John Michel Cousteau Wants To Save SeaWorld. Really?

 "...Marine-animal expert Jean-Michel Cou­steau — who worked on the successful release of Keiko, the star of “Free Willy,” into a seaside pen (before he died in the wild) — said SeaWorld Entertainment can move its orcas to seaside sanctuaries without costing it money.This brief news article is the musings of John Michel Cousteau (the son of Jacques Cousteau) whose organisation Ocean Futures was involved in the release project of "Keiko" the killer whale..."

  
The comments in the above-linked article in the New York Post by Claire Atkinson are of course misleading. Let us make it clear the "Keiko" project was not a success. In making this statement, I mean that the plan to reintegrate this animal back into a population of wild killer whales off the shores of Iceland did not succeed despite huge amounts of time, money and planning. This is not just my opinion this is the conclusion of the peer review paper published in 2009 in the journal Marine Mammal Science HERE.

John Michel Cousteau himself has also made it clear that he does not now consider it viable to release long-term captive killer whales back to the wild.  

My blog goes into more detail regarding returning captive cetaceans back to the wild HERE.

The releasing of former captive cetaceans has been given some extra impetus in 2012 with the Born Free Foundation's project to release two former captive Turkish dolphins after extensive rehabilitation. Although, details of this project have never been published in any scientific journals. Moreover, as with all these projects, there needs to be a considerable amount of context to understand what they actually mean. These two animals released had in fact not been in captivity for any particularly long period of time; they had been caught within the area they returned to and they were young male bottlenosed dolphins. These three criteria are the actual reason that this release project was likely to have a high degree of success. In addition, it should be noted that it followed a protocol that was used in a successful experimental capture and release project by the late Dr Ken Norris and cetacean biologist Dr Randall Wells published in 1998 HERE.

As to Cousteau's involvements with the eight bottlenose dolphins currently displayed at the Baltimore Aquarium (of which only one was caught in the wild) I have blogged this in some detail linked HERE.

As an opinion, I would say that removing these animals from an urban aquarium to Hawaii goes completely against any value that displaying these animals could have had as there are a number of both captive and wild dolphin viewing opportunities in this particular part of the world. The fact that somebody like Cousteau does not understand the value of urban zoological collections (particularly displaying animals that people are unlikely to experience) speaks volumes and sadly smacks of rather distasteful celebrity elitism.

Lies, Damned Lies and Propaganda

On the 16 June 2013, The Sunday Times under the headline 'Stress drives captive whales to kill trainers' published yet another sadly predictable and partisan article regarding the care of cetaceans in captivity.  The article focused primarily on the captive care of killer whales off the back of the recently released film "Blackfish" but also made more generalised comments on the welfare of cetaceans in captivity.

One particularly irksome comment was the erroneous claim that Britain has banned zoos from keeping whales and dolphins.



Such a specific claim is not new and maintained not only by members of the animal-rights industry but also by some zoo operators who one would hope would know better.

Notices displayed in the Brighton Sea Life Centre in 2009

A case in point being the Merlin Entertainments group owners of the Sea Life brand.  However, this may be in part to their somewhat bizarre position against cetaceans in human care and their close association with the anti-captive Whale and Dolphin Conservation lobby group and SeaLife's collusion in the infamous animal-rights led dolphin release project "Into The Blue".

In an exchange that pointed out this error, The Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Leake defended his position by stating that a DEFRA spokesperson had stated to him that:

“We [DEFRA] are concerned about the keeping of cetaceans in captivity and none have been kept in the UK since the early 1990s.  We believe that cetaceans are intelligent, social animals with complex needs that are unlikely to be met in captivity.”

This is a very surprising and ill-informed comment from a DEFRA spokesperson that appears to disregard the findings of their own commissioned report on to the welfare of captive cetaceans.

In 1985, the Department of the Environment (now part of DEFRA) commissioned biologists Dr Margaret Klinowska and Dr Susan Brown to research and review the keeping of cetaceans in UK zoos and aquaria. 

The report "A Review Of Dolphinaria" was published in 1986. The authors had the authority to recommend that cetaceans should not be held in captive care if their research supported such a position. However, it did not and they maintained that these animals could be successfully kept in animal collections given the right conditions. They stated

"...No substantial contra-indications to the keeping of cetaceans have been found which would not apply equally to the keeping of any other wild-caught animal...This is not to say that there are no problems with cetacean keeping, only that the problems are not dissimilar to those encountered in wild-caught animal husbandry in general, and could be solved...”

In 1986, a Steering Group of experts and officials was set up to review the recommendations of  "A Review of Dolphinaria" and after consultation with various interested parties in 1988 they published "Dolphinaria: Report of the Steering Group" which setup recommendations for the future welfare and keeping standards for cetaceans in UK animal collections to be implemented by 1993.

Since the publication of the new guidelines, no further official amendments or sanctions have been put in place regarding the welfare of captive cetaceans in the UK.

This was confirmed in May 2007 in an official response in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who stated:

"There are currently no cetaceans being kept in captivity in the UK, and other than for purposes of rehabilitation, there have not been any kept since the early 1990s. While it is not illegal to keep cetaceans in this country, the Zoo Licensing Act 1981 (as amended) aims to ensure that, should cetaceans be kept at an establishment for exhibition to the public, the establishment is licensed and the animals kept in accordance with strict standards relating to their health and welfare requirements. Those standards are set out in the Secretary of State’s Standards of Modern Zoo Practice and its supplement on the keeping of cetaceans in captivity. In addition to the requirements of the Zoo Licensing Act, all animals kept in captivity are subject to protection under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. We therefore have no plans to bring forward legislation to prohibit the keeping of cetaceans in captivity."

This position remains, as in the most recent edition of the Secretary of State’s Standards of Modern Zoo Practice published in 2012 the following statement regarding any future display of cetaceans in the UK states:

"Cetaceans have not been kept in UK zoos or aquariums for some years. The key references are Klinowska and Brown's Review of Dolphinaria."

Therefore, it can be clearly seen that the continued claims that the UK has banned the keeping of dolphins and whales in zoos and aquaria are false.  Moreover, extensive research by Klinowska and Brown found no reason why such a ban should be undertaken.

A View To A Kill

A recent survey reported in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper makes very interesting reading on a number of levels.  It was reporting on a survey carried out by the animal-rights lobby group The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in regards to the Japanese’s attitude to whaling and the consumption of whale products.  The poll was commissioned and undertaken by the Nippon Research Centre - a total of 1,200 people were surveyed aged 15 to 79 across all geographical areas in the country.

The survey found that 26.8% of people agreed with Japan's hunting of about 900 whales each year whilst 18.5% opposed the hunts - the rest were undecided.  Of those polled 88.8% had not bought whale meat in the past 12 months.  The IFAW tried hard to make a positive spin on this last statistic by declaring in a press briefing: "The people of Japan are taking whale meat off the menu”.  But as always this issue is far more complex and the poll seems actually to suggest a total failure on the part of the animal-rights and environmental lobby to persuade the Japanese to stop hunting whales – which also should include the smaller cetaceans such as dolphins.

The question to be asked is why this has happened after years of lobbying and one answer could be that the lobbyists, particularly the animal-rights groups, have produced confusing and mixed messages not helped by a rabid opposition to perhaps a huge and potential allay in the guise of the international zoological display community.

Perhaps one of the most insidious examples of misdirection by the lobbyists was the “award winning” 2009 film The Cove.  Whilst certainly not the first to reveal the dolphin and whale drive hunts in Japan, the film renewed and galvanise public opinion on the matter.  

Some excellent data on the drive hunts can be found HERE.

However, it did unfortunately spend a large amount of time side-tracking away from the bloody killing of the dolphins and small whales driven into the cove to highlight the small number of animals that escape death by being selected for sale to mainly Asian aquariums and parks.  Reviewing any press release or web page produced by the many and various groups lobbying against the drive hunt one could be forgiven to think that live-capture was the primary objective of the hunt not food or “pest control” (as some local fisherman have called it).  This despite many zoos and aquariums having made clear position statements against the hunts in the past. 

More details of this debate can be found HERE.

It is not, of course, any small chance that one of the primary movers and shakers in the The Cove was former 1960’s dolphin trainer and now animal-rights activist Ric O’Barry whose anti-captive agenda over-arched the film to such an extent that the real tragedy of the hunting of these thousands of animals was a foot-note to his (and the producers) erroneous claims that the objective driving the slaughter was the “aquarium industry”.  This despite the fact that the hunt has been undertaken for hundreds of years with the issue of acquiring animals for captive displays relatively a new phenomena only a couple of decades old.  Is it no wonder that the central message - the bloody killing of thousands of animals - has become lost to the general public in Japan and elsewhere in pursuit of an anti-captive agenda by the animal-rights industry. 

In 1992, the BBC Nature programme presented a programme featuring the whale hunts and an investigation by the environmental group the The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).  They wanted to discover what actually was happen to whale meat in Japan. 

Their conclusions were very different from the conclusion of the recent survey by IFAW.  They found that whale meat consumption was not high but this was due to the sheer expense of the product with the general Japanese public only consuming it in any quantities when it was place of special offer.  Perhaps more alarming was the fate of the small whales and dolphins killed in the various drive fisheries which their undercover investigation revealed were being sold as “whale meat”.  During the course of the programme alternative revenue generation and public education to the merits of cetaceans as living natural resources was explored and the subject of whale watching was discussed.  Interestingly, this included not only coastal watching by boat but also the observation of animals with zoological collections - a point now so vilified by operators and supporters of the animal-rights industry. 

It seems things really have not changed since the 1990’s for the animals killed each year in drive hunts except for the few who may find their way into an aquarium or zoo.   It could be suggested that it would be a bit more logical if those who sincerely want to see an end to drive hunts should actually focus on the realities of the issues rather than get side-tracked into the personal agendas of a small but influential  groups of animal-rights activist with personal axes the grind regarding cetceans in captive care which if actually banned tomorrow would not stop the drive hunt slaughter and could (by depriving some people direct contact with animals in zoos and aquariums) take away one of the avenues of direct communication needed to make a difference to thousands of animal butchered annually in Japan.