I personally think that although it'll make children watching the local news cry, we should help animals and immediately return them to the wild. If the only way to help them means taking them into captivity, we should not help.

It depends on the animal of course, and if they're social animals or prefer solitude. There are many birds, injured beyond rehabilitation, that seem to do fine in captivity (so long as it's a good centre with lots of space -- most places don't though which is sad. The Cincinnati Zoo is an example of a good centre for rehabilitation).

When it comes to dolphins and whales, I totally agree though. They're simply too big and they evolved to travel massive distances. If they can be treated and nursed for a few weeks and immediately released, I think that's the best thing.

Why should aquatic specialists decide if they'd survive in the wild? If they are healthy enough to at least be able to find others of their kind, is it not better to die free than live long in a cage?

From an instinctive and evolutionary standpoint, definitely the latter.

I am with "letting wild animals be wild". If an animal can be patched up and let back into the wild after a couple of week, great. I hate aquariums and zoos for this reason. Its the human equivalent of https://popularresistance.org/deep-racism-the-forgotten-hist...

I would rather prefer reserves. e.g Nairobi national park, serengeti, mara. Really large spaces where animals can remain wild but conservation programs can still take place.

Vancouver aquarium in its Vancouver's ridiculously priced real estate doesn't have enough space to host big intelligent animals.

Perhaps this is the preferred outcome, from the animal's perspective.

I mean if a human had the choice between dying and being caged in a 5x5 ft closet for a substantial amount of time, ...

http://awesomeocean.com/2014/07/05/blackfish-full-blacklies/

just spend a little time reading about lolita in the miami seaquarium, who has been alone there for decades. note that orcas are some of the most social and familial animals in the world. her tankmate essentially committed suicide by repeatedly ramming his head against the tank, eventually dying from a hemorrhage.

even if one believes what is stated on that site, i don't see how getting some facts (most of them being inconsequential) wrong negates the tragedy it is that we imprison one of the smartest species on the planet, a truly massive animal, and THE apex predator in the ocean.

you can freely search and find the many stories and horrors of our capture and imprisonment of orcas without watching blackfish.

Humans are also some of the most social and familial animals in the world. Nevertheless, some humans kill, dismember or do the most terrible things to other humans, having so serious mental issues that must be keep apart from society. This pattern can be found in all intelligent animal species. Most specimens are fine but a few can born being psychopaths or develop as one later. And a clever psycho is not something that you should take lightly. Life is unfair, and sometimes (and I'm not saying that is necessarily the Lolita's case) there is a good reason to have a big and mean animal isolated from its congeners.

The behavior you are describing also has little to nothing to do with psychopathy, which is far more prevalent outside of mental institutions and prisons than most people would like to admit.

Blackfish was very far from being truthful. Is manipulative and perversely designed to elicit an emotional and irrational response.

Mixing tillikum footage with old recordings of several people swimming on a pool that were filmed on different decades and places; and mounting both in an apparently continuous attack scene that never happened is just an example. One of many

> I think that all this criticism against Tilikum is hurting him more than anything.

Come on..

what marineland and seaworld do to their animals and what vancouver aquarium does as a rescue centre and research facility does is something totally different.

The vancouver aquarium is a noble facility with a noble goal. my visit there honestly instilled a deep respect for me in more than just sea life.

I implore you to stop deriding institutions that may very well be acting in wildlife's best interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Aquarium#Animals_at_...

Breeding is a natural instinct and one of the few normal (and fulfilling) activities captive mammals can still participate in.

It may not be noble to force them to breed, sure. But is it a noble to deny them the right to breed if they are naturally inclined?

To be clear, I don't pretend to know the answer, I'm just pointing out that it's a much more complicated moral issue than you are letting on.

Taking children from abusive parents, and giving them to foster parents, is rescuing those children.

Taking pets from abusive owners, and giving them to the ASPCA, is rescuing those pets.

So taking now-unable-to-survive-in-the-wild wildlife from abusive caretakers or breeders, and giving them to wildlife preservation organizations, is...?

(Note that I don't believe in paying the breeders for their whales; that just incentivizes making more captive whales. They should be confiscated by law-enforcement, and then law-enforcement should place them with a rescue organization they have a partnership with.)

Really. This is the definition of rescuing them.

Some whales have very low populations. There could be less than 30 estimated vaquitas alive in reproductive age and is an species exclusive to USA and Mejico that only has one single baby each two years. Is imperative starting breeding it on captivity as soon as possible.

You can release the grandsons of a captive animal, but not a single specimen of a wild and free extinct species. When is gone is gone and there is not more baijis to be released. Too little, too late.

Unlike SeaWorld, it's a non-profit. All proceeds are directed back into rehabilitation and education programs.

1. how much un-needed overhead their expenses consist of, beyond the minimum costs required to run the facility;

2. the dollar-amount of donations that reach the relevant causes by having this type of facility operating, vs. the dollar-amount of donations that would be given to the same causes if this facility did not exist, or if it tried to operate on slimmer margins (by e.g. only being a marine-wildlife gift shop or somesuch.)

My own suspicion is that the answer to #1 is "not much", and the answer to #2 is "a far larger amount." (Under the argument: people don't bother to donate money to wildlife preservation if they're not being actively reminded of the existence of wildlife in need of preservation. That "15% of revenue" still likely ends up as a larger absolute dollar-figure than the total amount of donations to the same causes made by all other individuals or organizations in the area.)

Even if you don't agree with my suspicions, I think those two questions are the only good ones to be debating here.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/proceeds.html

Nearly every non-profit in the world has expenses to cover first.

Is that what you're accusing the Vancouver Aquarium of doing?

https://www.charitydata.ca/charity/vancouver-aquarium-marine...

It looks pretty innocent as far as these things go. They do ~$40M in revenue / expenses every year, spend $1.2M on fundraising, and their management expenses are high but not unreasonable. The biggest red flag I see is a large ($15M) loan that's costing them upwards of a million/year in interest.

Compensation seems pretty typical too, there's a more detailed compensation schedule on the Canada Revenue Agency's website but the link doesn't work externally. In short, there's 1 staff member making between $250k-$300k, there are 3 between $200k-$250k, and 6 between $120k-$200k.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/05/pets-shelter-euthan...

But PETA appears to spend more effort putting them down than attempting to re-home them.

Maybe we should close down the animal shelters too and let all the animals "free". I'm sure they'll do fine in the wild.

Considering that the last report confirmed that the Belugas had been poisoned by a foreign substance, I wouldn't be so confident in that statement.

One interpretation of that could be they were intentionally poisoned.

These whales had been living in that pool for years and had even given birth without issue. Seems rather strange timing to all of a sudden have a mystery 'toxin' bring two of them down, particularly with the pool testing clean after their deaths.

The Vancouver Aquarium is a non-profit organization, and has much different goals and priorities than Seaworld.

Secondly, you are repeating this line that as a non-profit they are somehow more noble and different than Seaworld, for example. If that's the case, why do they loan animals to SeaWorld and other Aquariums for breeding?

"On breeding loan to SeaWorld, Shedd Aquarium & Georgia Aquarium are the following:

Allua, a female beluga is around 24 years of age. She was moved to SeaWorld San Diego on a breeding loan in 2005. Imaq, a male beluga who is around 21 years of age. He is on breeding loan to SeaWorld San Antonio. Grayson, a male beluga who is 8 years old living at the Shedd Aquarium. He was born at SeaWorld San Antonio in 2007, but belongs to the Vancouver Aquarium as he was born to Nanuq, who was owned by the aquarium and also fathered Qila. Until early 2016, Grayson was living at the Georgia Aquarium with his half-sister Qinu. Qinu, a female beluga born in 2010 who is 7 years of age living at the Georgia Aquarium. She was also born at SeaWorld San Antonio and lived with Grayson until he was moved to the Shedd Aquarium. As with Grayson, she was born to Nanuq and belongs to the Vancouver Aquarium."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Aquarium#Animals_at_...

> Michael Wiebe, chair of the Vancouver Park Board, said that after two belugas died within days of one another at the aquarium last fall, the board decided they needed to look into whether it was right to keep bringing in more.

The truth is people can't really build a tank large enough to take care of these creatures, or offer them the proper conditions. Killer whales can travel up to 100 miles a day, and dolphins sure do a lot of traveling as well. How do you offer that or allow for the group social dynamics in a cage?

I'm not even sure how good the education value of seeing a dolphin locked up in a tank is. Anecdotally, I went to the zoo a lot as a kid but all I remember doing is gawking. Watching documentaries as a kid I actually heard about their social interactions and natural behaviors. Many of those behaviors don't come up surrounded by people in enclosures.

If we want to "understand and appreciate" a creature it should be on their terms. For dolphins documentaries or visiting them in their habitat seems like the best way, not some aquarium where the parking lot for visitors is larger than their tanks.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouve...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-aqu...

---

The aquarium now suspects that a toxin is responsible, although no lingering contaminants have been found in the tissues of the dead whales. While intentional poisoning hasn’t been ruled out, it’s also possible that a naturally occurring toxin is responsible.

“The epidemiology of the scenario, the chain of events, lead us to be highly suspect of a toxin that came and went — and one that we may not identify,” Haulena said.

---

Investigation continues, but it's a small town and the unproven truth is that one of the people behind this ban poisoned the two whales to 'save them'

'The aquarium suspects' with no evidence whatsoever to back them up.

And you then claim: 'the unproven truth is that...'

Is this a joke ?

How does that work?

Vision Vancouver, the political party, is very slick and spends an order of magnitude more on PR than anybody else in the city, in a town now with little news reporting.

1. It's well known who killed 2 of belugas -- somebody who publicly presents themselves as caring for whales -- but there is no discussion of it in the reporting.

2. There has been zero effort to have a conversation with the people at the Aquarium. There is an intentional effort to get shock value, encourage a public squabble that rouses some of their base and that distracts from their overall performance.

Vision Vancouver is now feeling the heat for freezing upzoning of single family home neighbourhoods so that they can direct hundreds of millions annually in buildable land grants in one-off variances to the large developers who are their main donors (Wall, Westbank, Concord). The problem in Vancouver is a monopoly of new buildable land where a single marketer, Bob Rennie, can dictate pricing for a year by virtue of controlling over 80% of new units in any given year under Vision Vancouver.

The next municipal election is a year away, but they've been around at full speed hiring PR folks on the public dime, setting up astroturf groups, wining and dining the few remaining beat reporters, and sending moles to infiltrate the new Vancouver Renters' Union. They're picking fights that are fake and real, any news is good news now if they can be ahead of the story instead of chasing to catch up for once.

---

Disclosure: I volunteered for the last two Vision Vancouver campaigns, as a favor to a friend and when I believed they actually meant what they said. I had already given up on them when I was asked to join an astroturf group by Mike Magee last summer

The Chair is a Green party member and the rest of the makeup is 1 Green, 1 Vision and 4 right of centre NPA.

This decision doesn't seem to fit cleanly into any sort of left/right political spectrum.

Not a lot of direct evidence, but a shitload of smoke.

There are 5 beluga whales on loan to other facilities, in preparation for the construction of new tanks in September.

Everyone agrees that the welfare of these whales is better served in those new tanks, than where they are currently staying. This ban prevents the return of the whales currently on loan. As I said, I am for a ban on cetaceans but this is a PR exercise and not about the whales.

So you're saying that to have a "special connection" to ocean wildlife we need to keep animals captive in a small pool?

Obviously we can't all go on excursions into the sea, but aquariums don't seem like the best model for understanding and appreciating wildlife.

You don't need to pay for expensive tourist rides to see some of these creatures. If you live in the right areas, and if we take care of our waterways, you can see all kinds of amazing creatures just by riding a ferry.

Animals are a lot less likely to get bored in the wild.

https://img.memesuper.com/fb3647c753a84754210e7d4879042b9d_s...

Animals in captivity are always problematic, but there are sometimes good reasons for it both from an animal welfare point of view and from a human education point of view. In the meantime, great strides have been made in improving conditions for animals in captivity, and Vancouver has been a leader in this regard.

It's a "serious research institution" with only one peer reviewed publication based on data from captured belugas.

While individuals may take animal welfare very seriously, the Vancouver Aquarium has attempted to confuse their marine mammal rescue with the captivity of cetaceans. 99% of the marine mammals they rescue are baby seals that humans have interfered with while their mother was out feeding.

Next, regarding "tricks" and "entertainment," many people who experienced the shows found then entertaining. http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2017/05/11/we-dont-do...

While I will agree that the Vancouver Aquarium can be considered to "take animal welfare seriously" I also feel that their president and website disingenuously conflate mammal with cetacean, hide the sources of "wild cetacean injuries" (eg, Japanese sourced dolphins), and vastly under spend when it comes to care of their cetaceans.

Are some of these not peer reviewed? I'm not familiar with the journals that they were published in.

I'm no expert, but I imagine research could take place in a sea pen like this and Vancouver has no shortage of coastline.

http://40.media.tumblr.com/80c13240cad8e0b40c72ae7ea5a0797a/...

To feel better, to brag, to fight against stress, to improve their ego or impress the opposite sex. Several social reasons to explain this strange behaviour.

When dolphins jump, leap, chase and obtain some fishes and human approval as reward they are entertaining humans of course.

Is this bad? well, visitors pay their food, and the pool filters that keep the water clean, and the vets... but this is not all. They are exercising also. Some people says that dolphins are sad for this. Well, It seems that nowadays everybody is the true and sacred representant of dolphin race in the earth, so I can jump to that train also. Dolphins can and probably enjoy the play, the cooperative chase and the interaction with other dolphins and humans. Why? Because exercice leads to serotonin and adrenalin and this is known to have a positive effect in the mood of a vertebrate. More serotonin released by your brain will makes you a happier dolphin or guy. Trained dolphins have also the change of keep their brain active solving problems, feel better, brag, improve their ego or impress the opposite sex.

Otherwise the dolphin or seal would snooze in their pool for entire weeks without no stimulus at all and this "solution" would be the definition of animal cruelty.

I'm sure this is going to be a very unpopular comment here, but for the sake of a different perspective... Every time I see this sentiment, it tends to come from fans of Blackfish. I watched that "documentary", which was very cherry-picked to push a biased perspective. I've also lived near a SeaWorld and have noticed, first-hand, the conservation they do of the environment and cetacean life.

Yes, SeaWorld is for-profit, while many zoos are non-profit, but they do make some meaningful effort to help out.

I also wonder if they can shift away from the 'orphanage' model to a more 'foster' model by bringing in sick animals, nursing them to health, then releasing them shortly after. Not sure if this is in the cards politically, but it would be a middle ground between traditional aquariums and a total ban. Its important to note many of these animals get to aquariums because they've been injured by humans. We should feel a responsibility to help them if we are the ones hurting them. Washing our hands of this responsibility seems irresponsible to me and justifying it with feel good politics seems highly questionable.

I agree that the 'feel good' politics get in the way of sound decisions by professionals who really do have the best interest of the animals at heart. I really dislike when bystanders reading the daily headlines question the motivations of people who have dedicated their whole lives to understanding and improving the lives of the animals in their care.

That's not to say that how things are done should never change and we should never question the professionals or those in authority. But decisions like this really seem like they do more harm than good. Politics and science don't mix well but I guess we don't get much of one without the other, as that's how the bulk of science funding is done...

This is exactly how the Monterey bay aquarium works, fwiw.

And this is PETA's intention, they'd rather see an animal euthanized than be in captivity.

Pods of orcas visit Stanley Park and False Creek at least once every couple years, usually more. And thats a magical day when they do. If you think that kids dont feel special connections to these creatures that come visit downtown once in a while, you're deluded

There's a reason orcas feature heavily in First Nations art, local sports team mascots, etc here. They're beautiful animals but they're not exotics.

That's laughable. A cursory check indicates the pricing starting at ~$80 for a single child. A family of four? That's ~$420.

Children's tickets are ~$20 at the aquarium (and they have special discounts for kids from local schools and the disabled). A family of four at the aquarium would cost ~ $110

In what world does a 4x multiple qualify as "for not much more..."?

I meant specifically the orcas visiting downtown that I had never heard of. I did not know this was a thing and can't recall hearing it on the news.

As a kid growing up in Yaletown, I had never heard of pods of orcas coming that close, nor that it was possible to watch them. And I grew up in Yaletown for close to 15 years.