Marineland says it must euthanize 30 whales if Canada does not provide funding

A pretty grim situation from the sound of things.

I understand the whole idea of keeping these animals out of captivity, but at this point that's their only option. Just ship them to the park in China and let them live their lives.

Twenty whales, 19 belugas and one orca, have died at the park since 2019

And they still have 30? How do they have this many whales? I really don’t understand.

That is pretty astounding.

"Live their lives" at a theme park in China, which lacks even the modest animal protection laws of the USA [edit: I know Marineland is in Canada, I'm just setting a bar for comparison since I'm not as familiar with Canadian animal welfare law]? Are you sure that's not worse than euthanasia?

From everything I've heard about how terrible the treatment of the animals are at Marineland, this doesn't surprise me. It still sickens me though.

What sucks is that these folks play into what is usually nonsense from the PETA folks. Conservation is a legit and ethical endeavor (seeing as how we're also trashing the environment), even when for-profit companies like Disney or SeaWorld do it responsibly.

The issue is MarineLand is out of cash. Their value is in their 1,000 acres of land, which they can't sell until the animals are moved. You can't put the beluga whales out in the field to eat the grass.

Have you seen the drone footage? Dragon Mountain's bowtie is partially underwater because the drainage pumps have failed. The beluga tanks are disgusting. It is really amazing how quickly the property went from bad to worse.

I get MarineLand was awful to the animals. John Holler was an all around terrible person in every way imaginable. But the activists were so focused on shutting down the park they never stopped to think "then what?". It's shut down. Cool deal. Did they think MarineLand had some kind of trust fund set up to care for the animals after they went out of business?

There was talk of a whale sanctuary being built in Nova Scotia but the locals don't want it, they have next to zero funding to build it. Even if it happens it will take several years to get up and running, and they say it would only be able to take 10 animals. So that's not a solution.

Where is Sea World in all this? I can't believe the US government wouldn't make an exception to import 30 beluga whales across the 4 Sea World parks if the alternative was the belugas starving to death or being put down.

And not for nothing, there are two orcas in the all-but-abandoned Marineland Antibes in France and another lone orca (been without another orca since 2000) in Argentina in similar conditions.

I'm not PETA. I'm not against zoos or aquariums or anything else. But it does aggravate the crap out of me when laws are passed with good long term intentions but actually harm currently captive animals (Kiska was alone at MarineLand for how many years because Canada wouldn't let them bring in a companion or send Kiska elsewhere?) or animals are just discarded like this.

So your argument is that activists should have kept their mouths shut that animals were being held in substandard conditions because it might get worse if the business goes under? That’s silly and quite frankly is 20/20 hindsight because no one knew that the animals would rot in their tank when the park closed. One would have thought that the government or a nonprofit would have stepped in by now.

Unfortunately, most of these activist are under the fairy tale impression that when Zoos or Aquariums go under that the animals will be let free to live happily ever after in the wild.

That's the thought process that got Free Willy killed, and none of them have learned from it.

Sorry, but this is logic I just can't get behind. However, I do believe there's room for nuance here.

First, I hate PETA. I think their inane antics have hurt the image of 'sane' animal activists. Second, I don't hate the idea of zoos or aquariums as long as they keep their animals in good conditions.

The problem is that Marineland kept their animals in complete squalor. By the arguments being posited in this thread, everyone should have just kept their mouths shut, because their actions allegedly caused the park to go out of business and lead to the current debacle. (We don't even know if that was the case, because the park was in a bad financial situation for decade, and the pandemic might have pushed them over the edge.)

I pose these questions. First, had the activists stayed quiet and the park remained open, the park very well may have continued to acquire more animals to replace the numerous ones that died due to poor treatment. Is that more ideal than the circumstance we have now?

Second, does the public deserve to know about what's going on at the park before they choose to spend their money there? Or should it have been kept a secret so that clueless tourists throw a couple hundred dollars to take their family to the park only to find sick animals living in extremely depressing conditions? Should the park's visitors also not have written bad reviews because it might lead to the park getting a bad reputation and closing?

Lastly, can one not argue that the Marineland saga, in addition to other events, led to positive changes in the industry? Parks such as SeaWorld that continue to thrive are investing in larger tanks and environments for their animals as a direct result of public outcry about living conditions for their animals. Parks have restricted or stopped acquiring large animals and people have a heightened awareness of how animal trade was a large gray area.

In regards to Free Willy, would you have preferred that animal to live its life in a tiny tank just because you saw it in a movie once? Think about a beloved family pet -- would you be happy if it had to live its entire life inside a cage in which it barely had room to turn around? Wouldn't you at least consider that euthanization might be a humane thing to do in that situation?

PhantomTails:

By the arguments being posited in this thread, everyone should have just kept their mouths shut...

I don't think anyone has actually argued that. I think their point is that activism has to take a more holistic view to be effective and just.