After years of waiting, animal advocates are finally celebrating a big step towards emptying the tanks in Canada with the Senate moving to pass legislation that would ban keeping whales and dolphins in captivity. The legislation, Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act (S-203), would effectively phase out captivity by banning captive breeding, imports, […]
Tag: dolphin
The UK is Illegally Endangering Porpoises, Court Rules
A European court has ruled that the UK has not been properly protecting its declining population of harbor porpoises, breaking its international commitments. The European Court of Justice, Europe’s top court on issues surrounding regulatory law, has said that the UK is breaking the law due to its failure to designate enough areas to keep […]
POLL: Would you eat whale or dolphin meat after visiting a marine sanctuary?
Should you eat whale meat? Reports on Iceland’s new retirement home for beluga whales note that, after viewing the animals – rescued from a Shanghai marine park – tourists can then visit a harbourside restaurant where they can dine on whale meat. Last week, Iceland resumed whaling after a three-year hiatus, killing a 20-metre fin […]
POLL: Should Peru’s killing of dolphins for use as bait be banned?
Given how universally revered dolphins are, and the fact that humans rarely eat their meat, you’d be forgiven for assuming that dolphins are largely spared by the fishing industry. Alas, that’s not the case. As a new report finds, fishers hunt and butcher over 100,000 cetaceans (a classification that includes dolphins, porpoises and tinier whales) […]
POLL: Should dolphinariums be banned and closed down?
In another tragic loss for captive cetaceans, a second bottlenose dolphin has died in less than a year at Dolphinaris in Arizona. Despite massive public opposition, Dolphinaris opened in Scottsdale in 2016, offering a range of opportunities to interact with dolphins there. Sadly, over the past eight months, two of its eight dolphins have already […]
POLL: Should marine life be conserved by banning the use of “Drift Nets”?
California’s drift-net fishery is under fire from a coalition of marine conservation and animal protection groups.These wildlife advocates released a damning undercover video last week, revealing just how often innocent marine life dies because of drift nets. Deceptively small in size, California’s drift-net fishery has an enormous negative impact.The industry includes a fleet of about […]
POLL: Should the keeping of dolphins and whales in tanks be banned worldwide?
It’s been nearly 9 years since The Cove brought the story of dolphin massacres in Taiji, Japan, and the issue of captive cetaceans before the eyes of millions of people around the world. The film shows viewers the images of fishers corralling dozens of thrashing and squealing dolphins into nets set up in Japan’s sheltered […]
POLL: Should we give up half of the Earth to wildlife?
The orangutan is one of our planet’s most distinctive and intelligent creatures. It has been observed using primitive tools, such as the branch of a tree, to hunt food, and is capable of complex social behaviour. Orangutans also played a special role in humanity’s own intellectual history when, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin and […]