The following is a paste of a comment I made on Facebook. The context is a discussion on what should be done with the whale that killed a trainer at Sea World. There’s ample reason to recognize that we’ve been making enormous mistakes, and it’s time to rectify that.
They do NOT belong in captivity, for the very simple reason that they’re marine mammals that swim 100+ miles a day, and we’re land creatures that can only provide them with a tiny bathtub that echoes in ways that would drive any cetacean at least a little insane.
Take a baby merlin (small falcon,) raise it in a shoebox, keep it in the same box that your printer came in. Don’t ever let it out, feed it dead ants, play blaring Rap, Speed Metal and Big Band at loud levels all at the same time, all of the time, and you’re coming close to the analogy. Close but not accurate, because the merlin is STILL not social, intelligent, etc. How insane would that merlin be? How cruel would that be?
There are some creatures that we just inherently cannot and should not interact with in a closed/captive environment. Dolphins are 9′ long and several hundred pounds. Orcas are a much larger variety, blown up to 7000-12000 pounds, but still crammed into that same little bathtub. We really don’t have any business capturing and keeping them that way. Time to return them to the wild, and begin recognizing the differences, and our limitations.
It’s unlikely that anyone could effectively dispute that these are sentient creatures. They are as sovereign in the seas as we are upon land. It’s highly questionable that we ever had the right to kill or enslave them in the first place. Having found that what we’re doing is morally ,ethically wrong, how can we do anything less than to free them, and never seize them again?
