As first reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the huge and mighty Georgia Aquarium wants to import 18 captured Russian belugas and distribute them among American captive facilities because the belugas already in tanks in the U.S. aren’t making enough babies. Thanks to Bo Emerson of AJC for breaking the news, and thanks to a bunch of other people cited below for trying to rally dissent.
Georgia Aquarium, for shame.
According to Emerson, Georgia Aquarium has already invested 2½ years and $2 million in this previously unpublicized endeavor, and, far from being troubled by the news, the American public should welcome it — because, with climate change and all, who knows but that the belugas could soon be gone if we don’t start breeding them in tanks, as Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums executive director Marilee Menard put it, to “ensure the goal of a long-term, sustainable population for decades to come.”
“This is where we put our money where our mouth is,” Georgia Aquarium’s chief zoological officer William Hurley said. “We want to fix this mess so that your children and grandchildren can see beluga whales.”
Georgia Aquarium couldn’t have come out looking much better if it had written the article itself, which isn’t surprising, really. As marine-mammal advocates know, many media outlets do use press releases from places like Georgia Aquarium and SeaWorld as the basis if not sole source of their captive-display industry news — so matter-of-factly that they often don’t even bother to catch and change telltale industry lingo, like “in human care,” the industry’s preferred euphemism for “captivity.” Watch for it. Keep reading
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