highly recommend you read this article. explains why captivity is bad for these intelligent mammals.

I still don’t support captivity, at all. It is absolutely not right to keep an animal confined (this goes for all animals, not just whales and dolphins)

They evolved over billions of years to live in the ocean, not a tank! Fine, tell me to go hug a tree john, I don’t really care. This is what I believe in, and if you believe something else, good for you.

And by the way, all your claims of being trainers have very little proof, so really, I don’t believe any of you.

There is one individual on here in particular who is the equivalent of a FoxNews Teabagger holding up the sign reading “MORAN” (sic), screaming with self-righteous piety about Obama being Hitler AND a Communist at the same time. I grow so weary of the loud and inane who call others names and declare that these complex issues are black-and-white.

It is the zoological community that is most heavily involved with captive breeding of ENDANGERED species to replenish endangered populations in the wild, and every wildlife biologist knows that there is always an “acceptable mortality rate” in such repopulation projects. Orcas are NOT endangered at this point, but certain populations are heading that way. The Keiko release was an absolute failure, as everyone who knew anything about orcas knew would happen. It was a classic case of an “agenda” driving a release; this was the most human-oriented puppy dog of an orca that anyone ever met, which those who cared for him were vociferous about…only to be replaced by those who would bite their tongues or who didn’t know any better.

“The Cove” shines the spotlight on an absolutely horrendous fishery practice, which I applaud. But the film was hijacked by the agenda of the anti-captivity proponents, who completely skew the purpose for these drive fisheries. These have been occurring for over a hundred years in Taiji and Iki, LONG before any oceanariums appeared. Yes, some oceanariums do take animals from the drive fisheries for their collections, but this is NOT the reason for the drive fisheries. Think about it: you are appalled by bullfighting in Spain or Mexico. You go to a bull farm that supplies them to the arenas, and buy two of them to spare their lives. You have just done business with the “evil” people, yet saved two lives of the bulls you care about. Or you buy two pit bulls from a dogfighting operation….how evil does that make you? And in Japan, any oceanarium MUST obtain their dolphins from the drive fisheries, per the federal government.

In the US, we have had dolphins performing for us for generations now, since the 1930’s, yet even in the 1960’s, orcas were used for target practice by our navy. The Marine Mammal Protection Act was not passed until 1972, yet we now sit in judgment of other countries’ lack of insight about the “specialness” of marine mammals. It takes time; the Japanese and other Asian oceanariums deserve the same grace periods to turn their cultural ideas around.

Now not all oceanariums are created equal; US facilities in particular are capable of supplying marine mammals with top-flight care. But I want to throw down a challenge to the anti-captivity folks: go volunteer for a rehab group. Go see what the oceans have become. Go watch marine mammals, turtles, birds wash ashore needing help due to human trash or activities. Spend some time on the beach with a few dozen stranded pilot whales. Gain some perspective on just how hard it is for these animals to survive out there. We are turning our oceans into sewers and garbage dumps, and this Sesame Street image of this ideal, peaceful habitat where marine animals live in harmony and good health is severely outdated. And also, look into the VERIFIED sightings of released cetaceans; people can claim anything, including seeing UFO’s and Elvis. Short-term rehab and release of stranded cetaceans is difficult enough; doing it for long-term captive animals is a fantasy and a fallacy. Seriously. Don’t just take their word for it. Cetaceans are not terrestrial animals.

Oh, and another shout-out to John Valentine….Hell YES, he da man!

Let me start by stating I’m on the side of keeping all cetaceans free as well as protected.

Subjects like this can be highly emotive and as is clearly evident from the discussion above, highly polarising. However each side gains nothing by reducing the tone of the arguement to personal insults, expletives (even with **@~#* replacing the vowels) and statements of trainers deserving what they get (which they don’t). I know its frustrating when people don’t agree with our points of view, but if we all carry on like this we simply dilute the credibility of ourselves and get distracted from the facts.

In short, isn’t the best solution to try to educate others so they can make the right choice for theses mammals based on the facts. How can we expect them to listen if we appear to them like a bunch of intolerant extremists? Please rein it in a bit and stick to the facts guys, and we may get a result – maybe even a win-win solution?

On a side, but related note, but possibly worthy of mention on this forum:- Apart form the touchy feeling aspect of captivity, massacre and cruelty, cetaceans are indeed at the top of their world, and we of ours, yet there is a wider consideration with implications likely to reflect back onto both our species in the near future. Plankton.

Oceanic plankton provides something like 60% of the worlds oxygen (estimated). Taking out the oceans top predators such as cetaceans and sharks removes the population control of middle and lower predators that feed on plankton. If numbers of small baitfish are not controlled as they currently are in the food chain, they will likely eat into the planktonic population, decimating future oxygen production. In turn this may result in an increase of carbon dioxide, leading to global warming and subsequent issues we are familier with from the daily news.

Is it possible that looking at a bigger picture may allow more people to get involved? We bang on about detruction of the rainforest frequently, because its so visible, yet it produces a fraction of O2 for the planet that the sea does.

When we start to appreciate the amount of cetaceans and sharks killed worldwide each year in fishing bycatch (approximately 5 million), and sharks drowning after being caught and then finned alive (10-12 million annually), solely for their fins, and when we become aware that we’ve reduced these populations by 70% over the last 30 years we’ll begin to realise how we’re also destroying the invisible world below the surface of the sea as well as the mess we’re making of things on land.

The above doesn’t factor in other things like pollution and oil spills, which are bad enough. The biggest “Own Goal” the conservation movemnts are currently scoring is in ignoring the factor of population. It may be said that the balance is maintained by us increasing the amount of fish we’re catching, but the fact is that catches are becoming smaller, fisherman are having to search wider and deeper for new species to supply a growing market.

As the big fish are taken, remaining fish sizes are getting smaller and smaller, meaning younger and younger fish taken, often before reaching sexual maturity, and therefore before they’ve had a chance to reproduce. Numbers fall further and the tiny, uncatchable baitfish that middle and low predators feed on may then thrive to plague proportions, gobbling up unprecidented amounts of plankton. Yes, there is control of sorts in place, but only until we have totally raped the oceans of catchable fish.

Lets look at giving the balance back.
Save our top predators such as cetaceans and sharks.
Control our fisheries and expand our marine reserves.
Give the seas a chance to recover their stocks.
Stop dumping our waste into the seas.
Preserve our oceans.

Thanks, MarkV

Sea World makes money by allowing people to see marine mammals up close and personal. That’s a fact. Sea World also runs an unparalleled rescue and rehab program that, in the summer that I worked on the team, rescued, rehabed and RE-RELEASED close to 100 seals and sealions.
The world, and this issue is not black and white. Please accept this. At Loro Parque I was fortunate enough to witness 4 young children suffering from different stages of cancer be granted their “Make a Wish Foundation” wish and leave their wheelchairs to engage with dolphins in the shallows. Would you call them selfish for interacting with a captive marine mammal? No black or white my dear.
Let’s not use this tragedy as a platform to voice our opinions of what’s wrong or right with the captive animal industry. Let’s instead come together and honor Alexis’s memory and remember to think, act and speak with compassion for one another.

The senseless killing of animals is however a tragedy.

As far as cetaceans in captivity . . . take a look at that picture of the whale stadium in the article. I guarantee that there’s not a single person in that audience who gives a flying fuck about the plight of any of those whales. The general population of this world doesn’t care about anything other than getting to see that “fish” jump for their $79.95 admission ticket to “Akbar and Jeff’s Ocean World”.

Money makes this world go round and as soon as it is highly profitable to keep animals in the wild, that’s where they’ll be. Meanwhile, some of us work very hard to make their time spent with us the best it can be.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

So..
missing the ocean, family or rough player is just fantasy , it was just bad handling from trainers side.
as simple as that.

Last summer I read several books as well as online resources about Orcas. I was then lucky enough to spend 5 days kayaking in British Columbia where I encountered the northern resident Orcas every day. On one afternoon, two orcas swam over to my kayak from 1/2 mile away and spent 10 minutes swimming past me just 10 feet away.

There is nothing that compares to seeing them in their natural habitat — swimming, feeding, playing and sleeping in their family groups. Taking them away from this or denying them that life is wrong. It denies them their natural rights and it denies us the ability to truly appreciate them.

Orcas do NOT belong in tanks. They swim 80-100 miles per day in the wild. Can any of you fathom how many times and orca would have to swim around a tank to equal that?

They belong with their families. When a young orca is taken from the sea, it is the same as ripping a child from its mother.

If you want to observe orcas, come to the state of Washington. You can go to San Juan Island and sit on the shore and watch them from Lime Kiln Park. And you can watch them in their natural habitat. Forget the tricks and the music. Sit on the shore and watch a mother orca teach her calf how to breach. Once you have witnessed the beauty of that, you will realize just how wrong all the SeaWorlds and aquariums are.

http://www.marineanimalwelfare.com