Tag Archives: Animal rights

A trapper in my midst

Posted on May 11, 2013 by | Leave a comment

It just now, years after the fact, sunk in that someone almost killed my cat as a result of an intentional act.

When I was in high school, my cat went missing for a few days.  This was very unusual because she never went far, other than to explore the woods behind the house, and always came running when called.  When, days late, Casey came home, she had a severed chin bone, with one side of her face about half an inch lower than the other side, and a matching hole in her arm.  She had been caught in a trap and was immobilized long enough for flies to have laid eggs in her wounds and the eggs to have matured into nice, fat maggots.  She made it home, maggot-infested, still having the use of three legs.

I doctored her.  The much-beloved local vet complimented my dexterity in removing the maggots one at a time and pronounced that she would be well, but would always have a lopsided face and might later in her life develop eating issues, with that jaw imbalance.  Casey recovered, the eating issues never materialized, she regained full use of the trapped arm, and she lived for more wonderful years.

But it is just now dawning on me that there is a person, likely a man, behind her injuries.  Somehow I had just focused on the horror of her trap and her pain, and didn’t consider that there was a man behind the trap.  Nor did I consider that, since she could not have escaped from the trap on her own, this man who set the trap for the fox that would yield a cadaver for fur or for taxidermy, set her loose and didn’t try to help her.

I have no great sweeping conclusion, other than to say, trapping is an abhorrent act and should be banned.  Of all the ways that humans can kill an animal, trapping must be one of the worst.  Like Casey, the trap will likely not kill the animal outright, but it will be immobilized, in excruciating pain, and unable to fend for itself should other predators than the miscreant who set the trap arrive.

Non-Target Incidents occur hundreds of thousands of time each year.

Non-Target Trapping Incidents occur hundreds of thousands of time each year.

Born Free USA has assembled information and statistics with regard to trapping and has also provided a Trapping Incident Report Form, should you ever find an unfortunate one caught in a trap, whether he is a targeted animal, or like Casey or the bald eagle in the photo, considered a “non-target trapping incident.”

Forty plus years is probably too long for me to submit a form, but if you come upon a trapped animal, please do better than I did at that time, and consider that there is a trapper in your midst who should be held to account.

Contact your county government and read your local ordinances to find out the status of body-restraint trapping in your community.  Chances are, it is not banned, and is, rather, likely to be governed by a statewide permit-based system.  But even if permitted state-wide, it can be banned locally, and the wild animals that remain in your community may continue to live in the shadows, mostly unseen by human eyes.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.  - Henry David Thoreau

 

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He had a name, Oregon DFW.

Posted on April 17, 2013 by | 8 Comments

 

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

So begins the April 16 entry on the website of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, logging the taking of the life of a sentient, self-determining, individual member of this planet: a sea lion who lived in harmony with his surroundings and as he was designed.

C022 was the scar that identified him.  A searing and burning of flesh that ODFW justifies: “branding”.  Because the ODFW’s branding is a horrifying, aggressive and unimaginably painful act nearly incomprehensible to the human mind, and an offense to all that is sacred, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Dam Guardians thought to counter that offense and to reclaim some measure of dignity by naming him.

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

As if the “oneness”, the singularity, of that taking of a life made that act of killing less egregious.

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

As if the “euthanizing” makes the unjust taking of a life more palatable.

The tragedy of the Bonneville Dam goes beyond the death of Brian, as he was named by Steve Jack from Scotland, and beyond the blood and branding and flares and bullets and census-taking visited upon the innocent ones.  The blood of the tragedy runs over and first stains, then takes, all innocence.  The stain reveals – as if under a black light on some TV cop show – our collective failure to hold to account those who bear the full responsibility for the decline of the salmon and for the easy scapegoating of innocent creatures while the guilty continue business as usual.

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

While he had his own name, we have lost, along with our innocence, our ability to know it.  Instead, we brand. We build dams.  We build industries that shed their waste into and poison our waterways.  We take more than we consume in order to stash away more than our share.  We euthanize.  We allow all this to happen as if the damming, the poisoning, the robbing from nature were normal.

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

One day, we will wake up, and take back what is left from what the hoarders have stolen.  We will take back our innocence and our responsibility for this planet.  And we will know his name, which was written in the stars before we knew him.

One sea lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

To honor him and reclaim your responsibility, first take a deep breath and picture the sea lions being restored to their rightful place as sovereigns on the Columbia River.  Then contact the Governors of Oregon and Washington:

  • Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber: (503) 378-4582
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: (360) 902-4111

Tell them that you are calling about Brian, branded C022, the sea lion killed on April 16, 2013, at the Bonneville Dam, and that you know that the sea lions are not the real problems on the Columbia River and demand an immediate end to the senseless and unjust harassment and killing of the Columbia River Sea Lions.  Demand the release of Brian’s necropsy, as called for by the Sea Shepherd Dam Guardians.

Add your voice to support the efforts of the Sea Shepherd Dam Guardians who are present every day to document the senseless, desperate and irresponsible acts of violence against the Columbia River Sea Lions.

In his honor. To remember him. Brian.

Brian the Lion was trapped and euthanized at Bonneville Dam today.

 

 

 

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New York Times: The inhumanity toward dolphins goes further than a spike

Posted on April 7, 2013 by | 7 Comments

Very glad to see a report from the New York Times on this atrocious hunt, which is inhumane in every aspect.  The tactic of using fear and panic to drive these dolphins for miles and miles, all the while fighting the attempts to drive, results in a stress level that is known to kill dolphins even if they somehow manage to escape the spike on which the study focused.  The cacophony of noise of the banger poles which is supplemented by the new noise in The Cove of slap paddles to create nowhere for the dolphins to go, and everywhere a wall of noise, for dolphins who have always had the free expanse of the ocean – well, please try to imagine that.  The resulting terror, the panic, the parents trying to stay with children through this unEarthly experience of no escape. The driving over the dolphins with propellers once the dolphins have been corralled into ever-tightening netted circles.  The individual selection and forceful removal of the pretty young from their parents and family, while their parents try to come between their young and the several loud divers in wetsuits.

The spike is what is left for the parents and older siblings and other pod members after the pretty children have been ripped away for the aquarium industry.

Dolphin in The Taiji Cove. There is no end to the photo that is acceptable. Photo Credit by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Cove Guardians.

Dolphins in The Taiji Cove. There is no end to the actions captured in this photo that is acceptable. Photo Credit by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Cove Guardians.

It is significant, though, that in the past, these fishermen from the Isana Fishermen’s Union have claimed that, even if all these methods used in the drive were inhumane, at least the killing was.  Activists who have watched and heard the killings every day that they have occurred have known that the dolphins often drowned on the “ride” back from the Taiji Killing Cove to the town’s slaughterhouse because the dolphins were often merely paralyzed rather than killed by the driving of the spike.  On the other hand, the young dolphins who had been selected for captivity have been observed to die on the ride back from this Cove, only because of the terror and panic of being removed from their parents and family.  But it is nice to see scientists, even if at least one of them benefits from having dolphins held in captivity, finally speaking out in a peer-reviewed study about the science that laypeople have long-known as a result of observation of day after day of the six-month-long hunt.

If this means that this scientist is, at last, going to distance herself from captivity and her research on captive dolphins, so much the better.  It is captivity that “drives” the Drive Hunt.  Whether at the National  Aquarium, the Georgia Aquarium or SeaWorld.  Other countries emulate the hugely successful aquarium and marine park programs of the United States, and even though the United States aquariums have not attempted to acquire marine mammals for their shows from the wild (with the exception of the Georgia Aquarium who in 2012 submitted an application currently under review by NOAA for the import of 18 beluga whales specifically captured for the aquarium industry) since 1993, other countries make no attempt to constrain their “source” of dolphins.

Dolphins in aquariums, with few exceptions, do not live as long as those in the wild, and do so only by a regular regimen of antibiotics, antacids and even psychologically-enhancing drugs.  The stress of captivity, the unnatural food and water of captivity, the small tanks (compared to the ocean, mind you), the being ripped from family units that dolphins maintain for life in the wild, and more, spell a life of misery for captive dolphins.  A life that anyone who studies dolphins should know is also inhumane.

While I am grateful to the National Aquarium’s having ended the dolphin “shows” in 2012, we await the next ethical step to end their captive dolphin program, and to be part of the new age of rehabilitating all the captive dolphins for release into as much of the wild as any individual dolphin can thrive.  It is time for all aquariums to recognize that our current knowledge about dolphins  requires a different teaching moment for their patrons, one that would go something like this:

It is with bittersweet – but far sweeter than bitter – emotion that we announce that in order to ethically continue our position as “educators” of the public with regard to marine life, we end our captive marine mammal program.  We do this because we must.  We must because we know, by virtue of the past years of our involvement with dolphins and whales, that they do not belong in captivity.  It is with pride that we announce our new endeavor to rehabilitate the ones we have, for so long, kept in concrete tanks so that they may have a life worth living with sea water, fresh air, tides, and the ability to once again be apex predators, something that these sentient creatures deserve merely by drawing breath.

We activists work for that day and see it in our collective minds’ eye, every day.

End captivity, including keeping them as lab rats, and the hunt, and all its inhumane methods, will likewise end.

But as long as the hunt exists, continue to oppose it.  Expose the aquariums and those who pay money to go to aquariums as those who keep this killing machine running.  Register now to stand, on September 1, with others in your city or town or village or hamlet, and be part of a worldwide demonstration to end the Taiji Drive Hunt.

Japan Dolphins Day 2013 Coming Soon but you can register now

Japan Dolphins Day 2013 Coming Soon but you can register now

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Could Blackfish interrupt the legacy of captivity?

Posted on March 18, 2013 by | 5 Comments

As the world heads to Sarasota for a screening of Blackfish, a much-celebrated film by Gabriela Cowperthwaite that premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and will, on April 5, open the Sarasota Film Festival, Tampa Bay Online (TBO) takes a more “traditional” view of marine mammal captivity rooted in the 1960s and the television show, Flipper, as it considers whether the Tampa area can support two large aquariums.

TBO’s article, which demeans both its readership and dolphins by continuing, if only to correct itself, the aquarium industry’s old tradition of not giving dolphins unique names, reflects the all-too-evident sensibilities of the aquarium industry: the ability to profit and compete is a more salient factor in whether to keep marine mammals in captivity than the harsh reality that marine mammals do not fare well in concrete tanks.  Instead of films like A Fall from Freedom working to keep businesses like the Georgia Aquarium from opening (2007), from adding a dolphin “extravaganza” (2011), or from applying to import the first wild-caught marine mammals since 1993 (2012), the focus of TBO’s article suggests that competitive demographics is a more salient factor in aquarium siting and expansion than the truth about captivity.

Winter as she retreats from the noise

Winter as she retreats from the noise

Winter.  According to TBO, Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA) officials believe they “have that . . . something particularly interesting and readily visible” to keep attracting visitors.  The CMA’s “something” is Winter.  Winter is a female dolphin who lost her tail fluke after being caught in the monofilament line of a crab trap.  She was brought to national focus by the movie, A Dolphin Tale, and now lives in a world with the additional noise that accompanied the increased ticket sales from her “stardom” – a not insignificant one, as reported by TBO, from “$8 million to $21 million between 2011 and 2012.”

Winter’s position as the CMA’s current “something” is complicated since she “would be difficult to replace because her prosthetic tail is integral to her story,” as the TBO quotes an economist.

Winter would be difficult to replace because her prosthetic tail is integral to her story.

Tilikum.  Difficult to replace, as would be Tilikum.  SeaWorld Orlando’s star sperm-donor with more living offspring than any other male orca in captivity, Tilikum was caught off the coast of Iceland at about the age of three in 1983, where he was removed from his family and placed into a lifetime of confinement with strangers.  Tilikum is one of the stars in David Kirby’s 2012 groundbreaking and much-acclaimed book, Death at SeaWorld, and although Mr. Kirby did not set out to make a case against marine mammal captivity, he now finds himself at the center of an international dialogue about the ethics of this confinement.

Tilikum during a performance at SeaWorld

Tilikum, his flacid dorsal fin, during a performance at SeaWorld

As does Ms. Cowperthwaite and her film.  Blackfish tells more of Tilikum’s story: a male orca who was caught in the wild in 1983 and brought first to Sealand of the Pacific and then to SeaWorld Orlando, where Ms. Dawn Brancheau, one of Tilikum’s trainers, met a fate – shared by two other individuals – that would not exist but for the aquarium industry.

While Tampa and Clearwater continue to vie for more of the public’s dollars as aquariums display marine mammals and continue their vested interest in maintaining dolphin captivity, come to Sarasota on April 5 for the screening of Blackfish.  Consider the life of Tilikum, the deaths of two trainers and an aquarium visitor at his hands, and become part of the educated dialogue.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.  – Abraham Lincoln

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Nellie turns 60 in captivity, a “milestone” for Marineland’s “star”

Posted on February 27, 2013 by | 9 Comments

Some of Marineland’s statements in its celebration of Nellie’s 60 years in captivity ring true, because they reveal the aquarium industry’s lack of appreciation that captivity for a marine mammal is nothing to celebrate:

Such a milestone, and we can’t be happier for her,                 for us, and for the marine mammal community.

Here are other milestones, in addition to her honorary Masters of Science degree in Marine Biology, that Nellie may recall during her time at Marineland, in addition to being the star of those TV shows and commercials that Marineland seems to think is a feather in Nellie’s birthday hat.

Death or removal of both parents:

  • Susie, Nellie’s mother, was wild-caught in 1949, and died on September 22, 1962, when Nellie was just nine years old
  • Happy, Nellie’s father, wild-caught in 1946, was released on November 15, 1956, when Nellie was three

Deaths of siblings:

  • Mitch, Nellie’s half-brother, who died on an unknown date
  • Mamie, Nellie’s half-sister, born February 7, 1953, and died in June, 1953
  • Peggy, Nellie’s half-sister, who was born and died in 1954
  • Rollie, Nellie’s half-sibling (sex unknown), who was born and died in 1955
  • Nellie’s unnamed half-sister, born March 21, 1956, and died (date unknown)
  • Perky, Nellie’s full-sister, who was born when Nellie was three, on May 15, 1956, and died on an undisclosed/unknown date
  • Algae, Nellie’s older half-sister, who was born May 8, 1949, and died when Nellie was three, on April 5, 1957

Deaths of children:

  • June, Nellie’s daughter, who was born and died in June of 1968.
  • Nellie’s unnamed 10-day-old daughter, who was born November 24, 1989, and died on December 4, 1989
  • June III, Nellie’s daughter, who was born June 28, 1978, and died on March 2, 1994
  • Nellie’s unnamed 10-day old daughter, who was born August 16, 1992, and died on August 26, 1992

Nellie has seen scores of other dolphins die at Marineland, so one could appreciate why Nellie and I and many in the “marine mammal community” agree with another of Marineland’s spokesmen, when he states in his celebratory remarks, that “Being sixty years old at a marine park such as Marineland is just, just amazing.”

It is not a happy task to remind us all that Nellie has weathered a lifetime of birth and death in a  concrete tank, but remains a resolute survivor on this, her 60th birthday.

So, hats off to you, Nellie.  You are neither a milestone nor a feather in anyone’s cap, or birthday hat, save your own.

Nellie on her 58th birthday

Nellie turns 60 today and is the oldest living dolphin in captivity. Photo Credit: Marineland Dolphin Conservatory

Just say no to the dolphin show, and spare other dolphins, like Nellie or Kirara, from being considered a U.S. aquarium’s milestone.

As always, much gratitude to Ceta-base for compiling a database on the world’s marine mammals in captivity.

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Don’t put a lid on an animal’s right to be himself

Posted on February 15, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I once had a snake, or rather, a snake had me.  And that snake taught me my first and most important lesson about wild animals and their right to live their own lives.

GarterSnake20080525It happened that during the Summer that I was a rising Second Grader and having a wonderful time at Camp O’Cumberlands, Harlan County, Kentucky, I found a snake.  A juvenile green snake or garter snake – I’m really not sure what species it was – happened across my path behind Cobble Inn, the cabin occupied by the babies of the camp, the First and Second Graders.  Having no fear of snakes, I picked her up, and in animal-loving 6-year-old mindset, I proceeded to convert a quart jar into a terrarium.

GREEN-carpet-of-MOSSIn just a matter of minutes, I had collected enough moss and sticks and pine needles to create a soft, green, moist, inviting space, where even the fairies would happily rest their wings.  I placed the snake in the jar, into the lovely green softness of the moss, and rested the jar on its side on the ground, under a shrub behind the cobblestone cabin.

But since this was Girl Scout camp, there were other activities to do and schedules to follow, and I had to leave the snake in her new home under the bush.  When I returned that afternoon, and went to check on her, she was gone.

You see, I had not put a lid on the jar. While I was not certain, I was hopeful in a way that only a six-year-old animal lover could be, that she would so love her new moss-lined home, she would not leave.  But she had.  And I cried and cried.  She was gone.  The beautiful, small, green sleekness had gone on her way, and I was sad at the loss of no longer being close to her beauty and her wildness and the pure expression that she was of life.

And even though, having left, I didn’t really expect her to return, I left the jar in the same spot, in case she decided that the little glass moss house was pretty cool after all.  For days, I left the jar.  For days, I checked the jar.  I watched as my tears, which of course seemed to last forever, turned to understanding.

The thing that she taught me was to be moved by wildness, to be moved in watching it and not trying to control it.  To find a kind of full joy in knowing that the snake was never mine.  And should never be mine.  And while I know that some children might feel the sadness that I felt, and go out to find another snake, and to, this time, put the lid on, somehow that didn’t happen to me. I was spared what is likely a more common path of being insensitive to animals’ rights as a child, and having to unlearn some of that selfishness into adulthood.  I feel very fortunate for having been shown that lesson so young.

Make no mistake.  There is a longing and a pang of loss at not being close to the wildness that that six-year-old still feels and of which she frequently reminds me in a visceral way.  A reminder of the bitter sweetness that doing the right thing for wildness is most often to leave it alone, to let it be, even as that means to let it be away from us.

She reminds me to let the wild ones be wild.  And to not put a lid or a tank or a bar or chain on them.  If you love them, she reminds me, let them be themselves.  Let them be free.

Take the pledge that you will not support an industry that thinks that keeping wild marine mammals in concrete tanks is acceptable.  Just say no to the dolphin show.

And this weekend in Atlanta, come out to stand for the rights of circus animals to be wild and free.

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Fulfillment

Posted on February 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I go to bed at night knowing that someday all of us will learn that our role is to allow life to live to its fulfillment. And that a coat, or a blanket, or a meal is not the fulfillment of the life of any sentient being.

Lion mother and cubs - clearly not put here "for" humans.

Celebrate life. Embrace life. Support life.

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Ski Dubai “Penguin Training Program” video: the language of the captive trade

Posted on January 26, 2013 by | 5 Comments

The International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) recently posted on its Facebook page a new video by Ski Dubai about “the most innovative Penguin Training Program in the world.”

I notice that the language in the video is, not surprisingly, the same used to describe the captivity of dolphins and whales in aquariums, marine parks and other captive “encounter” programs.  This language is something spoken by every aquarium, any where.  This language has been intentionally designed.  Its purpose: to camouflage the truth that humans have ripped these creatures from their natural habitat and do not do well in captivity.

The animal captivity industry wants you to think that this can be recreated, even in Dubai.

The animal captivity industry wants you to think that this can be recreated, even in Dubai.

But what the aquarium industry and their minion, IMATA, whose purpose is the perpetuation of the aquarium industry, have underestimated is the ability of humans to hear the truth in between the words.  As you watch the video, listen for certain words.  Each time, insert its translation and hear the truth.

Keywords invented by the captive trade and their true meaning:

  • “Natural Behaviors” = tricks
  • “Education and Conservation for Awareness” = entertainment for monetary revenue that has no demonstrated substantial impact on conservation “behaviors” in humans
  • “Ambassadors” = captive beings who have not volunteered for “life” in captivity
  • “Animal Encounter” = exploitation of both people and animals for additional monetary revenue
  • “Best possible care program” = maximizing survival rate of already-trained animals
  • “Daily management behaviors” = so we can make them bend to what we need to do to them to keep them alive in captivity
  • “Stimulated” = things we do or give to the animals in an unnatural setting to avoid stress anxiety and boredom, which make animals ill in captivity
  • “Play day” = tricks for the public’s amusement (I can hear from here the clapping when the penguins bow)
  • “The animals are desensitized to having close interaction with people” = we have successfully exerted control over these animals

Please know that marine mammals are not suited to a life in captivity by virtue of their expansive habitat range (they migrate; they swim hundreds of miles in a short period of time; some dive to 1000′ in depth), their highly social and familial structure, and their high intelligence.  Keeping these sentient and social creatures in captivity is an inhumane venture fueled by an outdated view of the “animal kingdom”.

Enter a new day, based in today’s ethics, learn the language of the captivity industry, and do not go to zoos and aquariums that keep the animals who have no “business” being there.

 

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Within the mind of man, there is no education that can justify dolphin captivity

Posted on December 30, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Many if not most of you have by now have seen the video clip on ITN, of the dolphin trainer from the Ukraine.  In this perhaps infamous video, the trainer proudly demonstrates his dolphin-training prowess, having trained this dolphin a “trick” that is typically related to a dolphin’s demise.  In this trick, the dolphin “strands” and crawls on his belly about 10 feet, on the hardscape of the pool deck.

A friend and writer, Elizabeth Batt,observed that there was little regulation in the Ukraine that would require that such dolphin shows have educational value, but immediately checked herself, and noted that the situation in the U.S. was hardly much different.

So that got me to thinking about the U.S. laws.

Let us imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that the language in the Marine Mammal Protection Act and its implementing regulations has significance.  Let’s assume that when the MMPA says that any permits that NOAA issues under Section 104 may only be issued to a person whom NOAA has determined offers an educational program, Congress got it right in letting the aquarium industry set the standard of “educational program.”

What is that standard?

I have a feeling that it’s a little ill-defined, and perhaps we end up in the company of  Justice Potter Stewart when he stated – in what is probably one of the most oft-quoted concurrences – that he may not know how to define pornography, “But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”  So, while I might be tempted to conclude this day’s observation with, “I know it when I see it,” and I’d bet that there are lots of aquariums that aren’t even coming close in these United States.

But let’s suspend that reality, as well, for a moment.  And imagine that all aquariums were setting and meeting a standard of education that we would all accept as valid.

Even if we suspend that reality for a moment, and imagined that to be the case, there is one truth that each of you knows, that each of you recognizes as truth.

There is no education within the mind of man that can justify the enslavement of dolphins.

Cove Blue for Jiyu

Photo Credit: James R. Evans / U.S. Pacific Fleet

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Because nothing says “Happy Holidays” like preventing dolphins from living in the ocean

Posted on December 8, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Atlanta, Atlanta, Atlanta.  And now Atlanta Now, a  local advertisement for tourism and spending money in any number of ways in Atlanta, jumps on the captivity-is-cool at the Georgia Aquarium bandwagon.  In their latest issue, they remind us that we can spend money encouraging captivity for dolphins.  Because more and more captivity is what the ticket price purchases when one visits an aquarium that wants to import 18 beluga whales hunted and caught in the seas around Russia for a life of photo ops with Santa and friends.

A photo op for Santa and the Georgia Aquarium; a life of captivity for the dolphins. Atlanta Now! Magazine

A photo op for Santa and the Georgia Aquarium; a life of captivity for the dolphins. Photo by Atlanta Now Magazine

Maybe the Santa doesn’t translate to your holiday tradition.  So much the better for you, or at least the 11 dolphins held captive at the Georgia Aquarium.  But regardless of your tradition and whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day (yay), Ashura, the Winter Solstice or another event – you might yet be attracted by the man in the red suit to think that he was involved with something that was friendly toward the dolphin shown in the photograph.

Let me just say, no, he is not.  Scuba Santa is participating in an enormous marketing ploy to convince you that captivity is a-okay for dolphins, when, in fact, it is not. As the Humane Society of the United States and the World Society for the Protection of Animals and the marine biologists who have nothing to gain by keeping them in captivity have demonstrated, dolphins and other marine mammals are not suited for a life in captivity.  Why?

  • Marine mammals often breed unsuccessfully in captivity.  Shaka, a wild-caught dolphin held at the Georgia Aquarium, has apparently given birth four times.  Two of her babies died shortly after birth.
  • Marine mammals do not live as long in captivity.
  • Marine mammals survive and thrive by using sound to see their family, to find their prey, to locate other objects, including tools and toys that they select.  Imagine how confusing a concrete sound-bouncing chamber must be to a creature who uses sound to live.
  • Marine mammals are wide-ranging creatures, swimming up to somewhere around 100 miles per day and hundreds of feet deep.  How can a 25 or worse 12-foot-deep concrete tank provide a “life” that a dolphin needs to be a dolphin?  You’re right; it can’t.

What is a more appropriate holiday tradition?  How about actually learning about dolphins and whales and how they arrive and fare in captivity by sharing the following books and films – especially if you have a budding young marine biologist living under your roof:

The Georgia Aquarium as the world’s largest aquarium, may feel that there is no better way to say, “Happy Holidays!” than a visit to a facility that keeps dolphins and whales out of their native oceans.  But you won’t agree, once you know.  In fact, I’m betting that there are lots of you who, knowing more about the plight of dolphins and whales in captivity, would never again frequent an aquarium who held these regal beings in captivity and away from a life to which they have a full and vested right, by being alive.

Share life and freedom this Holiday season.  Happy Holidays to you and to all of life.

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