Last week, Kiska the orca at Marineland Canada became news all over the world when video was posted of her repeatedly bashing herself against the side of her tank. From Hong Kong to Hungary and Mexico to Romania, newspapers and TV and radio stations carried the shocking images.
This video was taken by a visitor and is posted here with permission. In the background, you can hear another visitor saying: “Oh! Right against the glass. Splashing. She’d love to be free in the oceans. Here she is, in this concrete and glass tank.” And then, as Kiska moves away, “And now she’s going to swim in circles.” Video credit: @jennyveganmcqueen
In “The Whales” section of this website, we describe Kiska as “the loneliest whale in the world.” We note that orcas and beluga whales are highly social animals and that Kiska holds “the cruel distinction of being the only orca in North America held in social isolation from any other marine mammal.”
Earlier this year, the Canadian Press reported that “a months-long inspection of Marineland by Ontario’s animal welfare watchdog has found that marine mammals at the tourist attraction were in distress due to poor water quality.” Inspectors ordered the park to repair the water system. Marineland appealed the order, but later withdrew the appeal.
People who have visited Marineland recently have been commenting on what they have been observing there. One person wrote that Kiska “spent the day flip flopping between logging and swimming quickly around her tank in her counter-clockwise circles.”
Endless circling of the tank, grating their teeth on tank walls and gates, and other forms of self-injury.Dr. Lori Marino, President of the Whale Sanctuary Project and a neuroscientist, explains that these kinds of behaviors, known as stereotypies, can include endless circling of the tank, grating their teeth on tank walls and gates, and other forms of self-injury.
“They all stem from the chronic stress of trying to adapt to the barren and artificial environment of a concrete tank,” she says, “very often leading to physical illness and sometimes even death.”
During a recent televised election debate that focused on animal welfare, a question was posed regarding the animals at Marineland. Candidates Nathaniel Erskine Smith, Liberal Party, Alistair MacGregor, NDP, and Elizabeth May, Green Party, all talked about the plight of large animals in captivity.
Ms. May, one of the sponsors of Senate Bill S-203 banning the keeping of cetaceans in captivity, noted that this law was “the first time we’ve actually taken into account the suffering of an individual animal as a sentient being.”
But the sentient beings at Marineland are not doing well. We have been hearing that over the last year at least ten of the beluga whales have died, one of them just three months after being transferred to an aquarium in the U.S.
To avoid yet more of them from succumbing to what appears to be pervasive ill-health, it is time for all of us who care about them to work together to create a comprehensive solution that can save and protect the whales and dolphins at this troubled amusement park.