Publisher’s Notebook

• Freedom Now: Can Marine Mammal Ethics Trump Profits? •

ANNE SOBLE

Less than a week after some of the nation’s most notable scientists and ethicists presented papers making a powerful case against the keeping of dolphins and other marine mammals in captivity, a six-ton orca largely kept in total isolation at a Florida amusement park was implicated in the death of a trainer. The animal had spent as much as 27 of his 29 years in solitary confinement except for occasional exchanges, such as the fatal one with the trainer, and his use in the breeding of 17 orca calves, whose value may have run as high as $2 million each.

Add other park breedings and the ticket take at these parks, and no one should be surprised that animals are not released despite possible implication in human tragedies as the orcas’ monetary value surpasses whatever costs the deaths involve. Despite any pretensions to the contrary, the enslavement of such intelligent beings as dolphins and orcas is predicated solely on profits from the sale of breeding stock and public attendance at shows that are today’s equivalent of the Roman “circuses.”

Malibu has long been in the forefront of making the case that dolphins and other marine mammals should be thought of as “nonhuman persons.” Scientists at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego presented papers against the keeping of these animals in captivity, even for medical research. Animals that swim upwards of several hundred miles a day in the wild should not be confined in concrete tanks where they can only swim in limited circumference circles over and over again. The consensus is this leads to frustration, anxiety and depression.

It was but two days after the death before park orca shows resumed and the “accident” was explained away. The fate of all the marine mammals in captivity is sealed unless people consciously decide that they will no longer participate in the subjugation and confinement of intelligent and sensitive animals that flies in the face of their gregarious nature. There has not been a single documented case of an orca injuring a human in the wild. The so-called human tragedies have all been in confinement.

AAAS scientists called for an immediate halt to the capture of dolphins and other animals. One ethicist said the mammals’ behavior and neurophysiology suggests that they have “all of the traits that philosophers traditionally require for persons.” Researchers have conducted studies that verified self-awareness, prompting these  scientists to state that they will not study the animals in captivity because it constitutes unacceptable torture.

To some of the scientists who have looked at the extent to which captive animals suffer anguish in confinement, amusement parks may be a worse fate than death.

Only the marketplace has the ability to force these marine amusement parks to rehabilitate and free animals that are now confined. Digital technology can replicate the experience of these animals in the wild with much more immediacy and drama than forcing them to do stupid pet tricks for food.

 As a society, we have to develop an interspecies ethic that would mark a significant turning point in the relationship between humans and other intelligent beings on the planet. Doing this would also mark a turning point in the way that humans deal with each other.