Another Beluga Whale Death At Marineland Should Spell End Of Keeping Animals At Amusement Parks And Zoos

It’s Time We Humans Who Continue To Shell Out Money To Visit These Places Do Some Soul-Searching

A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper

Posted October 10^th, 2024 on Niagara At Large

According to a CBC report aired this past October 9^th, yet another beluga whale has died at Marineland.

That brings the total number of belugas that have died at the aging Niagara Falls, Ontario amusement park to about 17 that we know of over the past five years.

Combine that with the death of Kiska, the last orca – more popularly known by those who choose to exhibit these greater creatures for our entertainment as a “killer whale” – at the park in March of last years.

To those who appreciate how social orcas are as they ply the seawaters with their families in what are called pods, the 47-year-old Kiska became known to animal activists hoping to move her to a marine sanctuary as “the loneliest whale in the world.”

Then there were the black bears in the park, the last of which was mercifully moved to a sanctuary earlier this year after Marineland was found guilty in court of breaching Ontario animal cruelty laws related to the conditions they were surviving in.

I remember as far back as 30 or more years ago, when I was still an environment reporter (yes, believe it or not the once were environment reporters) at the then independent, family owned St. Catharines Standard, going into the Marineland park to interview its founder, the now -late John Holer, and do some of my own scouting around in the wake of concerns shared by former Marineland animal trainers and others in the animal protection movement about the marine mammals there.

While there taking note of the way the whales, dolphins and other marine mammals were held in captivity and made to go through the paces of splashing around and so on for a theater packed with park visitors, I went over to an open air cement pit where bears were standing on the hind legs, begging for marshmallows some of the visitors were tossing down to them. Some of the bears had visible scars on them from fighting each other for what food was thrown down.

As I wrote stories about all of this, I had the odd person out who had visited the park call me and say they had filed a complaint to the humane society in Niagara Falls to no apparent avail.

Indeed, Marineland was one of the top tourist spots in the Falls back then and before the days of casinos and other tourists attractions came in, the park was golden in the eyes of local authorities, including representatives on Niagara Falls’ city council, many of whom did not take a liking to anything negative being reported on it.

And besides, John Holer insisted in his interviews with me, he “would be crazy” not to look after animals that were doing so well for him and were such a big draw for the countless tens-of-thousands who were pouring through the park’s gates each summer.

It caused me to wonder why so many of us visit parks like this and other zoos across Canada and the United States to view animals in these conditions.

I had been on whale watching boats off the shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts where, for not that much more than what a ticket cost at Marineland, I experienced the awesome of sight of whales, dolphins and seals swimming freely in their natural environments.

Then there are the wildlife documentaries that we can all watch on a screen which are now more beautifully filmed than ever in the natural places where these animals should be living their lives. Why do some many of us still want to pay money to go view them in a cement pond full or chlorinated water, or down in some manmade pit or a cage?

There is an old saying that has been attributed to everyone from Mahatma Ghandi  to Paul McCartney that goes something like this, and I paraphrase – ‘You can judge a person’s character by the way he or she treats animals.’

If that’s the case, we humans have a lot of character building to do.

There apparently are good reasons why the only place that some animal that are held in questionable conditions can go is sanctuary, but as far as any kind of amusement park or zoo that keep animals captive of our entertainment are concerned, it is long past time that government authorities shut them down.

The fact that we still have places like this and that so many people shell out money to visit them is one more of many reasons why my species disappoints me.

 

 

 

A Brief Footnote – I can never write a commentary like this without thinking of Duke, a dolphin who is long gone now and who I first saw circling around and around in an above ground tank at Marineland all by himself. I was told by former employees that he had been there for years. There were a number of animal activists, including Rick O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer for a 1960s TV program called ‘Flipper’ who campaigned to have him released to an offshore sanctuary in Florida, but to no avail. – RIP Duke.

• Dooug Draper, Niagara At Large

To read a CBC report on the latest beluga whale death at Marineland, click on – https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/niagara-marineland-ontario-beluga-death-1.7346973 

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