Letâs talk about WHY live captures for cetaceans are such an issue, shall we?
Since apparently some people lack the ability to think critically about anything marine parks do. Really, weâre talking about Odontocetes - the toothed whales. Most species small enough to be caught in a net have been held captive at some point.
Most of these animals have strong, complex social bonds from birth - their mother, elder siblings, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins. Other members of the pod often step in to babysit, and this strong emphasis on communal calf raising gives animals that survive their first critical year a good chance of reaching adulthood. And itâs these animals, particularly those aged between 1-5 years, that marine parks target. The animals have to be old enough that they can survive without nursing, yet young enough that they have a chance of adapting to their new surroundings.Â
Thatâs why people make such a hullabaloo about the Southern Residents - an entire generation of animals who should be grandparents by now were lost. Yes, there were other factors which contributed to their decline (mainly dams messing with the salmon), but you canât just gloss over the fact that the population buffer which should have been there was ruined deliberately by the greed of the captivity industry.
In some species, such as orca, offspring will often remain in their natal pod for life. Even in populations where offspring eventually separate out to form their own pods, they will meet up with the rest of their clan every now and then. In such tight knit groups, removal of conspecifics is highly distressing for both the animals taken and those left behind. And weâre not just talking about animals getting a bit sad for a few days, weâre talking increased mortality rates for months afterwards. To cetaceans, thereâs no difference between âtakenâ and âdeadâ. All the effort and energy they put into raising that calf, all that bonding and socialising has gone to waste.
And what happens to the calf when it reaches itâs new home? Theyâre not going to be part of a targeted breeding programme to boost numbers of their particular ecotype. Theyâre not there to educate the public on the varied diets of their species, their natural habitats, their social behaviour. Theyâre there to perform. Theyâre there to make trainers feel good about themselves, to make the public spend money to see them beach themselves or do a flip. Whatâs the benefit to their species as a whole? Marine parks have an absolutely woeful record when it comes to marine mammal research that can actively be applied to wild populations. Itâs truly abysmal.Â
Ex-situ conservation has to be carefully managed. The only method proven to have a positive impact is strictly controlled captive breeding and release. You canât release an animal with no teeth that doesnât know how to hunt and is dangerously habituated to close contact with humans. Even with extensive rehabilitation, the sheer damage done through constant human exposure and dental problems would kill them inside of a week.
Gone are the days where it is acceptable to take an animal from the wild and make it perform for human audiences. Marine parks and circuses have reaped what theyâve sown. You canât take these animals, break them so badly they and their offspring can never return to their native habitat and call it a good thing. With data on cetacean populations being so precarious and hard to come by, and with the odds already stacked against them through human impacts, removing these animals for such selfish reasons is no different to killing them. The end result is still the same - one dead dolphin and a population being robbed of not only the removed animal, but all their potential descendants.
Some other things I want to throw in⌠Captures can be dangerous, with some animals drowning in nets. Since cetaceans are often emotional animals, captures can also be traumatic even for the ones that donât get taken into captivity. Captive elephants taken from the wild have been described as having PTSD-like symptoms, I canât help but wonder if cetaceans experience something similar.
Whatâs more, many cetacean species and populations arenât well-studied. We donât always know how captures can affect the social structures or other aspects of their lives. Since most captures focus on juvenile animals, itâs not likely to affect social structure too much, but captures can cause a population or group to start avoiding an area. This can be especially bad if the area is important for feeding, breeding, migration, or something else. I remember watching a documentary where the crew wanted to get footage of some Northern Resident orcas using a rubbing beach. Issue was, the matriarch of the pod they were filming had a calf taken from her in the 70â˛s and she was wary of humans as a result. They wanted to figure out a way to film her without their presence scaring her away from the beach. And the whale in question was an older animal, meaning that the capture of her calf left a lifelong impact. Cetaceans are intelligent and have long memories, even a single capture event can affect them for life.
One other thing⌠You mention that captures mostly target juveniles, which are very important to maintaining future population growth. (one reason the modern Southern Resident orca population is so low is because an entire generation was moved during the 1970â˛s captures. And we didnât just lose those animals, we also lost any offspring they wouldâve had. Good thing those captures stopped when they did, at least. Population has a chance to recover) In addition to that, I know sometimes captures will specifically target female over male ones. Females can produce calves, attracting more visitors (everyone loves baby animals) and reducing the need to pay for captured animals, and as an added bonus theyâre not gonna have an erection. (apparently this is the reason all of the dolphins that played Flipper were female, lol) Iâve also heard that female bottlenose dolphins are less aggressive than male ones, not entirely sure if thatâs true though. Anyway. Specifically targeting female animals is going to have a bigger impact on the population than getting males or just picking randomly.
And, yeah, thereâs no good reason to capture healthy cetaceans for captivity. Captures have all sorts of negative impacts and any benefits are questionable at best. Even if the captures are regulated and not done in at-risk populations, they can still have undesirable effects on the animals that remain in the wild.
