For many species of marine mammals, fish, invertebrates, and microorganisms, the “wild” has become an increasingly life-threatening place, say scientists who note that the devastating changes to our oceans today are greater, happening faster, and more imminent.
And aquariums around the world are stepping up to stop it.
I monitored “wild” marine mammal-related and science-based articles in the popular press for just 120 days. Collectively, what I found was deeply distressing.
Most profoundly troubling is a new study in which a team of US scientists warn that humans are causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. Articles document deaths of marine mammals from plastic bags (100,000 each year) and describe drift gillnets as deadly curtains of death for marine wildlife.
But that’s not all. Those articles highlight these dangers:
- entanglement in fishing gear
- severely depleted food resources
- deaths from diseases and toxic algal blooms
- changing patterns of predation
- harmful, even lethal, interactions with tourists’ boats and commercial shipping vessels
- potentially devastating effects of climate change
Recent news about the challenges to and deaths of dolphins in the “wild” is particularly distressing. Half the dolphins in the waters off the Florida Keys could die as a result of the spread of morbillivirus, according to one news article.
The endangered Indus River dolphin has vanished from 80% of its range. More tiny, shy vaquita porpoises, which are close to extinction, are turning up dead in fishing nets.
A rise in tourism, fishing and sea transport is further compromising the “vulnerable” population of common bottlenose dolphins around Spain’s Balearic Islands.
For the third winter in a row, starving sea lion pups are stranding on California’s beaches. 2013 saw 1,600 sea lion pups come ashore, and since January another 500 of the tiny animals have stranded. Government officials believe the cause is a change in the availability of prey, especially sardines, which are a high value food source for nursing sea lion mothers
Zoological parks’ and aquariums’ vast research and experience with marine mammals has resulted in information essential to managing and protecting populations in the “wild.”
Dolphins first arrived at the New York Aquarium in 1913. Soon after, director Charles Townsend wrote a celebrated paper detailing dolphin care and behavior at the aquarium. Since that time, a century of marine mammal research has led to scientific advances, adaption of human medical technologies that save animals’ lives, and exhaustive knowledge of the animals’ physiology, cognition, behavior, and reproduction.
Scientists use indispensable, baseline parameters and knowledge gained from animals in parks and aquariums when evaluating the health of marine mammal populations in the “wild.”
Today, the marine life park community is an amazing fusion of veterinary, husbandry, and training expertise and experience that has resulted in dolphins in human care living considerably longer than their counterparts in the wild. The median life expectancy of juvenile California sea lions born in North American zoological parks and aquariums is two to three times longer, depending on gender, than that of those born in the “wild.”
Governments turn to aquarium experts to assist in health assessments of marine mammals in the “wild,” to save animals entangled in fishing gear, to nurse stranded animals back to health and return them to the “wild,” and collaborate in disseminating crucial messaging.
And marine parks and aquariums have long been important contributors to ocean conservation education and public awareness. They provide opportunities for visitors to experience fascinating marine mammals – experiences that foster a respect and caring for these animals and their environments.
Long ago, the dedicated educators at Alliance member facilities developed an Ocean Literacy Reference Guide that includes a collection of ocean messages for inclusion in presentations, narrations, graphics, camps, outreach programs, classroom curriculum, teacher workshops, and Web sites. The messages emphasize the interconnectedness between human activities and healthy marine environments, and underscore that each and every person can make a difference.
The immensity and complexity of human-caused threats to marine life struggling to survive in our oceans – in “the wild” – is formidable. They demand our focus—a science-based, unified approach that includes critical roles played by governments, NGOs, scientists, social movements, and zoological parks and aquariums. All must step up their game and work cooperatively to increase public awareness of these perils facing animals in the wild and motivate cognitive and behavioral changes that benefit the animals. It will take time and international collaboration.
Only by working together can we accomplish meaningful change for whales, dolphins, sea lions, and other marine mammals in the wild – safe, healthy ocean environments in which they can thrive.
Article written by Marilee Menard, former executive director of the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums.