Cetacean ban debate charts new course
Aquarium seeks to rally opposition to park board proposal by saying it will hurt mammals
The Vancouver Aquarium is trying to rally public support with an argument that a proposed parkboard 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 specifically hurt its Marine Mammal Rescue Program, which saves roughly 100 distressed animals each year.
Pratt said the aquarium’s attempts to share expert research with the park board have “fallen on deaf ears” and said leaving the program’s fate up to 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,” he 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 rescue work.
Aquarium CEO Dr. John Nightingale called the proposed ban “deeply troubling.” Nightingale said Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) would have to consider alternatives such as euthanasia for sick and injured marine mammals if the rescue program became 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 now 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 has already undertaken an exhaustive public-input effort. There is, he said, a possibility that the existing cetaceans could stay.
“The decision could be we grandfather them in, the decision could be they get moved to other centres,” he said.
If passed, no new cetaceans will be allowed at the aquarium, nor will any of the aquarium’s cetaceans that aren’t now inside the facility.
“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. “But it will not be brought into Stanley Park.”
The aquarium is currently in the midst of a $100-million project that includes new buildings and larger whale tanks, approved by an earlier park board in 2006.
In February, the aquarium announced it had updated the plan to include building a bigger beluga tank and bringing back five belugas — currently on loan to U.S. breeding programs — in 2019. Captive whales would be phased-out by 2029, according to that plan.
Nightingale said he wasn’t certain what their fate would be if the ban passes.
Wiebe said the future is now, that the park board is merely moving up the aquarium’s plans. “What we did is we made a decision that would advance what the Vancouver Aquarium thought should happen, (but) 12 years earlier. They said they were going to bring belugas in, but phase them out ... we think before building brand-new tanks, we should move that process up further.”