Newspaper investigation calls marine animal longevity into question

Posted | Contributed by supermandl

A reporter from The Morning Call looks at the history of marine life captured or born into captivity for attractions.

[Ed. note: The story is not what you'd call unbiased journalism. Frequent use of inflamatory phrases like "slick public relations mastery." The report quotes more Web sites than it does people.]

The South Florida Sun Sentinel is doing an entire week of front page stories devoted to this issue. It was kicked off yesterday and followed today with a front page story and 2 or 3 pages of continued story deeper in the paper.

I do question the promoted "life span" the parks use for captive animals, making it sound like they are doing the animals a favor. But, I still believe there is a place for this type of edutainment.

Here is part of the sun sentinel story Wahoo Skipper talks about. link
*** This post was edited by Jeff 5/17/2004 9:28:50 AM ***

The story reads like a witch hunt, which is unfortunate. I'm sure we've all met trainers and scientists and it's pretty obvious to me that they want what's best for the animals. I'm a tree-hugger, but I still see a lot of value in marine parks for conservation, research and public awareness.

Lot's of distorted statistics in this article. Certainly, there have have been both errors and abuses, but this article is pure muck raking and in no way objective.

One example, it says that 1/4 of the marine mammals born in captivity die by age 1 and 1/2 die by age 7. The article never mentions what percentage die by these ages in the wild.

It also talks about life expectancies over the last 50 years and barely mentions that they are greatly increased now.

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