By Peter Hamilton

Baby-beluga fans must get past the attraction of a new baby at the Vancouver Aquarium and remember the plight of marine wildlife in captivity. Baby animals are cute, but this doesn’t justify life imprisonment.

First, imagine spending your entire life in a bathroom. That’s a fair comparison for belugas imprisoned in an aquarium pool and deprived of ocean freedom. Then add to that cruelty that they will be swimming around and around and around in toxic feces and urine. It’s very sad that another beluga has been sentenced to life in a toilet bowl.

The aquarium’s imprisonment of dolphins didn’t teach people to respect marine mammals and to protect oceans. When the Vancouver Aquarium harpooned its first orca to use as a model for a sculpture, the orca slave trade began. It led to the decimation of orca populations. The aquarium’s captive dolphins and others continue to suffer and die prematurely. Presently, the porpoise Daisy is inhumanely kept in a tank awaiting her fate.

Nature films give people true insight into complex ecosystems, not barren aquarium pools.

What has the aquarium taught its customers? Judging by the oohing and aahing during the beluga labour, it is obviously not respect. It’s simply dominance over other species for their selfish amusement. The belugas didn’t even get privacy, as do other zoo animals during delivery. The aquarium dangled the birth in front of the public to pay and see. That is irresponsible.

More pools mean more captives. The next proposed aquarium expansion will cost $120 million. The aquarium gets government grants for all expansions. Let’s hope that politicians will see that more prisons and more captives aren’t necessary. Aquariums and zoo menageries are part of a speciesist past. We must use scarce funds to protect wildlife in their natural habitats.

The aquarium industry’s slick public relations and marketing are pressing all the green buttons in order to survive and not perish like their many captives. Education and conservation programs can be done without captives in aquariums and zoos.

The Vancouver Aquarium’s new “4-D Experience” film may be a step in the right direction to properly educate people about marine life in the wild. Let’s hope that it ends the inhumane captivity of belugas and others.

Peter Hamilton is the founding director of Lifeforce.