It’s “incomprehensible” to the CEO of the Vancouver Aquarium that the park board would let cetaceans die in the wild when they could be sheltered and cared for in Stanley Park.
John Nightingale responded to park board plans, announced yesterday, to ban the performance of whales, dolphins and porpoises at the aquarium and prohibit the addition of any more cetaceans than the three that currently live there.
“Whether it’s helping a stranded false killer whale or a baby porpoise that was separated from its mother, the humane thing to do is to rescue and care for these helpless animals,” said Nightingale in a prepared statement.
The biologist said he does not want injured animals to be left in the wild to die.
The decision, said Nightingale, to prohibit any new cetaceans at the aquarium does not align with the commissioners’ stated support of the marine mammal rescue program, which treats and rehabilitates close to 200 hundred animals every year, including seals, otters and turtles.
In 2014, a rescued false killer whale was also brought to the centre; that animal, Chester, is one of the three cetaceans permanently housed at the aquarium because he was not expected to survive in the wild.
“The Park Board’s actions contradict its words,” said the CEO. “Commissioners say they support Vancouver Aquarium’s Marine Mammal Rescue Program yet their ill-conceived ban will condemn to certain death the very animals that need rescuing. The proposed ban would result in euthanasia for stranded cetaceans along our coastlines.”
The park board will consider staff recommendations to uphold a cetacean ban in city parks but grandfather the three animals now at the aquarium into an updated bylaw. Further to that, commissioners will consider banning cetacean performances at the aquarium.
The public debate around cetaceans in captivity was brought to the forefront in November last year after two beluga whales died within a few days of each other.
Afterwards, NPA park board commissioner Sarah Kirby-Yung introduced a motion to hold another plebiscite on the topic, but that decision would not be binding and not made until 2018, so the elected board accelerated the agenda and voted March 9 unanimously to ban cetaceans in Vancouver parks.
On May 15 at a public meeting, the park board will consider the specifics of that ban and the implications for the three cetaceans now at the aquarium.
