Killer whales, car parks and The Whale Sanctuary.

The entertainment website LAD Bible perpetuating pseudoscience rather than objective journalism

"...there is no evidence to suggest the size of zoo car park should determine the size of their animal exhibits…"

One of the arguments against having large animals in human care such as whales and dolphins is that in the wild these animals range over large areas. This is then presented juxtaposed to the habitats these animals are provided with within human care. 

One such animal-rights meme (promoted by the animal rights group the Orca Project) has been an aerial photograph of one of the SeaWorld parks comparing the killer whale habitat with the size of the car park and an ornamental lake. As always this is an appeal to emotion from the animal rights industry. Moreover, as regards animal welfare it is not valid, particularly when comparing the life of animals in the wild with those in human care.

First, there is the obvious observation that there is no scientific correlation between the size of a car park in a zoological collection with the size of the facilities needed for the successful care of the animals they exhibit. Further, such a comparison is erroneous because in the wild many animal species may travel long distances for two primary reasons: one is to forage for food and the other is reproduction. They have to undertake these behaviours as a matter of survival: they are not undertaking this for recreational reasons. 

In fact, research that looked into the provisioning (feeding) of wild animals actually demonstrates that these animals do not move away from the area where they are being fed. This is why many countries like the USA prohibit the feeding of wild animals by the public because it distorts their natural behaviour; makes animals dependent on humans for their food and it can compromise their welfare. A case in point is the wild dolphins living in Australia at Monkey Mai where provisioning of the animals by the public has caused serious problems as regards animals welfare.

Moreover, animals in human care are living in artificial environments and therefore the dynamics are different than the wild. They are dependent on their food from their caretakers which does not involve the animals having to travel long distances. Therefore, giving them environments to live in that reflect travelling distance when foraging for food in the wild serves no useful purpose.

This is not to say that in human care animals can be kept in any form of restricted environment but these considerations need to be objectively assessed. Again, using the travelling distances that animals need to forage in the wild is not an appropriate parameter. It should be noted that a number of countries including the United States, have specific legislation that regulates the parameters of care that animals must be given. 

The Whale Sanctuary Project and their need for animals.

Perhaps it's worth considering why the animal rights industry is taking so much time and trouble with these kinds of campaigns. 

Originally, SeaWorld was going to extend their killer whale facilities in a project called the Blue World Project. However, problems developed in California in October 2015 when the California Coastline Commission (under pressure from animal rights activists) try to dictate SeaWorld's animal husbandry policy. The Commission stated that SeaWorld must undertake a breeding ban of their killer whales before they will give permission for the new facility to be built. SeaWorld then commenced suing the California Coastline Commission. 

However, Joel Manby - who became CEO of SeaWorld in December 2014 - announced in March 2016 that the group would discontinue breeding their killer whales in all their parks. Manby stated that his reason for instigating a group ban was due to the California Coastline Commission's decision. 

However, with a breeding ban in place across all the parks, SeaWorld made a business decision to cancelled its expansion plans for all their killer whale exhibits. As there were no plans to add additional animals to their current killer whale population, expansion plans were considered not viable due to the diminishing number of animals that would occur over the years.

In the meantime various animal rights activists meet in Vancouver, Canada to discussed the possibility of setting up a facility for holding killer whales. 

In April 2016, the Whale Sanctuary Project, as it was to be called, was officially launched; at this current time the Sanctuary only publicly exists as a website and they have yet to find a suitable location for the construction of the project. However, and perhaps more importantly, they have yet to raise the huge amounts of money needed to construct such a facility. In a meeting in Washington State in July 2019, The Whale Sanctuary stated the estimated cost of the project was 15 to 20 million US dollars for initial construction and 2 million dollars a year running costs which would maintain 6 to 8 whales. SeaWorld current display 20 killer whales at their parks.

Nevertheless, if such an animal rights run marine facility is going to be viable it needs to be populated with animals to attract visitors and generate income to secure its future. Therefore, these groups are targeting facilities such as SeaWorld's because they want their animals for there own marine park. With this in mind, it is easy to see why they continue to target SeaWorld despite the park being committed to a breeding ban with the current existing killer whales being the last to be displayed at the parks.

Other related blogs

Sea Pens: Not the Panacea They Are Perceived

Killer Whales, SeaWorld and Media Credibility

Not So Scientific American

No the killer whale did not say "set me free"

Killer Whales, SeaWorld and Media Credibility

As always the satirical web site The Onion gets it right.  Unfortunately, this could be reported as a fact by the mainstream press and science magazines.

Very little objective analysis by these news outlets as to the accuracy of the information presented within this documentary. Moreover, it is simply not the case that there is no alternative information available as this can easily be found on SeaWorld's supporting web sites and other legitimate sources. These go into a great deal of detail as to why Blackfish should not be viewed as a valid and objective documentary.

With yet another twist and turn in the saga of SeaWorld and its killer whales, it was erroneously announced by both popular and the scientific press that the San Diego Park would be phasing out its killer whale shows in 2016. 

  In point of fact, this is not exactly what was said at the SeaWorld press conference. The fact that both the mainstream (and even the scientific press) seem completely incapable of reporting anything to do with the whole issue of SeaWorld and its killer whales objectively should be a cause of serious alarm.  What SeaWorld has actually decided to do is to change the format of its killer whale show at San Diego to incorporate a more educational remit rather than the current more theatrical presentations that can be seen at the other two American parks. 

One of the worst offenders in the reporting of the issues regarding SeaWorld and its animal care is the U.K.'s The Guardian and The Independent newspapers. Within the last year alone The Guardian has produced over a dozen articles on SeaWorld - all with a negative spin on the issue of SeaWorld and its animal care. The Guardian even invited the producer of the film Blackfish Gabriela Cowperthwaite to write an article about this subject. As far as a review of the contents of the Guardian reveals not once has the newspaper invited anyone from SeaWorld to undertake a similar exercise or to directly comment on their articles – aside from comments lifted from other news agencies and press releases.  

Within the last year alone The Guardian alone has produced over a dozen articles on SeaWorld - all with a negative spin on the issue of SeaWorld and its animal care.

To compound these problems the majority of this copy is produced by the Guardian's regional reporters or syndicated from releases by Associated Press. This is disappointing because the Guardian has an excellent science reporting team who would inevitably have taken a more considered and scientific approach to the animal welfare issues which is at the heart of this debate.

Moreover, it is continually disturbing that the Guardian and other print and web-based news outlets somehow still seem to think that the film "Blackfish" should be taken on face value as being both accurate and factual. The actuality is there has been very little objective analysis by these news outlets as to the accuracy of the information presented within this documentary. Moreover, it is simply not the case that there is no alternative information available as this can easily be found on SeaWorld's supporting web sites and other legitimate sources. These go into a great deal of detail as to why Blackfish should not be viewed as a valid and objective documentary.

If reputable news and scientific-based magazine sites were reporting an issue such as the anti-vaccine movement there would be demanded a definitely more objective and rigorous examination of the facts. It is not without irony that the seminal work that was very much a trigger for the huge amounts of interest in SeaWorld and the care of its killer whales (and the production of the film "Blackfish") was written by investigative reporter David Kirby in his book Death at SeaWorld. If one looks at the body of Kirby's work prior to Death at SeaWorld he authored a book in 2006 entitled: Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. This book promoted the notion that the Mumps Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine was responsible for autism in children; a view that David Kirby still seems to support.

It was a UK general practitioner Dr Andrew Wakefield who produced the now discredited research on the MMR vaccine and autism.  As a result, he was removed from practising medicine in the United Kingdom.  However, David Kirby seems to have escaped a similar fate from his peers as regards his credibility as an investigative journalist. Why this red flag has been to all intents and purposes completely ignored when reporting issues regarding SeaWorld and the care of its killer whales remain extremely puzzling.

It seems that unfortunately when it comes to reporting issues regarding the compromising of animal welfare in situations such as zoos and aquariums and other animal keeping enterprises many journalists appear to lose all sense of objective analysis and reporting that they would not do for many other subjects - such as the controversy over vaccination as cited above. Why this is happening is something of a mystery but it does not bode well when journalist do not report issues regarding animal welfare evenhandedly and by doing this they do a disservice to their readers. 

Further Background

Blackfish and the Black Arts of Propaganda

 More Blackfish Backlash – Tilikum’s Trainer Dives In

Blackfish Exposed by Former SeaWorld Trainer

Blackfish and the Selective Skeptic

Killer whales, Politics and Animal-Rights.

Killer whales, Politics and Animal-Rights.

I am sure that this animal-rights led pantomime will continue to roll on. Unfortunately, I am minded to think that the only people who will profit from this are lawyers and the least likely are going to be the killer whales and their care at SeaWorld. 

Perhaps it should be a given that politicians should be very wary of getting involved in areas of science where they have very little or no specialist knowledge. This is particularly true in the area of animal welfare – which actually can be considered a science that can be objectively studied. This situation has become even more complex since the inception of the philosophical concept of animal-rights which as many have pointed out bears little relationship to issues of animal welfare.

A recent case in point is the continuing controversy regarding the SeaWorld's zoological parks and their care and husbandry of killer whales. This has been exacerbated by the much promoted film Blackfish which those who have regularly read the comments and blogs on this site will be very familiar with. The problems with this particular film have been discussed elsewhere and therefore I will not revisit old ground in this particular article.

The latest developments in the saga of the animal-rights lobby groups particular the organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) is an ongoing campaign to stop the SeaWorld Park developing larger habitats for their killer whales. This recently culminated in this organisation and its supporters lobbying the California Coastal Commission who have jurisdiction on allowing planning permission for SeaWorld's to undertake the new killer whale exhibit in San Diego. The resultant current outcome of the Commission's ruling aptly demonstrates the concerns regarding politics and animal welfare alluded to at the beginning of this article.

First, the California Coastal Commission is there to undertake stewardship of coastal resources in California and is primarily involved in making sure that planning decisions do not negatively impact on the environment. However, they are not there to make moral or other judgements on how organisations or businesses operate beyond that point. For them to give permission for the extension of the killer whale habitat at SeaWorld's but then bind it to issues regarding the husbandry of their animals - the cessation of their killer whale breeding programme and a banning of movements of animals within zoological facilities - is clearly not within their legal remit. For those people who do not understand this position a way to think of it is this: would it be acceptable for this same Commission to grant permission to allow the building of a new carnivore exhibit at San Diego zoo or Wild Animal Park and then turned round to that institution and tell them that they cannot breed these animals or move them to other facilities. This would be particularly pertinent if the animals concerned were also part of an international breeding programme.

Clearly it was the actions of the lobbying of PeTA that seems to have forced the Commissions hand in introducing these Draconian amendments to the planning permission of SeaWorld's new killer whale habitat. Interestingly, the same set of criteria was forcibly imposed on the publicly owned Vancouver Aquarium last year. The board that oversees the aquariums operation tried to initially ban the display cetaceans at the aquarium and when this failed tried to force a ruling that banned animal breeding and movement between other zoological facilities. Again this was a group of local politicians who had been influenced or had sympathies with the animal-rights movement. Fortunately, the animal management team at the Vancouver Aquarium challenge this ruling and it was overturned.

A second point to ponder is that PeTA and their associated protesters – who lobbied at the Commission meeting – have all publicly made declarations they wish to acquire the killer whales at SeaWorld's to be takento a sanctuary (zoo) run by themselves or their associates. Therefore, it would seem that here we may well have a legal conflict of interest insomuch that these animal-rights lobby groups and their supporters are actually taking action against a "business competitor" e.g. SeaWorld's which may well be at the very least legally dubious. This seems to have been something that the Commission has not fully realised.

I am sure that this animal-rights led pantomime will continue to roll on. Unfortunately, I am minded to think that the only people who will profit from this are lawyers and the least likely are going to be the killer whales and their care at SeaWorld. 

As a final thought, because we are now seeing a considerable amount of blurring of lines between a political ideology of animal-rights and the realities of animal welfare – not helped by the involvement of naive politicians – we are going to depressingly see considerably more examples of this nonsense in years to come.


Update: 15 October 2015. SeaWorld announced that it will challenge  ruling that banned the company from breeding captive killer whales at its San Diego park.

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.

Jane Goodall: GMO & Echolocating Dolphins

Her allegation that the sounds the animals produce when using their echolocation bounce back from the walls of their tanks in their exhibits is correct but that is exactly how echolocation works.

Dr Jane Goodallis a scientist who became famous for her research in primatology particularly her work with wild chimpanzees in Africa specifically Gombe in Tanzania when she began her studies in the early 1960s. In 1986,  she published her first major work which was an accumulation of 25 years of original research in The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behaviour. She went on to found the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 who amongst their mission statements state:

"Improve global understanding and treatment of great apes through research, public education and advocacy"

In later years, she became something of a wildlife celebrity and broadened her interests into other areas of environmentalism and animal-rights. 

From 1998 to 2008, she was a director of the animal-rights group Advocates for Animals: a group that was originally founded as the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection and was later rebranded as OneKind. She resigned this post in 2008 for reasons that some have suggested was due to her support of a new chimpanzee exhibit at Edinburgh zoo which went against OneKind's ethos of: "keeping animals in captivity for entertainment".   

She was later involved in more controversy with accusations of plagiarism in her 2012 book "Seeds of Hope".   

More recently she has been criticised for her support of "Altered Genes, Twisted Truth" an anti-GMO polemic written by the American lawyer Steve Druker. To this end, her position was also criticised in the sceptical pod cast Skeptic's Guide to the Universe under the section "The Dumbest Thing I Heard This Week"
 

However, Dr Goodall's most recent foray into areas of controversy is her attack on the SeaWorld marine parks and its keeping of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) reported in the Huffington Post and picked up by a number of other media outlets.   

This is not the first time that she has attacked the practice of keeping cetaceans in captive care as over a year ago she also attacked the non-profit Vancouver Public Aquarium for their public display of cetaceans. Unfortunately, there seems to be no evidence that she has visited either Vancouver Aquarium (or indeed the SeaWorld parks) or directly spoken to their staff and scientists regarding her concerns despite an open invitation to do so.

Of course, the major problem with Dr Goodall's vociferous opinions is that she does not actually have any direct research knowledge of whales and dolphins either in aquaria or the wild as she remains above all an expert on African fauna and specifically primates.

This is clearly obvious in her comments regarding dolphin echolocation(sonar). Further, she confuses the echolocation of dolphins with their communication skills - the two are unrelated.

Her statement that the sounds the animals produce when using their echolocation bounce back from the walls of their exhibits is correct - that is exactly how echolocation works - but at this point her understanding sadly falters.

Dolphin echolocation is very sophisticated and it is this very sophistication that make them exquisite tools the dolphins exploit when hunting or exploring their environment; the sophistication of the dolphins echolocation is believed by some to be the reason these animals have complex brains.

In using their echolocation, dolphins are fully capable of controlling their echolocation beam in both direction and strength (volume); it is not a blunt instrument and animals have total control of this function in a similar way we humans can vary the volume and pitch when we are talking. As stated, echolocation is used is for hunting or investigating objects.

Further, it should be realised that dolphins also have extremely good eyesight both above and below the surface (echolocation only works within the aquatic environment) and will sometime rely on their eye-sight and not their echolocation skills.

Moreover, there is no evidence to support Goodall's claim that dolphins in captivity live in an "acoustic hell" and such erroneous beliefs appear to have been lifted directly from animal-rights websites and are not accurate.  Dolphins actively control their sonar it is nether autonomous or an unconscious sense.

It is somewhat ironic that if Dr Goodall had taken the opportunity to research dolphin echolocation she may well have been surprised to learn that much of the pioneering research into this ability was undertaken in captivity in laboratories and aquariums; originally by scientists such as Arthur McBride at the Marine Studios (Marineland of Florida) in the 1940s and later Dr Winthrop Kellogg in the 1950s (Au, 1993). It is a further irony that prior to this Dr Kellogg had also undertaken chimpanzee language research and Dr Goodall may well have been familiar with his early endeavours.

In fact, if Dr Goodall and her followers are so concerned about the welfare of dolphins such as killer whales they need to be looking to the wild and groups living on the eastern Pacific as these appear to be having serious problems far more pressing than animals cosseted in a well run aquarium.

Finally, her comments that dolphins "have a emotion like ours" perhaps reveals how far she as a scientist has drifted from viewing things with true objectivity. 

To this end, Dr Goodall would be advised to review Dr Justin Gregg's recent book regarding dolphin cognition "Are Dolphins Really Smart: the Mammal behind the Myth" published in 2013.

In this book, Dr Greg puts into perspective the fallacy of the much vaulted intelligence of dolphins which is greatly exaggerated. He primarily lays the fault of this erroneous perception at the doors of neuroscientist DrJohn Lilly and his work with dolphins in the 1960s. Lilly was a man who became over time an incredibly controversial figure who (after the funding dried up for his dolphin language work from groups such as NASA) went on and experimented with floatation chambers and drugs. He even injected LSD into dolphins to see what effect it would have on them.

Unfortunately, Lilly later became a guru for the counter-culture movement in which he perpetuated and extolled many views which by this point had strayed considerably from rational science into the world of metaphysics and sadly pseudo-science.

Finally, it would be more accurate to maintain that chimpanzees are probably cognitively more sophisticated than dolphins. Which makes Dr Goodall's position on dolphins in captive care even more disappointing and contradictory in that she seems to be willing to accept and support chimpanzees in zoological establishments such as Edinburgh zoo; support elephants being transferred to a zoo rather an animal-rights run sanctuary but illogically attacks the keeping of dolphins in all well-run aquariums or zoos.

More of dolphin echolocation HERE