It is under much debate whether or not marine mammals, such as whales or dolphins, should be kept in captivity at all. The main source of the debate stems from the health of the animals. It is very apparent that life in captivity is very detrimental to the physical and psychological health of these marine mammals being kept in captivity. The people and companies keeping these animals in captivity assure the public that these animals are being given the best possible health care that they can afford. Those on the other side of the debate say that the health care of the animals is being almost completely ignored due to how deplorable most of their conditions are. After conducting some research on the subject, it is in my opinion that there are many more negative consequences for keeping the animals in captivity than there are positive ones.
Those whose viewpoints conflict with mine in this debate are usually big corporations, like Sea World, that make a living off of keeping these animals in captivity. Most of their supporters are employees and people who are genuinely entertained by the tricks that the animals are trained to do. The most popular argument for keeping these animals in captivity usually starts with “We found them in the wild with extensive injuries and decided to rescue them” and ends with “Their injuries are too great. If we were to release them back into the wild then they would surely perish” or if they bred the animals in captivity they make the argument “These animals have not been able to learn all the skills necessary to survive in the wild and thus cannot be released into the wild”. Another common argument is the spiel about “We give them amazing health care and an environment free of any predators. Surely this is better than living in the wild?”
The most difficult argument to make any sort of counterpoint to is the “We bred them in captivity. They lack any skills necessary to survive in the wild” argument. The only counterpoint

I can offer requires that their parents were not bred in captivity. These marine mammals could easily have learned the skills necessary to survive in the wild had they not been born and raised in captivity and were instead allowed to roam freely throughout their natural habitat. The point about giving the animals health care and an environment free of predators is fairly easy to counteract. While it is true that health care and an environment free of predators are a good thing, the pools in which these animals are kept in are miniscule compared to where they normally exist in the wild. Some pods of dolphins will swim up to one hundred miles in a single day. With that in mind, know that the pools are usually little more than 24’ wide X 24’ long X
24’ deep. On top of that, the pool is filled with chlorine which has shown to be rather damaging to both the eyes and skin of dolphins and whales alike. There are also numerous other things stemming from being in such a small, concrete pen that detriment the health of these animals.
It is in my personal opinion that marine mammals should not be kept in captivity.
Captivity is a terrible, terrible mistake on the part of those responsible for the animals being in permanent captivity because for seemingly every one reason they benefit from being in captivity there are usually two or three reasons they do not.
For instance, let’s explore the numerous health issues that stem from being kept in a relatively small confinement area. As I have already stated, the chlorine that is added to most, if not all, pools that these animals are kept in is very damaging to their eyes and skin and in some cases can cause them to go blind. Due to being so much closer to the surface than they normally are and because the water is so much clearer the animals will often suffer from chronic sunburn and possibly cataracts forming in their eyes. Also consider that dolphins and whales navigate using echolocation, which is producing sound waves that go out into the ocean, hit an object, and eventually reflect back giving the animal of what the object is and how far away it is. When they

are kept in such a small pen the sound waves they produce will simply bounce back and forth within the pool occasionally causing some of them to go mentally insane. This could all be remedied if they were just left alone in the wild.
Marine mammals, such as dolphins or whales, in the wild are able to swim freely in family units of varying size. It is usual for these families to swim up to one hundred miles in one day. In captivity, however, dolphins are usually kept in concrete tanks that are twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet wide and six feet deep. Whales probably do not fare much better. The biggest problem is the fact that most, if not all, of the animals on display at places such as Sea World were captured and not bred in captivity. This means that they were torn away from their families much like slaves were in the 1700’s. The stress of these events coupled with other environmental factors such as living in a chlorinated pool instead of seawater ends up severely degrading the health of these animals and many of them can hardly survive past the age of twenty.
Killer whales in the wild have been known to live up to ninety years before dying of old age and wild dolphins usually live as long as sixty or seventy years. However, in captivity it is rare to find either of these marine mammals living past the age of twenty but most can barely survive more than five years in captivity. What causes them to live such short lifespans compared to their wild counterparts? Most of these animals die from bacterial infections due to their immune systems being weakened by the stress of being captured and being torn apart from their family. They are also usually required to perform tricks to entertain crowds of people and the trainers do not always resort to ethical means of training. As said by former dolphin trainer
Ric O’Barry “’Positive reward’ training is just a euphemism for ‘food depravation’”. Another

common form of punishment is isolating the animal from any form of contact human or otherwise. Whales and dolphins being the social animals that they are, this is more akin to psychological torture than putting an unruly child in timeout. To further add to the terrible psychological state the captive animals are in, consider the fact that dolphins and whales largely rely on echolocation, bouncing sound wave off objects to determine what it is and how far away, for navigation. Also consider the fact that the captive animals are used to having the entirety of the ocean in which to navigate. Placing them in a relatively miniscule concrete pool is severely detrimental because when they try to use echolocation the sound waves they produce will bounce off of every wall in the pool and causes some captive animals to go insane from hearing the same sound bounce nearly endlessly back and forth. The chlorine that is kept in the pools to maintain cleanliness is also very bad for marine mammals that spend all of their time in the water. In most cases it causes them to go blind or be unable to open their eyes. It has also been recorded being very damaging to the skin of dolphins causing it to peel like human skin after getting a bad sunburn.
How can we fix the deplorable conditions and drastically shortened lifespans of marine mammals in captivity? The most obvious answer is by far the most difficult. These animals should not be in captivity. The simplest way of getting them out of captivity is by not patronizing the places that hold them captive. These places are businesses first and if they don’t get money from customers then they don’t really have a choice about going bankrupt. However, this is not always an option because some people are genuinely entertained by the goings on at these sorts of places. A better idea for getting these animals out of captivity is to do it with politics. As of

now, places such as Sea World are not legally required to report to any government officials about the care of the animals, the conditions they live in, or which ones have died and why. If one wanted to make a difference, a good place to start is working towards better government regulation of these places.
If these marine mammals are taken for granted and placed in captivity where they die years before they normally would have thereby forcing their original captors to seek out and capture more wild creatures, pretty soon there aren’t going to be any left. If we want the dolphins and the whales to be around for our children and grandchildren to enjoy then we have to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Works Cited
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"SeaWorld - The Tragic Truth About Orcas in Captivity." Save the Whales . Save the Whales, n.d.
Web. 11 Jul 2012. <http://www.savethewhales.org/captivity.html>.
"Marine Animal Exhibits: Chlorinated Prisons." People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals .
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<http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-in-Entertainment/marine-animal-exhibitschlorinated-prisons.asp&xgt;>
Jett, John, and Jeffrey Ventre. "Keto and Tilikum Express the Stress of Orca Captivity." The
Orca Project . People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 20 Jan 2011. Web. 11 Jul
2012. <http://theorcaproject.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/keto-tilikum-express-stress-oforca-captivity/>.
"Ask Shamu - Frequently Asked Questions." Animals - Explore, Discover, Connect . Busch
Gardens, Discovery Cove, and Seaworld, n.d. Web. 11 Jul 2012.
<http://seaworld.org/ask-shamu/faq.htm>