Animal captivity is all about the money, not the science

North Shore Outlook

Editor,

Your recent story about the Vancouver Aquarium was full of untruthful, misleading statements.

First, the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned, not rescued, the first killer whale that ended up in captivity. They wanted to kill one to use as a model for a sculpture. The orca slowly starved to death.

Secondly, the first beluga born in captivity was because the mother was pregnant when captured – the baby died prematurely. Also, all three orca babies also died within a few months.

Thirdly, sea otters captured during the Valdez oil spill were to be released not kept for blood experiments etc. In addition, the “star Clamchops” drowned when trapped under a water gate. Two months later the media discovered the truth about Clamchop’s inhumane death.

It has been animal protection organizations that have raised public awareness about the plight of marine wildlife. They have and will continue to save them from continued threats such as the zoo multi-million dollar industry.

I urge everyone to tell their politicians to stop the lucrative government funding of this cruel, exploitive entertainment business. If not, the aquarium will continue to imprison more animals.

Peter Hamilton
Lifeforce Foundation,
Vancouver

I am writing in regard to Jennifer Maloney’s interview with Vancouver Aquarium CEO John Nightingale (Coffee With…, Feb. 16 issue).

I was shocked at the one-sided nature of this piece, essentially glorifying lifetime prisons for these animals. Keeping animals, especially marine mammals such as whales, in captivity is not an attraction, as the piece describes, but a sad aspect of how animals are used for entertainment.

The article did not mention the many whales and dolphins, including many babies, which have died prematurely at the Vancouver Aquarium. Nor did you explore the issue of how animals come to live at the Aquarium.

Most marine mammals caught in fishing nets around the world drown, since the nets are not checked often enough to rescue them. Thus, when injured whales show up at aquariums, they are usually injured in an attempt to catch them live for display. So, the Vancouver Aquarium is not doing these animals any favours if there was no demand to see these animals in tanks, they would not be injured in the first place.

As for the education aspect at what value do we want our children to see things? With the suffering of these animals, facing a lifetime in a bathtub when in the wild they swim hundreds of miles, as the cost?

Kristin Lauhn-Jensen
Vancouver