#dolphin captivity

No functioning “sea sanctuary” currently exists for cetaceans. No sea sanctuary is currently being utilised by dolphins or whales. If you "empty the tanks" there is no where for these animals to go, which is why we have two shutdown facilities with dolphins and whales living in limbo: Marineland Antibes and Marineland Ontario

"Tricks" are just learned behaviours, which the dolphin or whale only chooses to do because there is a reinforcing outcome for them. If the behaviour was uncomfortable or caused them pain, they simply don't have the incentive to do them.

Dolphins and whales in accredited facilities are not being "made to perform" or "starved". If that was the case, you'd be seeing it in their body condition and behaviour. There are facilities where outdated training methods are still used but these are not the places where Empty the Tanks are demonstrating in front of.

"Shows" are basically high energy exercise sessions put to music and the animals can always choose not to participate if they don't want to. You being entertained by an animal is not inherently unethical if their welfare is prioritised. The animals don't care whether a show is "educational" or not. Or if they're doing "natural" behaviours.

Dolphins and whales in human care are all individual animals with individual personalities, learning histories, genetic histories ect. There is no one size fits all solution to welfare.

Just "make the tanks bigger" or "put them in the ocean/sea sanctuary" are not viable or reasonable welfare solutions. And the Empty the Tanks organisers are not qualified to assess cetacean welfare in any meaningful way.

I have personally witnessed poor welfare in a sea pen habitat in bottlenose dolphins - welfare issues do not go away in a sea pen. In fact, sea pens create a lot of other stressors and uncontrollable environmental factors such as pollution/oil spills, weather/currents/tides ect.

If you have any questions or concerns about the welfare of cetaceans in human care, you're welcome to message me questions or have a chat to trainers and caretakers at your local zoological facility.

Genuinely we would not be working minimum wage jobs and sacrificing financial security to scrub buckets and be elbow deep in frozen fish at 5am if we didn't care about these animals.

In a weird twist of event, Marineland Canada has befallen the same fate as Marineland France. The park has been closed for good, and 30 belugas as well as some bottlenose dolphins are left behind. The park has no income and no money to take care of these animals for long. Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, a state of the art modern marine park in China was willing to take them.

But Canada's minister of Fisheries and Oceans barred the transfer.

"In a statement, DFO Minister Joanne Thompson said she could not "in good conscience" approve the export and that her decision aligned with regulations in the Fisheries Act to protect marine mammals from exploitation. "It was obvious to me that whales belong in the ocean," she said. "To see 30 belugas in contained spaces was very difficult." "

Yeeesss. These 30 animals, that have either been born in Marineland or have been in captivity for decades, should really be released into the ocean! Or a sea sanctuary, because we've seen how eagerly animals adapt to a completely foreign and - to them - really stressful environment with the SeaLife beluga sanctuary! Oh oops, but there are no sanctuaries, let alone one that can take so many animals.

And so, while there is a suitable park that is willing to take these animals and make sure they are well cared for, now euthanasia is on the table. For thirty, healthy whales.

It is maddening and heartbreaking how the very people who claim to want the best for these animals, would truly rather see all these whales dead than continue their life under human care.

All these whales have a life, a personality, a family. They were or are trainers' favourites, their special baby, their best friend. I honestly can't believe we're living in a world where animal activism has gone so far where governments are influenced to the point of (possibly) forcing mass euthanasia. When a single (killer) whale dies at a park there is massive outcry. But purposefully killing 30 animals is fine if done for the right reasons! Anything except doing something for their actual welfare, because that makes us feel yucky!

I am hoping so, so hard that the worst doesn't come to pass. Because these animals do not deserve it.

What can you do? (thanks for Cetal Fauna on facebook for the links and sharing the photos of the whales!)

Contact Fisheries Minister Joanna Thompson and the DFO at:

Fisheries Minister Joanna Thompson [email protected] +1 709-772-7171 (St. John’s, Newfoundland)

For those unaware: Marineland in Antibes, France has been closed down since January, but they still have two orcas ( Wikie and her son Keijo), along with several dolphins, languishing away in deteriorating pools. The French government has blocked two attempts to relocate the orcas, and one orca (neither of the ones named here) has already died from the deteriorating state of the pools.

“There’s just nothing stimulating for them to do. Other than the feeding sessions and the training. There is some training to alleviate the boredom, but it’s the same training that they’ve been doing for 5, 10, 20 years. There’s nothing in the tanks, just the concrete walls.” 

Layla the Pacific bottlenose dolphin yeeting a basketball into space 🚀

Even in a sea pen in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the dolphins still needed regular enrichment in the form of toys.

Absolutely fantastic video sharing the recent work that Dolphin Communication Project has been doing with the killer whales at Loro Parque. It's really great to see more research being done with the orcas in human care in regards to behaviour and welfare because I really felt there was not nearly enough research focused there. And now we're really getting some really awesome data!

There are some fantastic mic drop moments in here about cetaceans in human care and the importance of research with a baseline population. And it's just genuinely really cool to learn about dolphin and killer whale behaviour, social dynamics and communication.

But I also can't get over Morgan just cheesing it up in the background of every interview with the Kiessling family members.

Really interesting question! While there hasn’t been any studies on this, these poses aren’t held for long periods of time and they are trained voluntary behaviours. So if the animals found this uncomfortable or were putting a strain on their bodies, it’s unlikely they would hold the behaviour.

Even if a behaviour has a strong reinforcement history, if it’s uncomfortable or causes discomfort, the animal is intrinsically motivated to avoid it.

In my experience of training these behaviours, fitness and physical health is always considered. So if we’re having issues with duration, it’s probably because the dolphin doesn’t have the core strength for it. So they might need to do some more exercises like tail walking to strengthen their core and peduncle (that’s that huge muscle powering their tail fluke)

So we might use a target pole to encourage them upwards and really work that peduncle - see below Marley just before she hears the whistle telling her she did a great job and then immediately after:

(She would also squeal when she heard the whistle bridge as well- a “victory squeal”)

It’s important to remember just how muscular and strong these animals are.

When you see this present behaviour, that animal is recruiting their ventral muscles to support their spine, which is also supported by muscle, to hold up that very heavy and powerful peduncle.

The behaviour itself is also a very important husbandry behaviour as it allows trainers to get an accurate reading when the dolphin or whale slides out onto a scale.

Anatomy is not my specialty but I do know the dolphin spine is very flexible and specialised for propelling themselves forward with their tail. Unlike us, they have much less flexibility in their head and basically no neck to turn the way we do.

Simply put, they adapted for flexibility specifically for upward and downward strokes of their tail and they have the ability to flex their lower spinal processes and tail for communication eg. Fluke slaps and locomotion.

You can see this article that discusses the basic morphology of the dolphin cervical spine: https://journals.lww.com/jcjs/fulltext/2021/12010/a_morphological_analysis_of_the_cervical_spine_of.12.aspx

While you can certainly say that the slide out, present behaviour is not natural, these behaviours are voluntary and work within the parameters of what each individual is physically capable of doing.