WDCS: Raking out the truth?

The UK Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) really does not like cetaceans in captive care and leaves no stone unturned to spend its’ members donations on this “conservation” issue even to the point of paying the salary for a “Captivity Programme Manager”.

One of their latest reported concerns on their web site is some injuries seen on a killer whale Ikaika (Ike) housed at Sea World California who returned to the park in November 2011 after a breeding loan to Marineland Canada.  Full WDCS article can be read HERE.

WDCS state: “Ike has suffered from a variety of injuries since returning to SeaWorld and attempting to reintegrate into the orca hierarchy in San Diego, including deep rake marks that were evidenced in December 2011”

 One injury displayed in the article does seem to be a scrap mark that may have been caused by the newly introduced “safety barriers” that the US government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) ordered Sea World to install.  But the other marks are indeed rake marks on Ikaika and also alluded to on another killer whale Morganexhibited at Loro Park, Spain.

Rake marks are to a greater or lesser degree seen in all species of toothed whale.  Primary they are gained during rough play behaviour, sexually interactions and social dominance.  It has been claimed that killer whales display very few rake marks in the wild and supporters of this often cite the work of Visser (1993).  Visser studied killer whales in New Zealand’s waters, where two whales observed had prolific body scarring (rake marks) from assumed interactions with other whales while seven whales were also seen to have collapsing, collapsed or bent dorsal fins.

In her conclusion Visser states:

The prolific body scars on the two adult male killer whales appear to be unusual and are the first of their type reported in the literature. They are almost certainly caused by conspecifics. The collapsing, collapsed and bent  dorsal fins found on the New Zealand killer whales do not appear to be uncommon in this population,  with 23%, of the adult males having some form of abnormal fin (Visser, 1993).

Unfortunately, these comments have been interpreted by a number of people to mean that rank marks are not commonly seen on wild killer whales, which is not the case. Visser is making a statement that these two animals have very extensive and unusual rank marks, which the pictures in her paper clearly show.

However, a quick review of photo IDs from various whale research organisations around the world such as the NAKID project and the Centre for Whale Research show that  rake marks can be clearly seen on many animals and are not uncommon.

Moreover, Dahlhelm (2008) states:

Resident and transient whales typically showed extensive rake marks on their dorsal fins and body made by the conical-shaped teeth of conspecifics

The WDCS seem incapable of understanding the actual social dynamics of many zoo animals when new animals are introduced within a group and continue to promote the idea that these superficial marks are some form of evidence that the animals’ welfare is being consistently compromised.  Indeed, if this these animals were displaying the gross body scarring Vissel cited in her paper or animals where being injured over a prolonged period of time there would be genuine cause for concern but this is not the case.

WDCS also state: “It is not uncommon for orcas to be transported between SeaWorld facilities, or even abroad to international facilities, such as the four SeaWorld orcas that were shipped to Loro Parque in 2006. The constant movement and relocation between facilities is extremely stressful for orcas”

Indeed “constant movement” could be stressful for many zoo animals including killer whales but the facts show that the WDCS is being rather disingenuous.

To start with moving animals within the zoo world is quite common and undertaken primarily for reasons of improved husbandry and breeding; of the twenty-five killers currently exhibited by Sea World twenty (80%) have been acquired by captive breeding programmes.

A review of the available data in the last ten years reveals thirteen transports of killer whales between marine parks involving Sea World.

April 2004: 

• Tekoa from Sea World Florida to Sea World Texas
• Tuar from Sea World Florida to Sea World Texas
• Keet from Sea World California to Sea World Texas
• Kohana from Sea World California to Sea World Florida
• Takara from Sea World California to Sea World Florida

Taraka was moved from Sea World Florida to Sea Texas in February 2009 where she remains at the time of writing.  Keet was moved from Sea World Texas in February 2012 and returned to Sea World California.   Kohana moved to Loro Park in 2006.  The remaining animals have not been moved since the above-cited transports.

Feburary 2006:

• Skyla from Sea World Florida to Loro Park
• Kohana from Sea World Florida to Loro Park
• Tekoa from Sea World Texas to Loro Park
• Keto from Sea World Texas to Loro Park

These four captive bred animals Skyla, Kohana, Tekoa and Keto were moved to a new purpose built fancily in Loro Park.  Currently there are no plans to move these animals .  Since their arrival the group of animals has increased by two with the birth of a calf in 2010 and the relocation of a stranded killer orca rescued by the Harderwijk Marine Mammal Park called Morgan.

November 2006: 

·         Kayla from Sea World Texas to Sea World to Sea World Florida

·         Ikaika from Sea World California to Marineland Canada

Captive born Kayla was moved to Florida after she failed to rear her first calf and it was considered she needed to obtain observational experience of calf rearing from experinced animals. She is reported to have integrated well with the Florida group

Ikaika that is cited in the linked WDCS article was moved to Marineland in Canada on breeding loan but returned to Sea World California in November 2011 after Sea World became concerned about the animal's "physical and psychological health" and filed court proceeding for the animals return.  Of course, if Sea World were concerned about this animals welfare then ultimately it had no choice than to move it back into its direct care. 

The WDCS finally state: “…public display industry is a threat to populations in the wild that are targeted by live capture operations used to supply public display programs worldwide.”

This is actually a puzzling statement as in the USA no killer whales has been acquired from the wild since 1983 and as stated 80% of the animals at Sea World have been acquired by captive breeding and there appears absolutely no plans by Sea World to deliberately capture more killer whales from the wild.  A full list of the current living population of captive killer whales can be found HERE.

Update: 

Shouka, a killer whale formally of the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, was transported to Sea World California on 20 August 2012.  Shouka was born on February 25, 1993 in Marineland, France.  She was transferred on breeding loan to Six Flags Parks in May  20, 2002.  However, no suitable mate was acquire for her. 

Source: Killer Whale Moves to San Diego | NBC 7 San Diego

Uacari

 

The Life of Animals | Uacari | Uacari is the common name for New World monkeys of the genus Cacajao. The uakaris are unusual among New World monkeys in the tail length (15-18 cm) is considerably smaller than its head and body length (40-45 cm). Their bodies are covered with long hair and loose, but their heads are bald.

The Uacari Calvo is north and south of the Amazon River, the Sustainable Development Reserve Mamirauá Japurá. The Black-headed Uacari is north of the southern Amazon and Rio Negro. The Fog Uacari is north of the Rio Negro, west of Rio Marauia Casiquiare and east of the canal. Uakari be found in the Amazon flooded neotropical forests or wetlands, including Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela

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DOLPHINARIA DILEMMA - HARD FACT OR HYPE?

The article below was originally written and published over 20 years ago in 1991.  And yet, despite this not much has changed as regards the rhetoric and propaganda of the animal-rights groups opposed to dolphins in zoos and aquariums.

US Navy 050411-N-3419D-056 A female bottlenose dolphin BJ performs her daily exercises while her trainer, Dera Look (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

                              DOLPHINARIA DILEMMA - HARD FACT OR HYPE?

Originally pubished in Ratel: Journal of the Association of British Wild Animal Keepers, 

Volume 18, Number 2. 1991 © The Association of British Wild Animal Keepers    

Public interest in dolphins and whales has increased in recent times. However, some concerns relating to the welfare of captive dolphins have been very much over-stated, and some otherwise well-meaning animal and environment lobby groups have presented a very unfair picture of the captive environment in which these animals live.

It has even been suggested that the small cetacea cannot be held in the captive environment successfully at all. This was in fact stated by Sean Whyte, leader of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, on the BBC radio programme The Natural World in July 1990. Whyte had just returned from co-hosting the Bellevire Foundation Symposium on captive whales and dolphins chaired by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan. The meeting was billed as the first of its kind by the September edition of BBC Wildlife magazine, despite the fact that that year the European Association for Aquatic Mammals (EAAM) held its 18th annual symposium and the International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) held its 18th annual conference, both dealing in issues relating to the care of captive marine mammals. It is also of interest that neither the EAAM or IMATA were asked to attend this 'invitation only' meeting, although 'animal rights' factions such as the UK 'Zoo Check' did attend.

Arguments against dolphin keeping at such meetings as the Bellevire are based in part on aesthetic considerations and expression of personal taste, and these cannot be considered valid when making objective judgements on animal welfare issues. Other views are developed by the presentation of false, misleading, out-of-date and/or incomplete information. Unfortunately, the correcting of such claims and/or placing such information into its true context is often ignored or not given adequate coverage by the media.

One example of how information on dolphins can be mis-represented can be found on the front page of the December edition of the Zoo Check news magazine promoting the charity's 'In To The Blue' dolphin project. It pictures a dolphin jumping clear of the water in the open sea, an insert shows a photo of a dolphin's head above the water taken at an unnamed dolphinarium. The captive dolphin had some scarring to its beak, and this had been circled along with the animal's eye and a small scar above its eye. The caption reads 'Dolphins - From one extreme .. to another'.'. Clearly, the suggestion is that the captive dolphin has suffered itsscars and marks from its captive situation and they are abnormal.

However, it does not state the captive dolphin's age or sex, if it is in a breeding group and so forth. The reason these points are important is that more or less identical skin conditions can be seen on most old male wild dolphins. The wild dolphin "Freddy", living in the Amble Harbour area off the east coast of England, is a prime example of such markings.

Although dolphin keeping has only been undertaken in the UK since the mid-sixties, we enter a new decade with the art and science of successful dolphin husbandry a reality. But the sins of the substandard operators, in the past, still haunt those who keep dolphins today, even though modern-day dolphinaria are maintaining their animals to the highest standards. Put into historical context, it is true that dolphin keeping by some operators during the late sixties and early seventies left much to be desired. No effective legal framework for the keeping of dolphins existed. Some animals were mis-handled and poorly accommodated and it is no surprise that under these circumstances animals died. However, the acts of these and any prospective unscrupulous entrepreneurs are now controlled by new and strict UK dolphinaria welfare regulations, incorporated into the 1981 Zoo Licensing Act. Dolphins and whales housed in British zoos and aquaria now have some of the best animal welfare protection in the world.

As stated, much of the evidence presented against modern dolphinaria is based on myths or particular incidents and accidents in the past, that not only legislation, but today's well-run dolphinaria, would not allow. This does not, unfortunately, stop the flow of negative propaganda by some groups to an ever eager media, hungry for the latest environment concern news story. Many of these negative claims against dolphinaria can be answered and placed in their true perspective.

One very common assertion is that dolphins only live a fraction of their normal life-span in captivity. However, the Government's new regulations for dolphinaria that were formulated from an independent (Government-sponsored) report by Dr Margaret Klinowska and Dr Susan Brown do not agree.The report's brief was to consider if dolphins and small whales should continue to be kept in the UK and, if so, suggest standards for the operation of dolphinaria. In that report, A Review of Doiphinaria (M. Klinowska and S. Brown, Department of the Environment, London, 1986), the authors concluded that survivorship in well-kept captive animals could not be shown to be very different from the wild.

Also, research by DeMaster and Dervenak (Marine Mammal Science4(4): 279-31, 1988) and Wells and Scott (Reports of the InternationalWhaling Commission Special Issue 12: 407-415, 1990) provided a compavtive study of both wild and captive dolphin populations. The research found that there was very little difference in captive or wild dolphin life-spans for animals of comparable age ranges.

However, one interesting finding was that there were differences in life-spans of animals which related directly to their treatment by some aquaria and zoos. Thus supporting once again that it is the management and husbandry that are the critical factors for the welfare of captive dolphins, not that the animals are impossible candidates for captive management.

Some concern was expressed at the pools these animals are kept in, statements such as "a dolphin living in the wild swims freely in about 40 square miles of seawater and that to these active creatures any pool is like a featureless concrete cage". Although these comments sound appealing to the lay person, the statement is basically emotive and scientifically inept. It is very important to remember that in animal welfare issues recommendations for particular features are not made on the basis of what people think may be best for that animal, without evidence to support that belief. To use the ranges of wild dolphins as a base for calculating the space needs of captives is not appropriate, because the situations are quite different. Wild animals need to forage over a certain area in order to obtain sufficient food, something they need not undertake in captivity. The example of, say, 40 square miles is not specific to all dolphins, not even those of the same species. There may also be different requirements of areas travelled relating to age and sex of the individual. In captivity, where food is provided, the space requirements are related to social and exercise needs. In the Dolphinaria Review no evidence was found that captive dolphins experienced undue or unnecessary stress in pools which were built to accommodate these needs.

One major concern expressed from some lobby groups relate to the use of chemicals such as chlorine in the water system of some dolphinaria to break down wastes and control micro-organisms. There is no contemporary evidence that properly maintained and treated water in a dolphinarium is damaging to a dolphin's health. Chlorine itself is very safe and has been tried and tested in public drinking and swimming water for over a century, but of course, like all chemicals, if mis-used it can be harmful; it should be remembered that even life-saving drugs such as the antibiotics can be harmful if not appropriately administered. The chlorination of water is a complex affair; eye and skin irritation can sometimes occur in situations of high levels of pollution. However, the concern over using chlorine in dolphinaria because of experience with eye and skin irritation in public swimming pools is not valid. The management of chlorine in public swimming pools is very different from the dolphinarium. Unlike swimming pool staff, dolphinarium staff have an exact idea of the day-to-day pollution load placed in the pool and how much chlorine should be added to maintain the water in a balanced and pure state, free from irritation. Further, all authenticated cases of damage to dolphins from chemicals have resulted from gross misuse or accidents many years in the past, mainly from chlorine dosed in a gaseous form, which is no longer used in the UK.

Perhaps it should be remembered that seawater itself is full of chemicals, some of which are toxic and have found their way into the sea via rivers or dumped at sea by man. It is somewhat ironic that in a well-run dolphinarium, dolphins can be swimming in water of a better standard than many of the world's coastal areas.

One charge also made regarding the training methods employed to train dolphins is that animals are often starved until they learn. One source for this belief was a story reported in the national press sometime ago that the trainer of one of the dolphins used 20 years ago in the television series Flipper starved the animal into submission to get it to perform. However, if this was so, it only proved that the trainer in question was incompetent.

Modern animal training is based on reward for co-operation between man and animal, and starvation has no place in this. The 1989 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare symposium was a review and commentary on current practice of both wild and domestic animal training. Many speakers at the symposium - Kiley-Worthington, de Groot and Kastelain - presented evidence that wild animals, including dolphins, can be trained to co-operate with humans in a humane and positive way. Also, research by Kastelain demonstrated that training animals enriched their environment and stopped stereotyped behaviour. Many of the behaviours demonstrated by dolphins in public displays are taken from the animals' own natural swimming and jumping repertoire.

One outcome of all the current propaganda is that many begin to think that because dolphins are said to be highly intelligent mammals with complex social lives, they deserve special status. But why should dolphins deserve any more or less special welfare treatment than other captive mammals and birds, and just how 'intelligent' is the dolphin?

The animals have the ability to learn and retain behaviours, but most higher mammals can do this at the same rate as a dolphin. The dolphin may have a large complex brain, but brain size is an unsatisfactory indicator of 'intelligence'. The spiny anteater has a brain with more neocortex, weight for weight, than humans, but no-one is suggesting they have superior intelligence. It should be remembered that the brain size 'intelligence' argument was widely used by anatomists to oppose civil rights for women at the turn of this century.

In Macphail's review (Brain and Intelligence in Vertebrates, Clarenden Press, Oxford, 1981), it concluded that brain size and characteristics are unsatisfactory indicators of 'intelligence'. Even if dolphins are 'higher' mammals, why should they be more worthy of better conservation and welfare standards than any other animal?

Dolphins may live in complex societies, but so, indisputably, do ants and bees. Do we ban the keeping of bees to make honey, due to their complex social life?

Finally, we have the latest ploy by some animal pressure groups that all dolphins should be released back into the freedom of the open sea and to this end they are trying to set up 'retirement, rehabilitation and release' centres for the 'captives'.

Of course, freedom is an abstract human concept: nothing in the biological world, including humans, is free. Was perhaps the young sealion, shown on the excellent BBC Trials of Life programme being tossed around the ocean on the tail of an orca, before being torn to bits and eaten, celebrating its freedom?

It should also be remembered that disease and death are not the exclusive domain of the captive environment.

Returning animals to the wild may sound a good idea, but it is also fraught with practical problems. Research on the wild bottle-nosed dolphin shows that dolphins tend to be in groups that stay in one specific range or area and that animals returned to the wild should be introduced back to the original location.

Not all dolphins are eligible for re-release. It has been found that the most likely successful candidates would be related juvenile males as these tend to form bonds with others of their age and do leave the main dolphin group's normal range.

Despite claims, there has not been any scientifically-controlled re release of captive dolphins. At the moment a project involving dolphin experts Dr Ken Norris and Dr Randy Wells plans to place two young males back to their capture location after spending two years in captivity, trained for re-release, so that the animals' movements and behaviour can be systematically studied.

Dolphins placed back in the wild will be tame and habituated to humans, which could put them in grave danger from humans not well-disposed to the animals. Also, animals not placed back to their place of capture can bring disease, such as viruses (which can be carried for many years without ill health to their host), into dolphin groups with no immunities to such disease. It is known that some populations of bottle-nosed dolphin off Florida do carry the morbillvirus, a similar virus to the one which caused the recent European seal epidemic.

Any retirement centre should also be located in areas which have national and international protection in law for the animals in case of mis-management or break-down of funding of the projects and so forth. For example, the Caribbean dolphin retirement project "Into the Blue" is based in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Although these islands are a UK Dependent Territory, they are not protected by any CITES regulations or UK dolphin welfare laws.

On balance, dolphin 'retirement, re-release' projects may be well-meaning, they also may be good public relations for animal welfare groups, but they have at this time little or no conservation value to the wild dolphin populations. Perhaps the money spent on such projects would in fact be better spent on wild dolphin research and habitat protection.

I wish to thank Dr Margaret Klinowska, Research Group in Mammalian Ecology and Reproduction at the University of Cambridge, for help with much of the information contained in this article.

Adelie Penguins

The Life of Animals | Adelie Penguins | There are 38 colonies of Adelie penguins, and more than 5 million Adélie in the Ross Sea region. Ross Island supports a colony of about half a million Adelie penguins. Adelie penguins breed from October to February, on the coast around the Antarctic continent. Adelie nests built of rough stones. Adelie penguins live in groups called colonies. These penguins are medium in size and weight of 46-75 cm (18-30 inches) long and 3.6 to 6 kg (7.9 to 13 pounds). The tail is a "little more than penguins queues. I am a bit "lower than other penguin species. His appearance is closer to the stereotypical image of penguins, like most black with a white belly. Adelie penguins can swim up to 45 mph (72 km / h) Adelie penguins are leopard seals prey, Skua and whales occasionally fatal.

Like all penguins, the Adelie highly social, feeding and nesting of groups. They are also very aggressive to other penguins who steal stones from their nest. Cherry-Garrard, said: "They are extraordinarily like children, of these people around the world, Antarctica, either as children or old men, full of self-importance. E 'was observed as the Penguin intrigue could put them in danger, Scott found a particularly troublesome The big problem with dog teams is due to the reckless behavior of penguins. These groups were jumping constantly in our iceberg. Since landing on your feet the whole attitude expressed devouring curiosity and a head of pork contempt for his own safety.

to the South Pole has been more receptive to this element of intrigue to Adelia Cherry-Garrard Meares and Dimitri-exercised dogs dog teams on the counter over, when we were stopped for a period of time. For stubborn personality characteristics Cherry-Garrard kept the bird in high esteemThe restriction of competition from these predators led to a surplus of krill, the penguins now used as a source of penguins fooddélie easier to reach their breeding grounds in October or November, in late winter and early spring. Nests consist of stones stacked.

In December, the warmest month in Antarctica (about -2 ° C or 28 ° F), parents take turns incubating the eggs, you'll eat and the other stays to warm the egg. The parent who is incubating does not eat. In March, young adults and their return to the sea. The Adelie penguin living on sea ice, but needs the ice-free land to breed. With the reduction of sea ice and food shortages, the population of Adelie penguins fell 65% in the last 25 years. Adelie penguins youth who have no experience in social interaction can respond to fake stimuli as penguins gather to breed.  Due to the emergence of birds and relatively similar to human behavior, human observers have interpreted this behavior as sexual deviation anthropomorphic.

The brochure, declined for publication in the official reports of the Scott expedition, said the frequency of sexual activity, an auto-erotic behavior, and the apparently anomalous behavior of men and women, young couples, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual abuse and physical chicks and homosexual behavior, "says an analysis by William Russell and his colleagues Douglas Sladen and David Ainley. Levick observe Adelie penguins at Cape Adare, the site of the largest colony of Adelie penguins in the world. The discovery significantly clarifies the behavior of the species that some researchers believe it is an indicator of climate change Adelie penguins live in the area of the Ross Sea, Antarctica and the migration of an average of about 13,000 kilometers (8,100 miles) during the year that follows the sun from their breeding colonies of winter feeding areas and vice versa versa. Longer trips were recorded at 17,600 km (10,900 miles)

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Drive Hunts and Animals Acquired for Dolphinaria.

Page Updated 28 September 2015   The Cove is the 2009 award-winning documentary exposing the annual drive fisheries hunt of dolphins and whales in the whaling village of Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.  Drive fisheries are not historically new and several countries aside from Japan also hunt (or have hunted) animals by this method such as the Solomon Islands, the Faeroe Islands and Peru. The drive fishery at Taiji is believed to have been in existence for more than 350 years. The Cove was actually not the first to document this controversial hunt which has been highlighted over the years by magazines such as the National Geographic and in the television series by the late Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the mid-1970s. Many have rightly been very concerned regarding these hunting methods and questioned both its operation on moral, ethical and animal welfare grounds. However, one aspect of the film that has also proved to be controversial is that in recent years a percentage of animals from this fishery has not been killed but selected for live display in public aquaria and marine parks. In 2007 (the year The Cove was made) official figures show that 13,170 dolphins and whales were hunted and killed in Japan. Of that number 1,239 were hunted in by the drive fishery method and 90 (7.3%) removed alive for aquaria.  Between the years 2000-2013, a total of 19,092 small cetaceans were taken in the drive fishery at Taiji, Japan. 17,686 of those were slaughtered while 1,406 were taken as live-capture for sale to zoos and aquaria. Graph and data courtesy of Cetbase. Unfortunately, the makers of the film have taken the position that suggested that this supply of animals to aquaria and parks was the prime purpose of the hunt and that if it ceased so would the hunt itself. This is not surprising as one of the main protagonists in The Cove is animal-rights activist Ric O'Barry who is stridently opposed to dolphins being held in the care of humans in zoological parks.  Moreover, the film suggests that animals from the hunt are being transported globally to countries such as the USA and that persons visiting these parks are in fact support the killing of dolphins and whales in Japan which is basically untrue. In fact, it should be noted that most of the popular cetaceans held in both the USA (and mainland Europe) are sustained via captive breeding and therefore these populations have no need to acquired animals via live capture operations from the wild. Animals from hunts such as Taiji are generally supplied to aquaria in Asia and the Middle-East and it has recently been alleged that 15 dolphins from a Japanese drive fishery have also been imported into Turkey in 2010. The Cetabase web site has produced a contemporary map of global facilities that currently house animals derived for drive hunts HERE. Further, several zoological collections and organisations involved in the captive care of marine animals have made clear statements against drive fishery hunts and consider them inhumane. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) The International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) Sea World Only one drive-fishery animal has until recently been held in the USA. It is a false-killer whale called Kina originally imported by the US Navy's Marine Mammal Program from Ocean Park, Hong Kong in 1987; it was transferred to the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology in 2000. This animal was used for research and was not on general public display.  In September 2015 Kina and her two bottlenose dolphin companions were transferred to SeaLife Park in Hawaii. Studies on these animals echolocation and biosonar abilities will continue at the park in partnership with the University of Hawaii. Kina died at Sea Life Park in October 2019. An attempt to import false killer whales to a US marine park acquired from a drive fishery in 1993 was blocked by the National Marine Fisheries Service as they considered such operations inhumane which has effectively banned further imports of animals into the USA from drive fisheries.  Animal rights supporters elsewhere have also cited that Sea World in California was granted an import permit for a captive pilot whale from a Japanese aquarium which joined its current group of pilot whales at San Diego on in 2012. It should be pointed out that this animal is an alone stranded animal that was rescued in January 2004 and is deemed unsuitable for release. It should be noted that this animal was not acquired by deliberate capture nor from a drive fishery.  The two facts anyone who watches The Cove should remember are: (a) that the drive-fishery in Japan prime motive is 'pest control' and food as the animals are perceived to be in competition with fisherman and that the hunt has been undertaken for hundreds of years and animals for zoos and aquaria are a recent development and the numbers taken are small and if this stopped sadly the hunt would still continue; (b) that no animals have been imported into the mainland Europe since 1980 and in the US since 1989 from any drive-fishery; the majority of animals displayed in these locations have come from captive breeding programs. ***  Below a two-part video commentary on the inaccurate statements made by Richard O'Barry and others regarding the Japanese drive fishery and captive cetaceans in aquaria outside Asia and the Middle-East. 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