Vancouver Sun Editorial, Tuesday, July 22, 2003
by Barbara Yaffe

Let's review the dolphin options

Spinnaker is lonely. The Vancouver Aquarium's only remaining dolphin needs a friend and it's to that end that efforts are under way to find him a mate, another dolphin already in captivity.

Is this the best strategy? Monday evening the Vancouver park board heard presentations opposing the plan to bring yet another captive mammal to the aquarium.

This debate forces us to think again about the difficult issue of animals in captivity. It was a decade ago that Vancouverites voted in a civic referendum against continuing operations at the Stanley Park Zoo, which was phased out in 1995.

With the Internet, television and IMAX readily at hand, it's worth questioning whether it's still necessary, for educational purposes, to keep caged animals for viewing by young people.

If the objective is to move away from the concept of zoos, the cycle of dolphin importation should be stopped. If not, then, unless the animals only die in pairs, there will always come a time when there's "one lonely dolphin left" and the pressure will mount to import yet another one. So this may be as a good a time as any to break the cycle.

Both the World Society for the Protection of Animals and Zoocheck Canada, two leading animal welfare organizations, maintain that continued confinement, even with a captive mate, is the worst option for Spinnaker. Both recommend "retirement."

Retirement might mean a gradual rehabilitation in which the dolphin is retaught skills needed for successful ocean release; this has been done in the U.S. and Britain. Spinnaker, aged 17, would be a good candidate because he lived in the wild until the age of five when he became entangled in a Japanese fishing net.

Or, if the dolphin continues seeking human companionship, an "ocean pen" solution might work. A big, submerged enclosure would give Spinnaker exposure to the far more stimulating ocean environment, where he'd have opportunities to swim greater distances, dive as dolphins love doing and communicate with other dolphins. Such pen arrangements frequently require the dolphin's diet be supplemented by humans.

Or other groups may have other solutions to propose. The point is to look at the full range of options and costs, and to decide which are affordable and have the best chance of success.

Vancouver Sun Editor sunletters@pacpress.southam.ca