A Vancouver Park Board special meeting focused on whether the Vancouver Aquarium should continue to hold whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity will carry on this week.
The meeting to discuss the future of the animals — all termed cetaceans, started Saturday. More than 132 people were scheduled to speak but time ran out, so the meeting was extended to re-convene today, July 28, at 6 p.m. It may continue for more days to give everyone a chance to air their views.
Board chair Aaron Jasper was unclear what the outcome of the process would be. The board might decide to stop keeping cetaceans, or retain the status quo, or to commission more studies. It isn't expected to decide before the fall, and Jasper said he isn't in any rush to settle the question. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has called for a phased end to the Aquarium’s holding of cetaceans, although council voted 9-1 in May against placing the question as a referendum in this fall’s civic election.
Vancouver houses two harbour porpoises, two Pacific white-sided dolphins, and nine beluga whales, but only two belugas are kept here. Five others are on loan to SeaWorld parks and the other two are at an aquarium in Georgia.
Aquarium staff argued that its housed cetaceans benefit from “the three Rs” (rescue, rehabilitation, and research), children are thrilled to see them up close, and the tourist dollars are needed to fund research. They said that all the aquarium’s cetaceans are either rescued animals or adopted from other aquariums. Opponents, including a former Vancouver aquarium trainer, argued that captivity is cruel and that cetaceans can be studied in the wild instead. Many cited a controversial CNN anti-captivity documentary called Blackfish. Aquarium CEO John Nightingale told the Courier the film may be good entertainment but it's full of inaccuracies.
The meeting opened with a speech by Joseph K. Gaydos, chief scientist at the UC David Wildlife Center's SeaDoc Society Program. Gaydos was hired by the park board to "provide a non-biased, third party review" of how the aquarium's cetacean program compares to comparable aquariums. His report made no recommendations on captivity but he said much more research is needed to understand behavioural implications for the animals.
On both sides of the issue, some speakers’ voices trembled with emotion. Most spoke against captivity, such as 10-year-old Kaija Wyness and her mother, who said they drove from Kelowna just for this meeting. The board voted to cut each speaker’s time from five minutes down to three, so some talked in a rushed staccato manner to cram their words into their allotted time before the timer rang.
At one point an overflow crowd of about 80 people sat in the hallway outside listening to the debate on loudspeakers. Some people complained the audio was not always clear, the board should have held the meeting in a larger space, and that for balance they should have been permitted to call in anti-captivity scientists to counter the Aquarium staff and pro-captivity biologists who spoke for hours that day.
The two Non Partisan Association board commissioners were absent. John Coupar recused himself because his company has business dealings with the aquarium. Melissa de Genova talked to the Courier by cell phone from Paris where she is vacationing to say she will not voice a position on the whale issue without more study.
“It’s very disappointing that the Vision members scheduled this public meeting on a Saturday morning in the middle of summer on the eve of the Celebration of Light,” she said. “It should be done in September. Why the rush now? Why did they not bring it up years ago?”
