Why we are against cetacean sanctuaries. Part 2 : Slavery with another name (1/2)

Another striking contradiction besides denying personhood itself is that sanctuaries are factually captivity in practice. Not merely because they work as enclosed, captive spaces, but more broadly because the general structure of organization and legitimation of these future facilities are similar to dolphinariums : an institution owned and managed by some, where hired “caretakers” will exclusively manage an enclosed population, in the broader context of a money-driven society. Sanctuaries are based on the same questionable relation of powers, ideas and arguments which the dolphinarium industry are traditionally founded on, as we will see in part 3 and 4. This means that most activists are currently making the mistake of supporting the very practice much of them have been fighting against for decades, with most of the very same arguments used by the captivity industry to legitimate their handling.

But there is also a mountain of theoretical and empirical evidences showing that the global activism actively collaborated with actors of the dolphinarium industry to transform dolphinariums into sea-side, touristic, money-driven facilities, despite how the “official” and most common claim inside of our activism insists on how cetacean sanctuaries should be non-lucrative and non visitable[1]. In other words, cetacean sanctuaries can only exist through a collaboration with the dolphinarium industry or by mimicking its principles. These will be listed on the second part with detailed description and history of each case (and could be the subject of regular updates in the future).

The theoretical evidences

We can already draw several conclusions from the context and the material necessity of such places which contradict the usual narrative of future cetacean sanctuaries being necessarily non-visitable and non profit based, as it is often claimed or perceived as an ideal by their proponents.

First of all, there are few doubts that if sanctuaries manage to appear at all they will indeed either replicate the dolphinarium model, or rather they will appear out of recycled dolphinariums or companies from the dolphinarium industry. This makes sense for several reasons :

1. Sanctuaries can’t maintain themselves without a dependable source of steady financial input.
   

They will need to be positioned as visit and fee based places to function at all. While difficult to assess precisely, this seems at least intuitively reasonable when we know not only the cost of maintaining enough caretakers, infrastructures etc. but also of daily feeding a cetacean population : it appears dubious that donations only could provide for the maintaining of a significative captive population, especially killer whales. Organizations seeking to create sanctuaries indeed already gave number seeming to confirm this intuition : for instance, Munchkin Inc, the main company funding the Whale Sanctuary Project, assessed the cost of a sanctuary to 500 000$ per year and 5 millions $ to found, an argument they use to justify its nature as a touristic, paying entrance based facility, contrary to the activist motto that sanctuaries should be both non profit and non visitable as not to turn into a blatant monetary exploitation of cetaceans as well as to prevent stress and harassment from visitors.

2. The monetary based visit system can easily be justified upon diverse pretexts traditionally used by the industry itself.
   

For instance upon the idea of maintaining the future captives alive, “under the best conditions and care”, as well as to support conservation efforts, research of “wild cetaceans” or pedagogy. In other words, money-based entrances or logic are easy to legitimate in the name of certain values or necessities and shouldn’t be difficult for these future owners to brush away. It is as well reasonable to believe that the industry will put up much efforts in surviving by changing their form, and that it cost less effort and money to transform such places and retake their basic organization and administrative structure rather than creating one anew. Such collaboration being again easily justified over pragmatics. Part of the problem is of course that such defense is deeply hypocritical, as the activism traditionally fought against these very arguments when used by the industry on the rightful pretext that captive animals didn’t taught anything about the original lives of said species, and more broadly that global conservation efforts were either problematic (in zoos) or a pretext with no factual grounds (for dolphinariums). The argument of care was also dismissed, again rightfully, on the grounds that no amount of care would compensate for the factual suffering of captivity. Proponents of sanctuaries are oblivious of the same problematic when applied to the infrastructure they seek to set up and manage.

3. Most sanctuaries will naturally take an ambitious, corporatist Sea-World like form

It appears necessary that if sanctuaries were to happen, they wouldn’t ideally function as a decentralized conglomerate of little facilities, but rather as a few extremely large areas encompassing hundred of ex captives from numerous closed down dolphinariums, owned and managed by one or a few powerful companies in collaboration with activist organizations such as the WDC. This makes sense from a management, strategic and economic point of view. First, they want to take as many captives as possible in such places. It would be easier for them to ship all captives to one massive place, instead of doing it “piece by piece” to small places scattered along the countryside. In particular, It also would be a way for huge companies such as Blackstone to “replace” massively profit-generating parks such as Seaworld : a big sanctuary with hundreds of captives would generate much more tourism and therefore profit than a hundred of little places scattered ones over the world. Such places would be then nothing more than renewed, glorified SeaWorlds, using a certain entertaining and attractive image to boost entrances while using the argument of care as a shield to legitimate such methods. They could also work as “rehab and release” facilities, and as such deem some of the captured cetaceans “unreleasable” on based on “expertise” to maintain a constant stock ; a well known practice from SeaWorld or facilities such as the Clearwater Marine Aquarium or Solangi’s Dolphin Research Center.

     4) As dolphinariums, seaside sanctuaries will be attractive assets to whoever decides to host or own them

The other argument weighing over the idea that sanctuaries will take such a form is that such ambitious projects would easily garner the interest of certain countries or regions as powerful tourism and employment generators, as many modern “swim with” facilities in the caribbean or south east asia already do. It would be easier to convince a local region or government to install a big sanctuary which can generate profit and employ several hundred locals rather than a small-scale one, housing for instance just a couple dolphins rather than one hundred or one killer whale instead of a family.

Though, this doesn’t exclude the possibility that little dolphinariums could surf on this tendency to legitimate themselves as rescues place or sea-side sanctuaries. This could be already the case in Russia, where a local dolphinarium company started to sue competing coastal dolphinariums to confiscate some of their captives, in the name of the deplorable conditions of life of these other cetaceans(quote). Rescue-based coastal dolphinariums such as the Clearwater Marine Aquarium or Moby Solangi’s Dolphin research center could easily take advantage from this tendency to expand by “green-washing” themselves with a sanctuary facade, effectively expanding over the fallen niche left by the collapse of SeaWorld. The industry will simply adapt the current market to a new form that can satisfy the customer, even as an activist.

This doesn’t necessarily and rigidly mean that the intention of leading activists such as Marino or Visser are profit based, or entirely so at least. The problem being more subtly that by encouraging sanctuaries, they are unfortunately seeking to replicate the same relations of power dolphinariums are founded on, with cetaceans being recognized as the legitimate property of owners, specifically company or institution-like systems, confined to a captive space, and managed and ruled through an use of training by caretakers (which is at least a necessity for medical check-ups and possible treatments). The mentality behind sanctuaries is fundamentally similar to dolphinariums, and uses the same dubious arguments and sophisms systematically supporting them (“instinct loss” ; cetaceans pictured as weak and “needing care”, myth of “the wilderness”, negation of cetaceans as both individual and social members ; all points we will see further in). Of course, all this is always being validated thanks to an implicit use of hierarchy and power in our own societies, particularly in the “anti-cap” cetacean activism as we will see in part 7.

In other words, the sanctuarized cetacea are still slaves, because they are encompassed in a relation of power which is slave-like : they are a state recognized, rightful property of some individuals granting themselves such a right of power and exploitation over these captives, having to submit themselves to the will of staff and ‘management’, with force if necessary “for their own good”, that they accept or not such a fate never being taken into account. There’s, again, neither freedom nor equality possible in sanctuaries, nor as it was the case in dolphinariums : both occur in a human-dominated society, where human bias and desire for power rules and where the cetacean point of view is never acknowledged.

Notes :

[1] http://www.satyamag.com/nov04/paquette.html
"• No commercial activity involving animals occurs (including, but not limited to, sale of animals, animal parts, by-products, offspring, or photographic opportunities; no public events for financial gain and/or profit);"

 https://www.thedodo.com/community/lorimarino/dolphin-and-whale-sanctuaries--826851031.html
"  A genuine sanctuary provides an environment in which the residents can lead some semblance of a satisfactory life closer to the wild setting. In a real sanctuary like PAWS, the only interest is in the welfare of the residents; they are not used as a means to an end, i.e. for profit or publicity."