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Blue is the wettest colour

It may find its greatest success as a wedding venue.

The Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada is a series of beautiful backdrops. It is not about science or education or conservation in any manner that might stimulate a person older than 10. It is the display of animals as spectacle, having less in common with a zoo than a large, decorative fish tank.

As a gallery of images, it succeeds. When a tankful of fish bobs in unison with the waves, it is undeniably beautiful. When sharks and rays and turtles soar overheard in the long glass viewing tunnel, it is undeniably cool. And when a wall of jellyfish are lit to glow neon pink, it is undeniably trippy.

Do these things serve any purpose? Absolutely not. And whether they’re worth the $33.88-including-HST admission is wholly up to you. (The cost – which is on par with those of larger, more ambitious non-profit facilities – will surely keep out the stoned teenagers who would get the most from the experience.)

After visiting the chinzty, racist Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum in Niagara Falls last February, I was concerned by the prospect of living creatures being put in that company’s care. Indeed, if Ripley’s Aquarium showcased mammals, this kind of for-profit freak-show treatment would be unacceptable.

But they don’t. Because there are only two non-fish vertebrates in the entire collection (a pair of endangered green sea turtles which I’m told were rescued and rehabilitated), the chief ethical question becomes the threshold at which we consider an animal worthy of concern. If a fish (even a shark) is held in captivity and afforded a less than ideal life, is that a problem and should it bother us? What is a reasonable standard of care? Is this better or worse than the tanks studded throughout the restaurants in my neighbourhood?

I encountered four species whose accompanying signs described them as “threatened” (the sandbar shark, sand tiger shark, goliath grouper, and weedy seadragon), and three which were designated “endangered” (the North American eel, green sawfish, and green sea turtle).

Ripley’s caught their sharks off the coast of South Carolina. When I ask Andy Dehart, the director of husbandry, how many sand tiger sharks remain in the wild, he says, “The thing with sand tiger sharks is they are listed, they’re protected because of their habitats, but they’re not necessarily listed as a threatened species. So there’s actually a number of… I don’t know what the population is offhand, [or if] anybody really knows the full population, but they are a protected species, not a threatened species.”

I point out that that directly contradicts the signs throughout the Dangerous Lagoon exhibit.

“So there’s protected, threatened, and endangered,” he says. “And it really depends on where the current status bounces around a lot.” He explains that’s because sand tiger sharks are inadvertently caught by fishers who are after other species, like swordfish.

Dehart hopes to breed them at the aquarium but acknowledges that other facilities in North America have not yet been successful in doing so.

(The world authority on conservation status, the IUCN’s Red List, categorizes sand tiger sharks as “Vulnerable,” the lowest rung of its “Threatened” subset.)

Outside the building, four picketers occupy a patch of Bremner, respondents to a last-minute call-out to protest the opening day. Slogans that burned so passionately and stirred so deeply when turned against Marineland – “Captivity is cruel,” “Enslavement is not entertainment” – fail to resonate in the same way.

It’s like rallying against a screensaver.

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