Years ago when I worked for the Beautiful Oceans Academy, I was introduced to a lot of high profile conservationists. Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd, Phillipe Cousteau of Earth Eco, Stan Waterman (famous in certain diving circles and star of Blue Water, White Death) and many others. Most of them were not fans of the marine aquarium hobby/industry, and were highly skeptical of parks that kept marine mammals. Beautiful Oceans worked alongside various diving industry conservation groups to help generate content for its courses, which inspired divers to take part in oceanic conservation. We took that material to resorts all over the Caribbean and combined marine science with recreational diving, with the supreme goal of helping foster conservation. In everything I do in marine aquaria, I try to factor conservation into the equation. Whether it be ensuring animals survive and thrive in my systems, on down to managing my aquarium so it leaves as light a footprint as possible on the environment. Like many in the conservation circles I watched the hit documentary film Blackfish. It was eye opening, but didn’t expose anything I didn’t already know. Killer whales are intelligent, social and complex animals, and when placed in a captive setting they are often unable to adjust, lashing out and sometimes people get caught in the middle. This is the same for aquarium fish, watch an Achilles tang struggling to adjust to captive life, in a tank far too small to support it. The fish will pace back and forth, up and down, refuse to eat and often eventually perish. The only major difference is if an Achilles tang tail swipes an aquarist, it doesn’t crush their body and kill them. Captivity creates a lot of ethical conservation concerns and when keeping animals in captivity turns into a highly profitable industry, as is the case with marine aquariums and attractions such as Sea World, those concerns are compounded. Captivity also brings with it a great capacity for humans to learn about different species. It’s hard to deny that Sea World’s work with killer whales has greatly progressed our understanding of them. Now that California has banned Sea World from breeding killer whales in captivity, could the conservation based law backfire? Sea World’s Research:
SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund Logo (PRNewsFoto/SeaWorld & Busch Gardens)
While Blackfish highlighted many questionable programs hosted by Sea World (such as separating killer whale calves from their mothers) it failed to shine any light on research initiatives carried out by the marine animal park.… More:
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