Let me begin with a confession: like thousands of other people around the world, I have visited an entertainment venue that displays sea mammals – seals, sea lions, dolphins, whales – and has them “perform” for an audience. At the time, I thought that this reflected my love for wildlife, going to see animals so unlike humans yet known to have amazing intelligence and social lives. I felt reassured by the venues’ assertions that the animals only performed because they chose to do so and that they were being treated humanely.
Nevertheless, over the past couple decades, my knowledge about marine mammals has increased and I’ve come to understand that using pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, walruses) and cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) in entertainment shows is simply a form of animal exploitation designed to satisfy our yearning for amusement, while bringing in money for those who own the venues.
According to historical records, walruses were held captive as early as 1608 and a monk seal (Monachus monachus) was caught for viewing in 1760. People began capturing cetaceans around the 1860s. Sea mammals are now found in zoos and aquaria around the world, with many facilities scheduling “feeding hours” so that zoo-goers can see the animals out of the water. Most of the time, however, the animals are left alone in zoos, so that people can see and observe them swimming, interacting and resting, albeit not in natural conditions. Zoos often also offer marine mammals “enrichment” to help relieve the boredom they suffer in their restricted living areas. Such boredom results from the fact that the mammals are deprived of the normal stimuli that govern their natural lives, such as the dynamics of marine waters (tides, waves, varying weather conditions), finding and tracking prey species, foraging for food, meeting new individuals with whom to form social bonds, and navigating large bodies of water using their specialized anatomical navigation organs (sonar). Some types of enrichment try to approximate the absent stimuli, such as the creation of wave patterns in aquaria and devices that release food when the animals move them around. Other types of enrichment are meant to stimulate the animals’ curiosity and interest, such as balls and other toys for play, or large ice cubes that contain fish. Some – but not all – aquaria also do research using the sea mammals they hold.
California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) spotted by JohnDonoghue in California
There are other places, however, that are devoted primarily to displaying the marine mammals as “performers” for eager spectators. Although these venues claim to be fulfilling an educational goal, in reality they are simply business ventures that use intelligent pinnipeds and cetaceans to make a profit. The first commercial dolphinarium opened in 1938 and such entertainment “parks” can now be found in all regions of the world. The animals most often trained to perform in shows are California sea lions, harbor seals, bottlenose dolphins, orcas (killer whales) and beluga whales. Dolphins and seals are also kept so that people can experience swimming alongside them and touching them. In some cases, it is claimed that this has therapeutic benefits but no research has demonstrated this to be true.
Why should we object to such shows? Animal welfare groups have investigated them and offer good reasons.
Dolphin pod in Baja California; photo kindly provided by the Oceanic Preservation Society
Pinnipeds and cetaceans, who normally live in family groups, are deprived of normal social lives
Pinnipeds and cetaceans are highly social animals. Whales and dolphins live in pods and extended family groups, in which they can maintain relationships with specific individuals for many years or even their whole lifetimes. Some whale species have specific “dialects” or types of vocalizations just for their own pods. Seals and sea lions also live in groups called colonies. Yet the numbers of sea mammals that live together in facilities of the animal entertainment industry are small; in some cases, animals are even kept as solitary individuals.
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) spotted by Daniele Pralong in Oman
Captive sea mammals are deprived of the space they need for healthy, normal lives
Whales and dolphins swim long distances (up to 100 miles) every day in the wild, often diving to depths of several hundred meters/feet. They spend only 10-20% of their time at the water’s surface, which is what makes sighting them in the wild so exciting. The entertainment industry pools and tanks in which the mammals are kept range in size from very small (2 by 3 meters) to somewhat larger (50 meters in length and 2-3 meters deep) but they do not approximate the area that their natural environment encompasses.
Orca whales (Orcinus orca) spotted by Leslie F in Alaska
The animals are unable to carry out their normal behaviors and resort to unnatural activities
Public display pools lack the varied vegetation and other sea life that make up the pinnipeds’ and cetaceans’ natural environment. Instead, they are kept in barren, concrete enclosures or small circumscribed areas. Cetaceans cannot drink salt water and obtain their fresh water from the fish they eat; however, when they are fed frozen or thawed dead fish, they need to receive fresh water through artificial alternative methods. They also cannot seek food when hungry but become dependent on humans to dole out their meals, often in return for doing “tricks” or allowing their keepers to ride on their backs.
Deprived of their natural behavioral repertoire (hunting for food, seeking out mates, creating social bonds of their choosing), marine mammals may end up simply showing stereotypical, unnatural behaviors such as constant head bobbing. The whales’ and dolphins’ innate drive to swim long distances is blocked and they resort to patterned swimming in circles, similar to the pacing seen in captive large cats that are kept in small enclosures.
The cetaceans normally rely on echolocation to navigate their environment by bouncing sonar waves off objects so as to determine their shape, density, distance, and location. In pools and tanks, the reverberations from their sonar clicks bounce off the walls; this has been shown to impair the animals’ mental health. Some dolphins and orcas have been observed to chew on concrete, and dolphins have engaged in self-harm by hitting their heads on the sides of pools or refusing to surface in order to breathe.
Beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) spotted by student during the Arctic Watch Youth Expedition 2012
The stress and conditions of captivity endangers their health and shorten their lives
The unnatural conditions in which the animals are kept negatively affect their health and longevity. Because their pools and tanks are so small, the cetaceans spend much more than 20% of their time near the water’s surface; this behavior, as well as contaminants in water, can lead to skin problems. Drifting at the surface has also exposed orcas to mosquitoes and subsequent infection with St. Louis encephalitis and West Nile viruses, causing the first deaths from these causes in killer whales. Lack of shade and chlorine in water have damaged sea lions’ and dolphins’ eyes; animals have died from swimming in contaminated water. The enclosures for pinnipeds may not be maintained so that walruses, sea lions and seals end up sleeping in their own excrement or being exposed to dangerous situations such as drains in which their heads can be caught.
Captive orcas show a high rate of dorsal fin collapse, because gravity pulls these appendages over when they are not supported by water. Sea mammals used in “swim with” encounters cannot choose what kind of interaction they wish with humans and their constant use in human-oriented encounters affects their social interactions within their own species group. Dolphins and belugas used for tourist photo shoots, in petting pools or for giving rides to spectators may be poked, prodded, and exposed to bacteria carried by humans They may be fed continuously by visitors and become obese; these mammals are also at risk of injury by ingesting foreign objects, with some having died, for example, after swallowing coins. Marine mammals may also develop stress-related conditions such as bleeding ulcers and abnormal aggression towards one another or humans who interact with them.
In the wild, dolphins can live up to 50 years, beluga whales 35-50 years, and orcas up to 50-80 years. However, documentation has shown that more than 80% of captive dolphins in some facilities died before reaching 20 years, while orcas often do not survive for more than 10 years in entertainment facilities. Research on orca survival from 1988 to 1992 showed that the annual mortality rate was more than 2½ times higher for captive killer whales than for wild orcas (6.2 versus 2.4%). At one US marine park, 22 orcas died between 1986 and 2010 from conditions including severe trauma, intestinal gangrene, acute hemorrhagic pneumonia, pulmonary abscesses, chronic kidney disease, chronic cardiovascular failure, septicemia, and influenza; none died of old age. At six US marine entertainment venues with beluga whales that are currently seeking the importation of 18 wild-caught belugas, 34 of the 71 whales that they already held captive suffered premature deaths.
Photo kindly provided by the Oceanic Preservation Society
What you can do to end sea mammal exploitation
As difficult as it might seem, you can resolve to no longer visit entertainment venues that have captive marine mammals perform for the public (unless you are helping monitor the animals as part of a campaign). When you educate your friends and family members about the reasons for your decision, you can point out that it is not necessary to display these animals in order to garner support for their conservation; people are also interested in seeing humpback whales survive even if they can’t visit them in an entertainment venue. Consumer boycotts led to the closing of dolphinaria in the United Kingdom. Brazil, Costa Rica and Croatia have prohibited such venues as well.
You can encourage your local aquarium or zoo to stop breeding animals so that they have more space for rehabilitating (and possibly releasing) injured wildlife.
You can talk about the plight of captive marine mammal “performers” at school, for local conservation and civic groups and in letters to the editors of local publications.
You can support legislation that prohibits the capture or restricts the display of marine mammals, publicly thank parliamentarians who support such laws, and lobby government officials to not use taxpayer money to subsidize the marine mammal entertainment industry. For example, the Minister of Environment and Forests in India, Jayanthi Natarajan, is now considering a nationwide ban on captivity and expressions of support could encourage her to enact such a policy.
For further reading
http://www.pinnipeds.org/seal-information/rehabilitation-and-captivity/pinnipeds-in-captivity
http://www.opsociety.org/projects/campaigns
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-in-entertainment/aquariums-and-marine-parks.aspx