A large amount of the dolphins kept in Japanese aquariums came from drive fishery : Aquariums reveal dolphin sources / 18 obtained dolphins via drive fishery - The Japan News
Wh cares? 100 % of the apes in "captivity" have their orgin in wild caughts-and the parents and most other members of the group were slaugtherd to get the babies....and who cares about that fact ? And dont ask for the orgin of elephants and millions of coral fishes, birds, reptiles.... Ps:Some japanese aquariums breed bottlenose dolphins now in the fifth generation, and some have stopped breeding them... Ps 2: ALL animals in"captivity"have their orgin in the wild-even the animals some people eat or keep them as a pet...but who cares ?
The problem with dolphins is that captive breeding will NEVER cover the demand for them, as long as the dolphins are used solely for entertainment and money-making. Their husbandry conditions are often awful. For example, in Russia - many dolphinaria are either travelling ones or, if stationary, are still cramped - almost always with just 1 pool! And usage of illegally-sourced animals (such as Black sea bottlenoses) with microchips re-implanted from their registered, dead predecessors is not unheard of. For a businessman who wants to start a dolphin show, it's always cheaper to buy wild-caught dolphins rather than captive-bred ones, because the animals would have to be replaced after several years - they just die! Sometimes, calves are born, even in travelling shows, but they usually don't survive long enough to mature and produce 2nd generation.
That's a pretty big generalization Elephas, but yes, as long as dolphins can easily be sourced from the wild there will be a huge number of low quality purely commercial institutions in countries that allow a free flow of wild caught animals. That's not a problem with dolphins though, it's a problem with human greed. Saying it's a problem with dolphins is like saying that we shouldn't be having orangutans because of ape boxing in southeast asia. Once you have restrictions in place on who can acquire them though, captive breeding quickly covers demand. In Japan it would be easy too, as it has already reached critical mass in places new dolphinaria can be built. It's already gotten to the point where most of Taiji's live captures are going to China. All Japan needs is for current facilities that plan to keep dolphins for the long term to build larger pools. Once that's in place Japan can join the rest of the developed world in keeping dolphins in a sustainable way, which we have been doing for a couple decades now with plenty of success.
It may be an off-topic, but the only one facility in Russia that does NOT provide dolphin swimming and BULL**** called 'dolphin therapy' is the dolphinarium of Moscow zoo (now being reconstructed). It's private-owned, but the animals living here are part of zoo's collection. Only interaction between visitors & animals happens at photoshoots (high proces in busy days deter much visitors and keep animal stress to minimal level). On the contrary, the new dolphinarium in Novosibirsk zoo (currently in construction, claimed to be 2nd largest in Russia) is privately-owned too, but exists on land lease conditions and totally separated from zoo collection & management. There would be kept Taiji bottlenoses, belugas & pinnipeds, and it was specifically built for swimming & dolphin therapy. Since it brings damn good money, nobody will tell the visitors that 'smiling' Flippers who 'heal' their children were witnessing the death of their own family members from human hands. And no damn belugas were born in Russia yet - why breeding, when live capture quotas are issued? Those animals are viewed just as food for natives and polar bears.
It's very simple: The collection of megafauna for western zoos occurred in the past. We learned hard lessons from that long ago. Today we are a bit more enlightened, and so we have changed our methods. Baby gorillas and elephant calves are no longer swept away from their slaughtered families and shipped to western zoos. Today, we finally understand that the practice was wrong - ethically, ecology, economically. Today, ethically conscious people and facilities typically do not capture animals due to the stress of capture. If they do, they capture species or individuals which are perhaps less cognizant than other species and lack social bonds. I.E., Spoon-billed Sandpiper eggs are collected for conservation efforts. The eggs experience no/little stress during collection; meanwhile, if adults were captured, they would experience extreme stress and likely suffer high mortality. (For a modern elephant example, read into the controversial Swazi Eleven capture - another case in which people cared.) On the other hand, the capture of cetaceans is incredibly stressful for the individuals involved. Watch any video of this procedure - be it from 1970 or 2010 - and this is immediately evident even to the most amateur of ethologists. Cetaceans have some of the most complex brains in the world, and have extremely strong bonds with their pods. All this makes their capture and life in captivity psychologically challenging. This signifies that the capture of dolphins for captivity is cruel, and must be stopped. Add in the attendant slaughter of dolphins that takes place in Taiji, and the practice becomes even more objectionable. I hope that answers your question. If you still don't understand why people care, perhaps you should visit Taiji's cove this September. If you are still puzzled after such an experience, a psychologist's help may be needed. I hope you find sympathy in your life. Goodnight!
We all know that wild captures are incredibly stressful on cetaceans, and probably all animals with a central nervous system for that matter. I don't think that Bib Fortuna was trying to argue that it wasn't. I think the point is that people act like dolphins from that specific source are somehow "stained". If an aquarium has agreed to no longer taking wild caught dolphins, how is it any different from any one of the many western zoos with elderly apes and elephants brought in from wild sources?
There are several differences between Eastern aquariums with drive-hunt dolphins and Western zoos with aging, wild-caught wildlife. First, there is the question of transparency: I'd assume that there was less information on capture methods available to zoos four, five, or six decades ago. However, the brutality of drive-hunts is well-known. Second, there is the difference (in some cases) of monetary drive. At my local zoo, our three African Elephant cows are circus retirees. They were originally bought (In Zimbabwe, I believe), as cull calves, by the circus. Indeed, once I began reading into animal histories, I was astonished at just how many zoo animals were, at one point, kept in circuses or as pets. Of course this is not the situation for all "wild-caught" zoo animals, but those zoos which house "second-hand" animals, so to speak, are not responsible for that animal's capture and, in most cases, did not support captures by accepting these animals. However, I do not know of a single aquarium whose drive-hunt dolphins have all been acquired because the aquarium offered asylum to an aquarium which happened to be closing. On the contrary, Eastern aquariums bought approximately 80 dolphins directly from the drive hunt at Taiji just this past September. This means that the aquariums directly supported the capture. But both these points seem unimportant, though, when one considers that some Western aquariums have only just decided to end buying wild-caught dolphins. Meanwhile, wild-caught great apes have not been bought by Western zoos since CITES regulations were enacted in 1975, and I believe that imports of wild-caught wildlife ebbed for a decade or two prior. Since then, very few wild-caught animals have made their way to western zoos. A striking exemption to this trend is that of the Swazi Eleven, eleven African Elephants that were captured in Swaziland in 2003 as part of a population control program. The eleven elephants were bought by the Lowry Park and San Diego Zoos for $12,000 each - hardly a fair trade. The act was extremely controversial, with many taking offense to the fact that wild animals were being captured for display in American zoos. I too was concerned - concerned that American zoos were doing business with a less than democratic country; concerned that Swaziland would manage their elephants for overpopulation so that they could profit from them; concerned that the elephants may be killed or shipped to substandard zoos or circuses if Lowry and San Diego did not take them; concerned that the elephants were going to locations with mediocre elephant habitats. There were many different issued to consider in the Swazi Eleven case. But no animals were killed in this event, much unlike the Taiji slaughter. Considering this, and the fact there is no reason to bring the cetaceans of the pacific, there is ample reason to put greater blame on aquariums with drive-hunt dolphins than zoos with old gorillas. I hope that explains my position! I must say, I'm honestly surprised that people are actually claiming that there is no difference between the Bronx Zoo and the Taiji Dolphinarium with regards to their animal-collection ethics...
Well, he did say "Who cares?" and in my native dialect, this phrase implies that the speaker himself does not care about the said issue; in this case, aquariums supporting the drive-hunt capture of dolphins... What do mean by "strained?" Do you mean stressed? Unacceptable? I'm not sure what your point is here.
1975 fairly is recent, only a few decades before wild captures dolphin captures in the west ended. so there's really no difference with western aquariums beyond timelines. I'm saying dolphins from Japan are metaphorically stained in the blood of the Taiji drive hunt in the minds of many people. If the dolphin is from Japan, some activists don't seem to care if it is first hand or second hand, captive born or even a rescue. I haven't heard of an aquarium in Japan that only has dolphins from another aquarium or park that has previously closed either, but that's probably due to a combination industry secritiveness and the ease of which dolphins could just vanish into anonymity in most eastern aquariums. We know this sort of thing has happened with commerson's dolphins in Japan, but only because there's a limited number of them.
