Vancouver Aquarium in hot water over new dolphins

Coalition for Whales in Captivity is pushing for the aquarium to be prosecuted for keeping the pair of white-sided dolphins named Hana and Helen.

Updated Wed. Jun. 7 2006 3:47 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The Vancouver Aquarium is in hot water over its possession of two dolphins, allegedly in violation of a city bylaw that bans the forced captivity of cetacean mammals, including whales and dolphins, on park property.

A group called the Coalition for Whales in Captivity is pushing for the aquarium to be prosecuted for keeping the pair of white-sided dolphins named Hana and Helen.

Members claim the decision to import the mammals from Japan last October was in direct violation of a warning from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation not to do so.

A spokesperson for the aquarium told CTV Vancouver the dolphins were imported under special circumstances because they were injured at the time and required rehabilitation.

The activists flatly disagree.

"The Vancouver Park Board, responding to the ethical principals of the community, enacted a bylaw intended to phase out the further introduction and imprisonment of cetacean mammals in Vancouver parks," said Denis Howarth a lawyer with the Coalition for No Whales in Captivity.

"The Vancouver Aquarium is now at this moment in breach of that bylaw."

At a recent Park Board committee meeting, Howarth called on the municipality to take action.

"It is the duty of the Board as a legislative and administrative government over Parks, when a bylaw has been broken, when it has been proven to the Board that it has been broken, when their own staff says it has been broken, it's their duty to prosecute," Howarth said, according to CKNW radio in Vancouver.

The Park Board has referred the issue to staff for further research.