End Killer Whale Captivity

The Center for Whale Research have a brand spanking new website with loads more information and photos. 

They’re also offering annual memberships. I’ve just purchased mine!

fightingforwhales:

This is a pretty cool site that teaches you how to identify the calls of the K, J, and L pods so you can tell what pod your listening to when you hear them on the hydrophones!

prairieorca:

Kristy Lynn:

My Experience as a Guest at Marineland (September 14th/ 16th)

My Experience as a Guest at Marineland (September 14th/ 16th)

I walked in there, keeping an open mind despite all the negative media and allegations being made. I remembered this place from being a kid. Going numerous times a year with my mom. I used to love it. Going back now after so many years I found myself nearly in tears.  Some of the animals there I remember from being a child. Some I have even had chances to be up close and personal with so they hold a special place in my heart.

I stopped first at Friendship Cove to visit Kiska. She has been there ever since I was just a baby who could barely talk. It crushed my heart to see her all alone. A whale once full of zest and spirit, swam listlessly around in a circle, barely moving. It seemed like she didn’t much care to be bothered to go up for air. The tank is so small and not very deep. I remember as a kid I loved Kiska and Kandu. When they had their baby Nova I was taken to to the back nursery pool and allowed to pet and feed him. This was before they allowed whale petting. I’ll never forget that day. I asked an employee if there was an possibility of getting another orca and she said no. She claimed there was only 40 killer whales in captivity and that no one wants to give theirs up. She also claimed moving Kiska to a new home with company would be too stressful. Her fate seems to be mapped out. A highly social animal, living alone and getting minimal attention every hour or two for maybe 5-10 minutes at a time. Orca whales are highly tactile animals and love to be touched and pet. They need stimulation as well. Kiska has nothing. Not even a toy to play with in the pool. A simple toy to make (not to mention cheap) is two, 2L Coca-Cola bottles ties together each filled 1/4 of the way with water. Yet nothing is there.

My next stop was Arctic Cove where they house the belugas. The belugas in the section at the back were so hungry they were coming up to tourists opening their mouths for food. No one was there to pay attention to them. The only belugas getting any sort of food/attention were the ones people had to pay to pet and feed. A baby beluga in another section was playfully squirting tourists and giving them his tail wanting to be pet. The trainer was just talking about him and not even acknowleging his existence. She could have easily bent over and gave his tail a quick rub.

I then stopped to see the bears. Black bears are solitary creatures unless caring for sows or cubs. They typically spend their days roaming around for miles at a time. So to see 20 black bears in a small enclosure made me sad. They have a few make-shift “dens” but not enough to house nearly all of the bears. There is no sections for female bears and her cubs (females typically give birth to roughly 3 blind cubs) to stay safely while she raises them. A male black bear will kill small cubs and without proper protection they won’t last very long in a pen full of dominant males. A cub needs its mothers milk for at least 30 days. A bears diet consists of some plant-life, berries, insects and fish. Occasional large-prety like deer and elf have been reported. When I worked in the restaurant at Marineland we put waste food in a “Bear Bucket” that get’s fed to the bears later at night. This includes, pizza, chicken fingers, fries and burgers. Sounds like a legit diet right?

I then stopped to see the deer. The population has seen a vast decline since my last visit. I walked around an came to notice a couple of deer way in the back corner. One had a tumor on her neck and a growth on her lip (which i though was her tongue hanging out until I got closer) The other would not put pressure on her back leg and limped as she walked. I knew these deer wouldn’t last long. The female with the growth on her lip couldn’t even get up to walk to get food or water. They are fed pellets and ice cream cones from tourists but she wouldn’t eat that from the kids that tried. She has very bad arthritis in her legs which could be felt when you moved them. She would twitch nervously at every touch. My boyfriend and I grabbed some leaves from the trees and she happily ate those. I wish I could have given her some water as well. The terrain was just dirt and gravel. Gravel is not good for anything with hooves. Very uncomfortable. They need grass. It’s also sad to see deer, being timid creatures get chased around in the heat by kids. They have 2 small watering stations, and I mean small. I wear a size 9 shoe (ladies) and it wasn’t much bigger. It also wasn’t very deep. My dogs water dish holds more.

A couple came up to me and said how sad they were. The husband said 10 years ago there was much more deer and they had more life in them. Him and his wife both said the state of the deer was very disheartening. The wife said “They do not look very healthy.”

I sat in on a 3 O’clock show and watched that. They kept two belugas in the small tank to the left of the grand stand. That pool is not even big enough for one beluga, let alone 2. They had 5 dolphins and some sea lions. They also used Apollo in the show. He is a massive walrus. I am not sure what Marineland feeds their walruses but a walrus has a very diversified diet. Crab, tube corals, shrimp etc.

My last stop was the aquarium that is in with the Hungry Lion restaurant. Today Baker was laying near the door on land and 2 other seals were also out of the water. Pebbles swam around in circles with her tank mates. All of their eyes tightly shut. Even the seals out of the water would not open their eyes. Pebbles bounded out of the water onto the platform of land. She began scratching her face and body against the wall. The used her tail to scratch her neck and rubbed her face against herself furiously. You could tell something was irritating her. My guess was the chemicals in the water which you could smell in the air. While swimming she let out these raspy, loud breaths. You could hear her respiratory problems. Almost every seal there was out of the water. Only Larry the harbour seal was still swimming around. He opened his eyes briefly and you could see red, swollen patches underneath, just like the photograph released by Toronto Star.

These were my observations from just a few hours spent here as a guest.