It’s Saturday night at Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto, and a blue-carpet gala fundraiser for a small European children’s water education charity is in full swing: the wine is flowing, canapés are on offer, and conservation is on the agenda.
Promoting an early-childhood passion for lakes and oceans is a cause that most investment banker types and environmentalists in the room seem to agree on. But as endangered sharks slowly circle inside the tank overhead, it’s hard not to question whether Ripley’s itself is into saving the seas.
Ripley’s website promises it all: “education, conservation and fun!” The aim of its three North American aquariums, it says, is to “foster a culture of sustainability that supports the environmental and conservation goals of the organization and the greater public.”
Fabulous, except where is all this conservation hiding? Many of the 450 species on display are near-threatened or endangered, but good luck learning why here.
There are lots of “believe it or not” fun fish facts on display, but no panels filling you in on the fact that the sand tiger sharks in Danger Lagoon, for example, are endangered because we’re killing them for fins and food.
Or that these sharks may swim more than 1,000 kilometres on their annual migration. It might be a bummer for visitors to think that these creatures were removed from the wild to be confined to a tank the size of a single football field.
Back in 2012, as Ripley’s was breaking ground on Bremner, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society circulated a petition to stop Toronto from granting Ripley’s an import permit for the sharks, which were captured mid-migration in South Carolina en route to their breeding grounds. Aquariums like Ripley’s can get around international trade laws banning the capture of endangered species precisely because they’re deemed educational facilities.
But much of the conservation talk at aquariums and zoos, says Zoocheck campaigns director Julie Woodyer, is little more than window dressing.
“When the public began questioning the ethics of keeping animals captive in enclosures that cannot meet the their biological and behavioural needs and cannot replicate the complex natural environment where the animals have evolved to live, the zoo and aquarium industries began to market themselves as education and conservation centres,” she says.
Captive wildlife facilities help justify their conservation branding, says Woodyer, by donating small amounts (often less than 1 per cent of their annual budget) to “in situ” conservation programs, or, like Ripley’s, by support-ing shoreline cleanup activities. Either way, she says, the programs “rarely make any significant contribution to wildlife conservation.”
The Vancouver Aquarium has made a big public splash pushing sustainable seafood programs. It’s got hundreds of retailers and restaurants across Canada promoting its Ocean Wise logo system. So is it off the hook? In the eyes of some critics, Vancouver Aquarium is a worse offender than Ripley’s since it keeps dolphins and belugas in captivity, whereas Ripley’s is marine-mammal-free.
Sea Shepherd’s Vancouver coordinator, Jeff Matthews, has called out the Vancouver Aquarium, a charity, for accepting millions of dollars in donations from oil giants, deepwater drillers and natural-gas tanker companies that “profit by placing our oceans and ocean wildlife in peril.”
Both the Vancouver Aquarium and Ripley’s stand by their educational and animal welfare efforts. Ripley’s points out that it’s accredited by the industry-run Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and inspected twice yearly by the OSPCA (the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
OSPCA tells NOW, “There have not been any recommendations or actions taken at Ripley’s Aquarium since we started the zoo inspections.” In 2013, OSPCA cleared Marineland of wrongdoing after a four-month investigation into serious charges of animal abuse by former employees.
But Zoocheck can rhyme off a long list of animal welfare incidents that have occurred at both AZA- and Canadian Association of Zoo and Aquariums-accredited zoos and aquariums.
Barbara Cartwright, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, says the standards need overhauling. “Canada remains in the Victorian era, with federal animal cruelty provisions that were introduced in 1892.”
On marine mammals in captivity, Cartwright says, aquariums “are confusing education with entertainment. Captivity does not meet any of the benchmarks for animal -welfare.”
So you may never learn that the tiny bamboo sharks that spend their lives at Ripley’s in a shallow 3-metre-wide pool are being imperilled by climate change as the oceans heat up and acidify. But, hey, at least you’ll leave knowing that these cute little creatures may be as small as 70 centimetres long at maturity. Believe it or not.
ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | @ecoholicnation
