Cetacean ban at Vancouver Aquarium called threat to marine mammals
VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Aquarium is trying to rally public support with an argument that a proposed Vancouver park-board ban on captive cetaceans puts marine mammals in peril.
The park board on May 15 will consider a bylaw that would ban the import and display of live cetaceans — whales, dolphins and porpoises — in city parks, including Stanley Park, where the aquarium logged a record 1.2 million visitors last year.
At a news conference Thursday, Randy Pratt, incoming chairman of the board at the aquarium, said the ban will hurt its Marine Mammal Rescue Program, which saves roughly 100 distressed animals each year, including some found on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.
Pratt said the aquarium’s attempts to share expert research with the park board have “fallen on deaf ears.” He said leaving the program’s fate up to its commissioners will have “dire consequences” for rescue animals.
“The proposed ban jeopardizes Canada’s only marine mammal rescue program and eliminates our ability to save the most vulnerable of animals — those that cannot care for themselves,” Pratt said.
No it won’t, said Michael Wiebe, chairman of the park board.
“Cetaceans are a very small component of that rescue work,” Wiebe said, while praising the centre’s work.
Aquarium CEO Dr. John Nightingale called the proposed ban “deeply troubling.”
Nightingale said Fisheries and Oceans Canada would have to consider alternatives such as euthanasia for sick and injured marine mammals if the rescue program were unavailable.
Dr. Martin Haulena said that of the roughly 100 mammals the program rescues each year, only one or two are cetaceans, such as a false killer whale and harbour porpoise currently in its care.
The aquarium is calling on the public — including its paying members, who were sent emails Thursday — to send the park board letters on the aquarium’s behalf, expressing support for the marine mammal rescue program.
But Wiebe said the park board already has undertaken an exhaustive public-input effort. There is a possibility that the existing cetaceans could stay, he added.
“The decision could be we grandfather them in [or] the decision could be they get moved to other centres,” he said.
If the ban is approved, no new cetacean would be allowed at the aquarium.
“That doesn’t mean it can’t stay at the rescue centre, it can’t be released, it can’t be moved to a different facility,” Wiebe said.