St. Maarten Private Eye

Georgia Seaworld blasted by Naomi Rose - 17th January 2007

Georgia Aquarium ignored reality

It was not Nature that killed Ralph and Gasper, but captivity.

“When will they ever learn, When will they ever learn.....”

By Naomi A. Rose

For the Journal-Constitution - Published on: 01/17/07

Gasper the beluga whale and Ralph the whale shark are dead. The Georgia Aquarium's executive director, Jeff Swanagan, was quoted in the AJC as saying, "Sometimes, nature is that way. It can be cruel in terms of back-to-back tragedies."

It was not Nature that killed Ralph and Gasper, but captivity.

Swanagan's statement is hypocritical. When Ralph and Gasper and the other whale sharks and belugas arrived at the aquarium, Swanagan was among those who claimed that one of the advantages of captivity was that it protected these animals from the cruelties of nature. He should not now trot out these cruelties as an excuse for the animals' deaths. And, of course, there is the irony that the Georgia Aquarium's tanks are not natural in the first place -- they are artificial in the truest sense of the word.

The Humane Society of the United States opposed the beluga and whale shark exhibits at the aquarium from the beginning. We expressed concerns about the belugas' and whale sharks' survival chances. It is very frustrating when a national animal protection organization with considerable experience and expertise in the welfare of captive marine life expresses concern, is ignored, and then must endure the statements of aquarium staff along the lines of "No one could have foreseen this" and "We have no idea what happened" and "Nature is cruel."

Apparently, Swanagan has even stated that the aquarium's activities, known for pushing the envelope, sometimes "don't work out." Well, they didn't work out this time, but it wasn't the aquarium that suffered for this failed experiment -- it was Gasper and Ralph.

Gasper died young because he was traumatically captured from the wild when he was a juvenile; was subjected to terrible conditions in a Mexican amusement park; was made sick by those conditions; and was then subjected to a long transport that caused considerable stress.

The stress faced by whales and dolphins during transport is a scientific fact. Several studies have documented the hormonal reactions of these animals during transport and their negative impacts on the animals' health.

Gasper really didn't stand a chance. His survival chances would have been better if he had been removed from the Mexican park, but placed somewhere closer, to avoid the stress of the long plane trip to Atlanta. The aquarium chose to fool itself and the public into believing that somehow its staff would miraculously save his life.

After Gasper's sorry history in captivity, for Swanagan to blame Nature for his death is deplorable. Maybe he would have died in the wild anyway, but that's pure speculation -- given his health in Mexico, his death in Georgia was nearly a certainty. We expressed this very concern to reporters on the opening day of the aquarium.

As for Ralph, Swanagan claims that the aquarium rescued him and Norton, the other whale shark, from a certain future as sashimi on an Asian dinner plate. The obvious response to that now is -- not so much. The jury is still out on Norton and the two females at the aquarium, but clearly Ralph was not rescued at all. He is dead.

In my professional opinion, the necropsy results are likely to be inconclusive unless some obvious physical problem, such as a swallowed foreign object, reveals itself, given the relatively limited state of veterinary knowledge regarding whale sharks.

What killed Ralph, and may yet kill the other whale sharks, are captivity, ignorance and arrogance. Little is known about whale sharks in the wild, which makes knowing how to keep them alive in captivity a bit of a hit-or-miss exercise, one that is academic for aquariums, but life or death for the sharks.

The aquarium has claimed it is an educational facility and the whale shark and beluga exhibits are valuable teaching tools. It claims its goal is to learn more about these animals and now the staff says that even in death, some good can still be had if the post-mortems of Gasper and Ralph provide new information and insights. Yet rather than making Gasper's tissues widely available to researchers or veterinarians, he was cremated.

Hypocrisy is the name of the game here, and it should not pass unchallenged.

Naomi A. Rose is marine mammal scientist for The Humane Society of the United States.

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