Whale Kills Trainer

It always continues to be portrayed as a dream job. Training whales, dolphins as well as other similar intelligent creatures has become portrayed as the type of job that many who love animals would do at no cost if possible. Receiving payment for frolicking with such creatures could well be icing with the cake, cream in your java, and breakfast in bed all lumped into one. With few facilities capable of keep large cetaceans in proper captivity as well as provide satisfactory care, the opportunities for this type of career are very low. As it turns out, maybe that’s just as well. Such careers evidently have quite the dark side.

With recent headlines yelling “Trainer Killed by Whale” and the like ubiquitously appearing globally in print, on TV and the Internet, it is being revealed exactly how disturbing captivity is to such intelligent animals as whales and dolphins. Tilikum, the killer whale that killed his trainer at Sea World in Orlando, Florida, was actually associated with two previous deaths. Trainers were warned about the potential violence of Tilikum and special precautions were to be used with Tilikum that are not commonly extended with other whales in captivity. Tilikum had apparently been obviously irritated earlier during the day, refusing to perform and misbehaving in general.

While this incident is extremely sad and unfortunate, it raises so many issues. Cetaceans are thought to be by many philosophers and ethicists to be non-human persons. Cetaceans, coupled with great apes and elephants, are amongst the few non-human creatures proven to pass the mirror test. The mirror test involves placing a mark of some sort on a part of the animal which the animal is able to see only by looking in a mirror. When the animal sees the spot on himself in the mirror, the creature identifies that the spot is on him or herself. For example, if a dot is positioned on the forehead of a chimpanzee, the chimpanzee will recognize that the dot is on his or her own forehead when he or she looks in the mirror. Cetaceans have exhibited this self-awareness similarly when a pen mark is positioned on their body. Upon observing the mark in a mirror, they are going to either preen in front of the mirror or attempt to remove the mark. If a pen without ink is utilized, ! causing no mark, the creature will look in the mirror to check out what was done and just go on his way when he sees nothing there. Self-awareness and intricate social behavior and communication are crucial aspects attributable to non-human persons.

If these creatures are indeed non-human persons, than it is undoubtedly a huge question of our right to sustain them in captivity. Given that they’re self aware, and that they have great social needs just as humans do, how should keeping them in virtual solitary confinement possibly be justified? That “dream job” suddenly begins to take on several ethical dilemmas.

Most of those that would think about training such creatures as Shamu or Flipper would do so out of a deep respect for their intelligence, playful behavior and in the matter of the dolphin especially, their enduring smile. It must be hard to juxtapose those feelings with the awareness that the creatures are in captivity, not by their choosing. Trainers are in effective jailers, no matter how gentle, caring and loving they are to their captives.

The administrators and management of Aquariums that keep cetaceans justify their actions through the claim of research, much just like the Japanese whalers justify their slaughter of countless the animals each year. True researchers say that little is often learned from captive cetaceans as they are so stripped away from their natural habitat. When it comes to the large killer whales, the creatures are unnaturally isolated as they would normally live in pods of no less than five other whales.

Some of the difficulty in the debate over whether these creatures should continue being kept in captivity or released lies within the uncertainty of whether animals who’ve been born in captivity would be able to survive in the wild. However, it has been shown that Killer Whales that have been caught in the ocean and brought into captivity are readily accepted back to their pods upon release. There’s little justification for keeping wild-caught animals.

Aquariums are scrambling to breed cetaceans in captivity. There’s growing pressure to release the whales and dolphins as well as the seals and walruses. Successful breeding hands the aquariums some seeming justification to keeping the animals, as they would supposedly have little chance for survival within the wild. Needless to say they are scrambling. The animals attract hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. And while it is practically self-evident that keeping such creatures is wrong, money happens to be the deciding factor, no matter the ethics involved, in any such situation.

True research institutions don’t keep such animals, even ones that are less intelligent. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, for example, has an exhibit that usually contains large animals such as sun fish, sea turtles and Great White Sharks. These animals are only kept for short durations and then released. They’re creatures which have been difficult to research in the open ocean and little is known about them, so short term captivity can be justified. But even for these creatures, that are not considered self aware and that live usually solitary lives, it is felt that it would be unjust to keep them in captivity for a long length of time.

Let’s at least commence with this as a model – temporary captivity and reports of the actual research accomplished. Once the research becomes obviously repeated and nothing new is being learned, a ban on captivity unless new scientific studies are approved by some governing panel. Situated close to the proper habitat, some of these creatures would probably come and put on a show voluntarily. Given that would be a true dream job, without ethical dilemmas associated.