The time has come for the Vancouver Aquarium to let their mammals go.
Facing a rising tide of public sentiment, the Vancouver Park Board recently decided the aquarium could keep their whales and the dolphins, but forbade most breeding.
Presumably the cetaceans are now free to explore alternatives to mating, such as moodiness, lethargy and posting comments on Reddit.
This is the worst type of compromise. If it’s wrong for a whale to be born in captivity, it’s wrong for a whale to be kept in captivity.
And as SeaWorld stockholders can attest, more and more people oppose cetacean incarceration.
However, before the Splash Zone runs dry, we should be mindful of what we’re losing.
The aquarium is a hub for research, and every marine maven who clicks through the turnstile to see the fishbowl’s bread and blubber attractions helps fund invaluable investigation.
For nearly a year the sea stars off the coast of British Columbia have been wasting away and dying in massive numbers. The Vancouver Aquarium is one of the very few scientific bodies trying to solve that mystery.
The aquarium monitors depleted stocks, cares for sick and injured mammals and advocates for marine protected areas.
During a time when the policies of the federal government are increasingly and aggressively anti-science, we simply cannot afford to lose the aquarium.
But lose it we must.
Unless the park board reverses their breeding ban, our choice is whether or not to support animal cruelty.
We choose not.
