Dolphins and other marine mammals - to zoo or not to zoo?

I suppose that they could always take in rescued individuals that were deemed unreleasable, if those aquaria (SeaWorld included), decided to not breed them anytime soon, similar to what you had said before just now.

 

They could and they probably would but we won’t see SeaWorld use pilot whales as an Orca alternative for a while. Honestly I have no idea what their plan for their large Orca stadiums is right now. Replacing them with Pilot Whales as the secondary cetacean to the dolphins makes sense but SeaWorld may not be looking to replace Orcas. They are probably waiting for the population to die out so they can replace the stadiums with rides or switch out the Orcas for Bottlenose Dolphins. But right now with the constant change of leadership in the company it’s difficult to tell what the plan for just 5-10 years from now is. I just wouldn’t bet that Pilot Whales will become prevalent because of SeaWorld.

 

Does anyone have data about the recent average lifespan of Belugas and Dolphins in those top aquariums like Shedd and Georgia?

 

As for these two facilities there is not enough information on their averages. Overall, dolphins in top aquariums live much longer in captivity than in the wild. In captivity, bottlenose dolphins, on average live to be 50 years old but in the wild will only live to be about 30 to 40 years. For example, Capricorn at SeaWorld's Discovery Cove is 55 years old and still thriving and Nellie who died at 61 at Marineland Dolphin Adventure lived an extremely long life. These two were just examples from off the top of my head. There is not enough data for belugas but as of the last ten to twenty years they seem to live much longer. Beluga whales typically live to be around 30 to 35 years old in the wild I from what I have collected around 40 to 50 in captivity. The oldest beluga now is Ferdinand at SeaWorld San Diego who is 53 years old. Overall Belugas and bottlenose dolphins live much longer lives in captivity compared to the wild. As for Pacific White-Sided Dolphins which is what Shed has, there is also not enough information about them as they are not very common in captivity. They live to be around the same age as bottlenose dolphins in the wild though.

 

For bottlenose dolphins, lifespan is indeed higher if you disregard older data. If you don’t do that, and pretend like the early attempts of keeping dolphins are representative for the present you get an average lifespan which is lower.

 

Canada banned this (strengthened older laws) in 2021
There are loopholes (animals already in captivity etc) but places like Vancouver Aquarium and Marineland are going to see some big changes in next couple of years

https://www.canada.ca/en/fisheries-...ptivity-of-whales-dolphins-and-porpoises.html

 

This is considered past news and has been discussed on this site many times. This has and will not affected the Vancouver Aquarium as the local parks district already banned them from keeping cetaceans in 2017. The aquarium sent away their last dolphin a while ago. Meanwhile, the only thing that has stopped at Marineland is breeding and shows. Now the owners of Marineland are trying to sell the park which will most likely end of cetaceans in captivity in Canada unless the Whale Sanctuary Projects somehow works. It is also important to remember that it was a couple members of the Canadian government that wanted this. I know that at least for the Vancouver Aquarium, the people loved visiting the belugas and white-sided dolphins and were very sad to see them go.