One of my favorite movies of all time is Free Willy, a movie about a lone teenager and a lone killer whale(orca).
Ever since Free Willy, Orca is my favorite animal. I watched the movie hundreds of times, and especially loved the ending theme with footage of wil orcas swimming so peacefully...
I have visited an aquarium 15years ago and saw a living Orca performing. I remember how excited I was to finally meet one, and I remember feeling “this is not it” after seeing his magnificent performance in “big” tank he live. I didn’t know why exactly I was disappointed to meet an Orca.
Little Biscuits was born ocean lover. Whenever he was grumpy I could bring him to the bath tab or toddler pool in balcony. He could spend hours and hours in water despite my worries of him freezing. It was only natural for us to start going to our local aquarium that lies on beach throughout the year. As his interest grew, we learnt a lot about the ocean and creatures living in it.
Dolphins swim so much that living in a tank is like us humans being in bath tab for life. Dolphins never eat dead fish in the wild that captive dolphins need to be infused water to its stomach every day to stop dehydration. Dolphins don’t jump the way we know them that often and they do so in performance as they are hungry. They are entertaining us so they can be fed. Dolphins bully each other as part of their social life, in the wild you have enough space to avoid bullys if one wants to: in a tank you just have to be bullied. I can go on and on...
Now I know why I was disappointed to meet a captive Orca.
Because I know there was no happy ending like Willy. Because I knew he didn’t belong in a tank. Because I knew he was meant to swim and hunt in big wide ocean.
Nagoya Aquarium announced that they will take a research on captive breeding of Orca. And it made me upset. All the wrong reasons to breed it. What’s the goal? To use Orca for human entertainment? It’s not helping them in any way to breed in captivity... It’s co-researched with Mie university (local university) and just hard to believe that marine biologists don’t see what’s wrong with the decision to breed such magnificent animal in captivity...
I admit that I loved dolphin shows when I was small and not educated about them. But as Little Biscuits grew I don’t see the necessary of captivity of animals that can’t maintain healthy life and generations. Kids don’t learnt to love them just by looking at them, they learnt to love through learning about them.
Little Biscuits loves white sharks and Tiger sharks through reading and watching documentaries. He wishes to see them real one day and that motivate him to learn to swim. We promised him diving course ones he is 8 and once he can swim well. His goal is clear and it wasn’t brought by captive sharks, but the ones swim freely in the ocean.
Don’t be silly and start saying what’s different from herding cows, as they are live stocks and we have been coexisting long with them even turning to own species to coexist with us(read into silk worm if you are interested)...
So please, Nagoya Aquarium and researchers involved, think carefully what is needed for research and education in our future...