observed without the body, but later with it again. Apparently, she may be dropping it and then recovering it from the bottom, or perhaps sharing the burden with other members of the family.

“Just as when someone dies in our own lives, she is neglecting herself because this is taking precedence over everything,” says Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project and a leading expert in marine mammal intelligence.

“It is very familiar to any of us who has lost a family member. And that is why people around the world are feeling such sympathy for her. She carried this baby for 18 months, and then, less than an hour after giving birth, she watched her die.”

Tahlequah in happier times – 2017. Photo by Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research.

And her pod, which has not seen a successful pregnancy in three years, grieves with her.

Barbara King, professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary and author of the book How Animals Grieve, says that grief and loss are not only human qualities.

She notes that there is an extensive body of evidence showing how whales and dolphins – like elephants and chimpanzees – mark the passing of their dead, including keeping vigil around the bodies of dead pod mates or keeping them afloat, as Tahlequah is doing.

Remembering the Captive Orca Mothers, Too

As we join with the orca Tahlequah in mourning the death of her newborn baby, let’s also remember the mothers at marine display parks who, like Tahlequah, have lost their infants to death or forced separation, and in their case without even any close family members to support them in their grief.

Former whale trainer Carol Ray describes the scene when “Baby Shamu” Kalina was separated from her mother, Katina. When Kalina was removed, her mother swam to the side of the pool and stayed there, screaming, screeching and crying.

“There was nothing you could call that beside grief.”

In this same video, former trainer John Hargrove describes what happened when SeaWorld decided to separate Takara from her mother, Kasatka, and ship her across the country to Orlando, Florida. When Kasatka could no longer sense her daughter’s presence in the waters around her, she began to cry out. Her long-range, heart-wrenching vocalizations – a pleading attempt to bring her daughter back to her side – continued long after Takara was gone, testifying to the deep bonds shared between orca mothers and their offspring.

Scenes like these have been repeated, over and over, when mother orcas have either seen their calves die at marine display parks or have had them taken away and transferred to other facilities. Whatever the cause – death or transfer – the grief is real and demonstrable.

Kiska at Marineland.

During her 38 years of life at Marineland, Kiska has suffered the loss of every one of her five children. Their deaths, from 1992 to 2009, likely meant for Kiska the repeated experience of deep despair. People familiar with her report that she used to be a highly vocal whale; they suspect she once called out in an attempt to reach her deceased offspring or former tank mates. Now, as if without hope of ever receiving a response, Kiska is silent.

These hardships are endured by all kinds of cetaceans in marine parks. Maris, a 21-year old beluga whale at the Georgia Aquarium, lived through the death of two of her babies in the span of three short years. Not long after the death of her second child, Maris was found dead of unknown causes.

Tahlequah’s mourning, along with the worldwide sympathy it has engendered, has given us all a moment to reflect on the universality of grief and loss. In the case of whales, both in the ocean and in captivity, it is profound and enduring.

Headline image of Tahlquah carrying her dead infant by Michael Weiss, Center for Whale Research

The post A Mother Orca’s Grief – in the Ocean and in Captivity appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

Maxine with her mother, Allie, at the Brookfield Zoo

Maxine was three years old.

“Maxine’s death has been devastating to all of the Chicago Zoological Society family and she will be greatly missed,” said Bill Zeigler, senior vice president of animal programs.

But however “devastating” the loss of Maxine may have been to her zoo “family,” it is likely nothing compared to the grief being experienced by her mother, 32-year-old Allie. Whales and dolphins, like elephants, are known for their behavior in response to the loss of one of their own. Only last week, a new paper was published that explores the evidence for grief and “postmortem attentive behavior” among various species of cetaceans.

For her zoo “family,” meanwhile, Maxine’s death must also have been something of an embarrassment since this was just the latest in a string of young dolphin deaths at the zoo. In 2014, two dolphin calves died at the zoo, and three years earlier a four-year-old died after apparently colliding with another dolphin in their concrete tank and suffering a fractured skull.

Alia at Dolphinaris

Maxine’s death also comes hard on the heels of the demise of Alia, a 10-year-old bottlenose dolphin who passed away on May 22nd at Dolphinaris Arizona. Dolphinaris, a Mexican-owned swim-with-the-dolphins facility outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, has yet to report whether they have done a necropsy and what it may have told them.

Alia spent her short life being shipped around the country. Born at SeaWorld Orlando in 2007, she was transferred to Discovery Cove in Orlando, then across the country to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California, and finally to Dolphinaris Arizona when it opened in 2016.

Bodie at Dolphinaris

She is the second dolphin to lose her life at Dolphinaris in less than two years. In September 2017, Dolphinaris lost Bodie from what the company called a rare muscle disorder. Animal protection groups, however, suspect that the true cause of death was valley fever, a fungal disease that can lead to deadly respiratory infections. Dolphins are highly susceptible to respiratory ailments and their immune systems are weakened by the stress associated with captivity. Before Dolphinaris was ever built, the Animal Defense League of Arizona (ADLA) and other organizations were issuing warnings that housing dolphins in a dusty desert environment could be fatal.

Following Alia’s death, the ADLA wrote: “Bodie’s death was tragic and preventable, and it’s likely that Alia also died from respiratory disease.”

There’s growing public sentiment that whales and dolphins don’t belong in zoos and marine entertainment centers, whether in big cities in the Midwest, in the desert Southwest, or at any vacation resort. Two weeks ago, Rolling Stone published an article about the pop star Pink after she had sent an email to SeaWorld asking the company to retire its orcas and other marine mammals to seaside sanctuaries. In her email, Pink made this powerful statement:

Singer Pink in 2013 – by Wikimedia Commons

“As a mother, I would never take my kids anywhere that keeps intelligent, sensitive beings in intensive confinement. Children are impressionable, and the last thing I would want to teach my kids is that “might makes right” or that it’s OK to bully and exploit someone just because they look different from us.

But that’s exactly what SeaWorld does by locking up animals who, in their ocean homes, would swim up to 140 miles a day, dive to great depths, cooperate with their pods to find food, communicate in their own dialects, and transmit their own culture from generation to generation. At SeaWorld, all these animals are able to do is swim in endless circles. Some are so frustrated that they break their teeth by gnawing on the concrete corners and metal bars of their tiny tanks.

“But you have a chance to change all that – and do right by orcas and other animals – by sending them to sanctuaries, where they can live a more natural life and receive care for as long as they need it, as well as by making future locations, including your planned park in Hainan Island, China, virtual reality centers without any live animals. People could then feel good about taking their families to your parks. So, my question is this:

“When will SeaWorld transfer its orcas and other marine mammals to seaside sanctuaries to save them – and itself?”

Public opinion has already driven circuses to begin retiring elephants and other land-based animals to sanctuaries. Now it’s time for the marine theme parks to do the same by giving these animals a new life in an environment that’s as close as possible to their natural habitat.

The post More Dolphin Deaths at Zoos and Theme Parks appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

This week a new scientific paper was published in PLoS One by Rachel Morrison and Diana Reiss showing that two captive-born juvenile bottlenose dolphins, Bayley and Foster, living at the National Aquarium, can recognize themselves in a mirror.

The ability to recognize oneself in a mirror is an indicator of self-awareness – that is, a sense of an autobiographical “I”, as in “That’s me in the mirror.” This level of self-awareness is the basis for the ability to reflect upon and think about oneself and one’s circumstances in a subjective manner. It is a very advanced cognitive capacity that, beyond dolphins, has only been observed in great apes, elephants, magpies and humans over two and a half years old.

In 2001, Diana and I co-authored the first peer-reviewed paper to demonstrate mirror self-recognition in dolphins. And today, I’m gratified to see our seminal finding replicated and published in a peer-reviewed journal. The new findings confirm and extend those original conclusions, and we now know more about how this capacity unfolds in dolphins developmentally.

Our earlier paper showed that two captive-born bottlenose dolphins – Presley, age 13, and Tab, age 17, living at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island – independently demonstrated mirror self-recognition, providing the first evidence for this capacity in a non-primate species. Tab and Presley shot to fame in the press and became members of a club of cetacean “research superstars” who had been shown to exhibit other cognitive abilities like language comprehension and metacognition.

The suffering and death of these two dolphins led to my decision to no longer participate in research on captive animals.Back in 2001, as I began to let our own findings sink into my consciousness, I began to realize the deeper significance of what Diana and I had just shown: namely that two self-aware beings had been spending their entire lives swimming in circles in a small dingy barren tank in Brooklyn. A few years later, Presley and Tab were transferred to other captive facilities, where they would meet untimely deaths from diseases related to stress, immune system dysfunction, and infection. Presley succumbed to fungal encephalitis at age 19 and Tab to gastroenteritis at 21.

The suffering and death of these two dolphins with whom I had worked so closely led to my decision to no longer participate in research on captive animals. I knew that there would be a personal cost to this since our findings had raised so many burning questions that more research would be able to explore. But finding self-recognition and all the other results from captive research only made it glaringly obvious that these animals do not belong in tanks.

Bayley (left) and Foster – Courtesy National Aquarium.

Now, 17 years later, I’m pleased to see that our original scientific findings have been confirmed. But I’m even more delighted to know that Bayley and Foster, the two subjects of this research, will not meet the same fate as Presley and Tab. As members of a group of dolphins at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, they are being prepared for a remarkable new life. The National Aquarium, under the direction of its very progressive CEO, John Racanelli, is creating a permanent seaside sanctuary where all the aquarium’s dolphins will be able to flourish in an environment that’s as close as possible to life in the wild.

The significance of the present work by Morrison and Reiss to our scientific knowledge cannot be over-stated. But its relevance as an example of our ethical evolution is even more important. That’s because it demonstrates that scientific findings have ethical implications.

What I learned from our research back in 2001 led me to what is now the work of the Whale Sanctuary Project, so that other cetaceans – specifically captive orcas and belugas – can be provided with a life that complements their psychology.

It is time for all of us to move beyond the confines of the concrete “dolphin lab” and into a realm that reflects our own findings about who these beings are.

The post Dolphin Mirror Self-Recognition: the Science and the Ethics appeared first on The Whale Sanctuary Project | Back to Nature.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.