J62!!!

California sea lion

// full illustration for @seaunseenzine vol.3 // this piece is on Inprnt

Today's Seals Are: Robot Uprising

Don’t make me put your ass in the sealbarrow

tsuki oh how i love you

Animal welfare advocacy should be about the animals, not an agenda

potato chip’s old man groan…

via

let’s swim with mama

welcome to my blubbery blog!!! 🦭🦦🐋🐬🫧

i’m currently a volunteer at an AZA accredited aquarium, i hope to study marine environmental science in the future and work in conservation and education! my primary interests are in northern fur seal biology and southern resident killer whale behaviour, but i love all marine mammals!

i support accredited* zoos and aquariums! i do however hope that we can move away from them in the future. i think that conversations about the ethics of captivity are important and should always be centered around the wellbeing of the captive animals. i encourage caution and use of critical thinking around both anti and pro captivity arguments. i’m always happy to answer any questions about the practices of AZA accredited zoos and aquariums!

*there are some accredited zoos and aquariums (such as seaworld) that i am heavily critical of, but it’s unfortunately a complicated issue that isn’t realistic to have black and white opinions on.

marine mammal rescue, conservation, and research organisations:

alaska sealife is center

vancouver aquarium marine mammal rescue society

center for whale research

SR3

marine mammal care center

Since many facilities already successfully keep bottlenose dolphins in sea pens, would it be that much harder to build one for killer whales? Just curious.

In theory no… it would just need to be quite a bit larger! In practice, though, it would be more difficult. Bottlenose are right at home in warm coastal tropical and subtropical waters, like Florida, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. These places also draw tourists year round, which means constant income. Cetaceans are expensive to house, and sea pens require constant upkeep to prevent them from succumbing to the inevitable wear and tear of tides and salt.

A sea pen for orcas would need to be in much colder waters (which is why Sea Shepherd’s proposal to build a pen in the Mediterranean was ridiculous), which don’t tend to draw as crowds quite as big as tropical destinations. So you have much larger animals that need much more space, much more food, therefore much more money… but much less income. And that’s not even getting into the issues of staffing.

Since I’m assuming you’re referring to the idea of a sea pen for the orcas currently in captivity, I’ll touch on that briefly. Cetaceans that have spent their whole lives in highly filtered environments tend to have weaker immune systems than those in natural ocean water—one of the valid complaints about artificial tank habitats in my opinion. They just aren’t getting much antigenic stimulation. Some still do okay transitioning to sea pens, but others don’t, and it’s hard to predict how they’ll respond. And for some of the older individuals, like Katina and Corky, the stress alone of such a massive change might be too much.

So yeah, in theory, nothing wrong with a sea pen! In practice though, might be more difficult than many make it out to be.

lets lean on a pipe with mama (x)