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10 years ago
The List is Out! Here are the Top 10 Worst Tanks for Whales and Dolphins in North America
Despite the fact that various studies have shown that the best place for a wildlife animal is in their natural habitat, time and time again we we’ve witnessed just the opposite: majestic creatures being captured and kept in enclosures. Take whales and dolphins, for instance. Normally, in the wild, these animals would travel hundreds of miles per day, have the thrill of hunting for their own food, and most importantly, experience all of the different dynamics that come with being in a pod and interacting with other marine animals.
Whales and dolphins who are captured, however, are confined to tanks that are a mere fraction of the space they have in the wild – tanks that are downright criminal in comparison. While, personally, we feel that ALL tanks are equally terrible, there are some characteristics that make certain tanks worse than others. And the Animal rights organization, In Defense of Animals, in a similar vein as their famous Ten Worst Zoos for Elephants List, has taken it upon themselves to also investigate and identify the Ten Worst Tanks for Dolphins and Whales, here are three from the top five on the list.
SeaWorld, San Antonio, Texas; San Diego, California; Orlando, Florida
Unsurprisingly, all three of SeaWorld’s locations nabbed the top spot. From stealing cetaceans out of the ocean to ignoring obvious signs of distress and depression, all while claiming that this behavior is “normal,” SeaWorld is hardly the Conservation-based organization they lead the public to believe they are.
After a year of terrible press (much of which was spurned by the release of Blackfish), it finally seemed like SeaWorld had begun to understand how horrible their facilities were, and decided to end their orca breeding program. Unfortunately, it seems that the announcement was yet another PR spin by the park – they had not made the choice to end it, they were forced to, and more importantly, they can break the agreement at any time. Worst of all, SeaWorld doesn’t seem to have any intention of slowing down the exploitation of their marine animals. At the very same time that they decided to “eliminate” the orca performances, they opened up interactive “swim-with-the-dolphins” exhibits. Yeah … it really seems like they have these marine animals’ best interest in mind…
Marineland, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Last Chance for Animals
Imagine being put in solitary confinement for years, essentially left for dead with no one to interact with but a metal gate. For many of the animals at Marineland, this scenario is one they must deal with every day. Marineland not only has Kiska, Canada’s last captive orca, in their possession, but under their watch, all five of this sweet orca’s children have died. Kiska has also outlived all seventeen of the other orcas Marineland used to have and now must pay the price for being the sole survivor. Her physiological and psychological state has suffered tremendously over the years. She has severely worn teeth from compulsive gnawing, dorsal fin deterioration, and has shown signs of being underweight.
In addition to the heartbreaking story of Kiska, Marineland has also amassed approximately 46 beluga whales, five bottlenose dolphins, 28 black bears and approximately 500 fallow deer. The beluga population, in particular, have been kept in terrible conditions of isolation.
Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta Georgia
There are several acts Georgia Aquarium has to be ashamed of. Most notably, attempting to import wild-caught beluga whales from Russia, hosting swim-with-dolphin programs, holding belugas inside an enclosed building, and shipping belugas across the country with no apparent regard for their social, psychological, and physical well-being.
In Defense of Animals even refers to the Georgia Aquarium as the “dying pool,” since three beluga whales died under their “care” between 2012 and 2015. Considering their blatant disregard for these animals’ well-being, it sadly seems that the strings of death will only continue at this marine park.
The full list and descriptions of each offense can be found on IDA’s website, but for a quick overview, here are the zoos that have made it into the IDA’s top 10:
1. SeaWorld, San Antonio, Texas; San Diego, California; Orlando, Florida
2. Marineland, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
3. Puerto Aventuras Dolphin Discovery, Mayan Rivera, Quintana Roo, Mexico
4. Georgia Aquarium, Atlanta Georgia
5. Miami Seaquarium, Miami, Florida
6. Six Flags Mexico Dolphin Discovery, Mexico City, Mexico
7. Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, Gulfport, Mississippi
8. Mirage Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada
9. Vancouver Aquarium, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
10. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, Illinois
As heartbreaking as it is to see that these parks are still in existence and still causing an incredible amount of pain to marine animals around the world, it is important that we highlight them. We hope that this list will inspire these parks to finally display a bit of compassion and #EmptyTheTanks!
If the reality of marine animal captivity upsets you, the best thing you can do is raise awareness for the issue (sharing this article is a good start) as well as boycotting all facilities that keep animals captive for profit. While it can feel like the blame for these animals’ suffering is mostly out of our hands, as long as we keep giving these cruel institutions monetary Support, we are partly to blame. We can all help put an end to this vicious and abusive cycle.
Image source: Tinseltown/Shutterstock
SeaWorld, you have taken a step forward, however for most of the public it is not enough. You claim that your tanks are "safe" for your Orcas while the ocean is "dangerous" for them, while in reality the opposite is true. Orcas evolved over millions of years to live and thrive in the ocean and to wild caught Orcas tanks are not only alien to them but are also the more hostile environment. And even captive born Orcas, if they are not still born, would find it extremely difficult to live in them. There\’s very little room to swim, they have to compete for space constantly with other whales, and they are always hungry in order to perform tricks (not that the food is that great anyway, and I\’ll get to why)!
Orcas are capable of sustaining speeds at around 8mph and can go as fast as 30mph for a short amount of time. The only time I\’ve ever seen Orcas in a marine parks care ever get any exercise is when their doing tricks in the shows, which only happens for about possibly 3 times a day for about an hour, after that they just stay and float at the surface of the water for the rest of the day with nothing to do. And even if I\’m wrong it\’s still nothing compared to what the wild Orcas get for exercise, which are constantly in motion throughout their entire lives. People say that wild Orcas can travel 100 miles a day, that’s 1,208 laps around the perimeter of their tank or 3,105 lengths back and forth at the longest part of the tank (depending on the size of course), however wild male Orcas can live up to over 60-70 years and females can live up to 80-100 years, and with them traveling 100 miles each day for their entire lives then it certainly does look like captive Orcas are living a dangerously unhealthy life style by not getting this crucial exercise. And with that, how much crucial exercise are your Orcas loosing while they are in those tanks!?
Depending on where they live and what ecotype they are Orcas can have a large variety of food such as sharks, seals, rays, even sea birds, or they can feed on a single food source, for example a curtain kind of fish. In the wild some populations are known to teach their young by hunting an animal and then letting it go afterwards because their just not hungry and don’t want to waste food that may be eaten later. This shows that the wild Orcas eat so much that they simply don’t become hungry in many populations. In captivity however they are fed small amounts of dry dead fish with gelatin, this is a small source of food mixed with something completely alien in their diet that’s made out of pig and cow bones and is supposed to hydrate the Orcas, something that they would get anyway with fresh fish. With a daily diet of this tiny amount of food they are bound to be constantly hungry. The fact proving this point is that the Orcas are kept hungry to keep them performing tricks. Orcas from a different ecotype that eat a wide variety of animals would be hit the hardest by this because they are not getting their nutritional needs met. This is an extremely important issue that needs consideration, if some Orcas are not getting the nutrients that they desperately need then they are more likely to die sooner than other Orcas from a different ecotype that feed mostly on fish! And I haven’t even touched on the anti-depressants you feed them. If you seriously think that you have to feed the Orcas anti-depressants just to get them “happy”, then you couldn’t be anymore wrong! It just proves how right the experts are on these animals!
These are not the only problems with captives however. Many of them suffer from eye and possibly skin conditions thanks to the chlorinated water, the eyes become irritated just like when a human enters the water and Keto, who has strange pockmarks behind his dorsal fin, lesions his right side, and has wrinkled skin both under his dorsal fin and on his side, are all possibly caused by the water! And this isn’t even mentioning their teeth! Not matter which way you look at it, it is just pure, downright painful for them to have broken and shattered teeth. You claim that their degrading teeth is caused by them chewing on their food when in reality this isn’t true, the food is thrown into the back of their throat were they can just swallow it, most likely to avoid any bits of food getting stuck in their drilled teeth. The real reason their teeth are in horrendous condition is that they chew on the sides of their tanks. We can clearly see the damage they’ve caused to their tanks when you drain the water to maintain the tank itself. We can see the bits of concrete and paint that have been damaged and I wouldn’t be suppressed if they accidently swallowed small pieces of them, leading to possible sickness. The amount of damage the Orcas have in Loro Parque alone is about 41.66% to 70% and we know that it’s getting worse the longer they live there. With a cat, dog, monkey, cow, or even a horse many rescue organisations would not stand for this amount of cruelty in the amount of time that the Orcas would have to put up with it.
Orcas in the wild are known to live with their mothers for their entire lives and only leave their pod for a short time to breed before returning to them. The 145 Orcas that were taken from the wild and from their mothers as babies suffered huge amounts of stress, and now only 20 survived the ordeal. The endangered Southern Resident Orca pod suffered massive causalities thanks to marine parks like SeaWorld! And after all that only one is still alive today who is now kept in illegal conditions, Lolita. She has lived in captivity for nearly 50 years when she could have been helping to repopulate the Southern Residents! Not once has she contributed to her species (not that she could anyway seeing as she’s the only Southern Resident in captivity) and laws with her are being broken every day with her being in that ridiculously tiny tank! She is better off in a sea sanctuary now more than ever, if she doesn’t get any help soon then she could die within the next few years or even months, because the average age for captive Orcas is only 13 to 30 years!
Oh and don’t make the case that you haven’t taken Orcas out of the wild in 35 years, I know your lying on that as well. I know for a fact that Morgan was taken out of the wild in 2010 and now she somehow ended up on your asset list, making it 6 years that you haven’t taken an Orca out of the wild. And don’t tell me she’s deaf either. She spent 3 years in the wild and I’m pretty sure that she would have done just fine if the rescuers released her. I’m also not ruling out the fact that she’s deaf because of captivity, I wouldn’t be surprised if an Orca from the wild, who has sensitive hearing, would be deaf from the loud music. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the staff was lying to us about her condition or is not really sure that she has anything at all. Considering that the announcement was made during a court hearing and considering that a zoo vet mistook an employee in a gorilla costume for an actual gorilla, see “Zoo Vet Mistakes Employee In Gorilla Suit For An Actual Ape, Shoots Him With Tranquilizer” on The Dodo for that, it makes sense that that they would lie just to keep her at the park to gain money.
Because of the mixture of all of these facts they would all lead to the animals becoming extremely stressed, increasing their heartrate, rising their blood pressure, and giving them faster breathing rates. Thanks to scientific research we now know that months of exposure to stress can permanently destroy brain neurons, this can affect learning, impulse control, reasoning and memory. It can also influence diseases that can cause intestinal distress, depression and many other problems. This is possibly the reason why Tilikum has a possible bacterial infection in his lungs and possibly why he attacked and killed three people within his lifetime. It’s also the reason why the animals attack each other and rake their teeth across other Orcas. In the wild if an Orca attacked another Orca then it would usually be a male fighting other males over the right to mate, and even then they could just simply swim away to avoid any real injury’s or scars. The victims here are captives of all genders, all ages that don’t have the luxury of swimming away and are forced to endure the attacks. This causes permanent scars on their body, something that you don’t realise is extrodeneraly painful for them. To them it’s like knifes being raked across their body, probably not enough to break their thick blubber but enough to hurt extremely badly and cause even more stress on the animals.
And do NOT tell me that all of these problems are normal for wild Orcas as it is for captives just because your vets said so. If Orca experts, people who have spent years researching wild Orca pods and know their differences outside and in, know that the Orcas in captivity are suffering, then they are suffering! Who am I more likely to believe, an actual expert in the field that researches wild Orcas, or a vet who, even if they actually have a good education with curtain animals, can be completely influenced by bias towards the parks or by money? Orcas are extremely intelligent animals with their brain weighing up to 15 pounds or 6.8kg. If you want a comparison to another intelligent animal look at the Elephant, whose brain can weigh up to only 11 pounds or 5kg and has earned the saying “an Elephant never forgets”. If they never forget what would that make the Orcas then? The Ringling Bros recently just released their Elephants into a sanctuary because of the changing attitudes in their audience. If you wish to save the company then I’d recommend that you’d best do the same. Oh and this applies to all Dolphins and Porpoises in all marine parks, not just Orcas.
PS: This isn’t technically proven, however is consistent to what I know and would be very interesting if proven right. When I talked about stress I talked about the raising of heart rates, blood pressure and breath rates, and recently while reading a book I learned that large animals, like the blue whale, have a slower heart rate. This allows them to live for many years as opposed to small animals with incredibly fast heart rates that only live for a few years at best. With Orcas your website says on Adaptations that on the surface of the water they have 60 beats per minute, while when diving they have 30 beats per minute. Since Orcas can dive to around 100m or 328ft it is expected that wild Orcas have naturally fairly slow heart rates and therefor live longer lives. However captives don’t have the pleasure of diving that deep with your largest tank being only 40ft deep or 12.2 metres deep. Plus most of the Orcas I’ve seen in your care float listlessly on the surface, proven by their collapsed dorsal fins which is only seen in sick and injured Orca in the wild. This means their heart rates are bound to be high. And if you think 60 beats per minute is normal for an Orca then look at a Humans heart rate, which is 60 to 100 beats per minute, and 40 to 60 beats per minute for an athlete. With that I end it, I’ll admit I have no idea what their blood pressure is and I only know that wild Orcas come up to breath every 20 minutes (I’m not sure about captives), however if a Human athlete is healthier than your Orcas then you are in trouble.