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Marine Mammals in Captivity

The public display industry captures many species of marine mammals from the wild, especially whales and dolphins. HSI Asia believes that these animals should not be taken from the wild simply to entertain and amuse people, for a number of reasons.

Life in the Wild

The very nature of these animals makes them uniquely unsuited to confinement. In the wild, whales and dolphins live in large groups (called pods), often in tight family units. Family bonds often last many years. In some species, they last for a lifetime.

Whales and dolphins travel long distances each day, sometimes swimming in a straight line for a hundred miles, other times remaining in a certain area for hours or days, moving several miles along a coastline and then turning to retrace their path. These marine mammals can dive up to several hundred meters and stay underwater for up to half an hour. They spend only 10 to 20% of their time at the surface.

The sea is to whales and dolphins much as the air is to birds—a three-dimensional environment, where they can move up and down and side to side. But whales and dolphins don't stop to perch. They never come to shore, as do seals and sea lions. Whales and dolphins are always swimming, even when they "sleep." They are "voluntary breathers," conscious of every breath they take. They are always aware, and always moving. Understanding this, it is difficult to imagine the tragedy of life in no more than a tiny swimming pool.

Life in Captivity

Life for captive whales and dolphins is nothing like a life in the sea. It is almost impossible to maintain a family group in captivity. Tanks only allow a few strokes in any direction before coming to a wall. Because tanks are shallow, the natural tendencies of whales and dolphins are reversed—they spend more than half their time at the tank's surface.

This unnatural situation can cause skin problems. In addition, in captive killer whales (orcas), it is the probable cause of dorsal fin collapse, as without the support of water, gravity pulls these tall appendages over as the whale matures. Collapsed fins are experienced by all captive male orcas and many captive female orcas, who were either captured as juveniles or who were born in captivity. However, they are observed in only about 1% of orcas in the wild.

In a tank, the environment is monotonous and limited in scope. Sonar clicks, the method by which individuals define their surroundings, have limited utility in such an environment. These animals, who are perpetually aware, have nothing like the varied stimulation of their natural environment. In perpetual motion, they are forced into literally endless circles. Life for these animals is a mere shadow of what it was in the wild.

Do Marine Mammals Belong in Captivity in the 21st Century?

At the turn of the last century, showmen like P.T. Barnum exhibited exotic and "freakish" animals for the amusement and amazement of their customers. Barnum displayed the first captive whale, in fact—a beluga whale from the Arctic. The animal, held in a small box filled with water as a sideshow at Barnum's circus, lived only a few months. But the idea caught on, and by the end of the century, trained whales and dolphins, leaping and spinning to entertain wide-eyed spectators, were on display in dolphinaria from Belgium to South Africa and from the United States to Japan.

In the last 100 years, the global community has made significant progress on the issue of animal cruelty. There are anti-cruelty and humane slaughter laws in many countries now. Yet the practice of keeping whales and dolphins in water-filled boxes, started by a huckster who callously exploited animals for profit, persists. The boxes are bigger. The water is cleaner. The food is better. The training methods are kinder. But the concept—capturing intelligent, socially complex, wide-ranging animals from the wild and confining them for the public's amusement and amazement—is basically the same.

In Barnum's day, profit alone justified the capture and confinement of whales and dolphins. In the 1960s, with the popularity of the television program Flipper and the rise of the environmental movement, the public learned that whales and dolphins were intelligent and social creatures. People became uncomfortable with dolphinaria whose sole motive was entertainment and profit. The dolphinarium industry had to come up with a better raison d'être. The themes of education and conservation had great potential to justify the continuation of what was, in essence, an archaic and exploitative practice. Unfortunately, the public's love affair with these graceful and intriguing ocean mammals is so intense that people seem reluctant to look beyond the glossy surface of the new philosophy to the unchanged reality beneath.

Most captive whales and dolphins have been captured from the wild. Breeding these species in captivity has been largely a hit-and-miss affair. Only the orca and the bottlenose dolphin have been bred with any significant success. Some species have had only a few successful births, while others are no longer held in captivity because they simply did not survive when confined. However, despite their relative breeding success, orcas and bottlenose dolphins do not have self-sustaining captive populations. Both species are still captured from the wild, especially when dolphinaria in the developing world need to increase their "collections."

Capture is a violent affair. Animals are herded toward shore into shallow water, or chased by catcher boats. When driving the animals to shore, capture operators ruthlessly separate juveniles (those still swimming with their mothers but no longer dependent on milk) from frantic females, truss them in a sling, and carry them from the water to a transport vehicle. When chasing animals, capture operators either encircle them with nets or use specially designed lassoes on bow-riding individuals, before dragging them on board. In Canada, men actually jump on the backs of belugas in shallow water and "ride" them to exhaustion in a traumatic "rodeo." The trauma is real; in an analysis of a U.S. government-maintained database, researchers found that mortality rates for bottlenose dolphins shoot up six-fold immediately after a capture. The rate only drops back down after about 35 to 45 days.

Most disturbingly, this spike in mortality occurs every time dolphins are transported. Each time they are confined and shipped from one place to another, it is as traumatic as if they were being newly captured from the wild. The experience of being removed from water and restrained is apparently so stressful to dolphins that they never find it routine. This is in marked contrast to other wild mammals (including other marine mammals such as sea lions), who eventually acclimate to the transport process.