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Nova Scotia Whale Sanctuary Approval: What It Means for Captive Whales and Ocean Conservation · How To Protect The Ocean

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  For the first time in Canada's history, we're one step closer to giving captive
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  whales a real home in the ocean.
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  Nova Scotia, the province of Nova Scotia has just approved the lease to
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  the country's first whale sanctuary, A refuge that could finally let
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  former captive whale live in the sea again, or if they were born in
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  captivity for the first time ever.
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  But is this the finish line or is it just the beginning of a long journey?
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  We're gonna talk about that on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  Let's start the show.
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  Hey everybody.
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  Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find
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  out what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for the
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  ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
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  On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about how the Whale Seaside Sanctuary.
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  the Whale Sanctuary Project finally got approval for a lease in Nova Scotia.
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  This is huge.
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  We never thought this was actually gonna happen.
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  It's been a long time, and it's been over 10 years that the Whale
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  Sanctuary project has been alive.
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  I remember having Lori Marino from the Whale Sanctuary Project
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  on the podcast to talk about it.
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  Also link it to the show notes.
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  this is something that's been a huge, huge news, and I, it's all sort of
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  stemming from, I think, from Marineland.
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  It just seems to be a big coincidence right now.
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  There are 30 belugas in Marineland right now that need to go somewhere.
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  The Marineland wants to sell them off to either theme parks in China, but the
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  government stopped that from happening.
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  They needed a permit.
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  The government said, no, you're not gonna be putting it into another park
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  where they're allowed to be part of the entertainment as well as breeding.
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  That's a law in Canada, you're not allowed to do, so why would
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  we send it to another country?
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  Perfectly understandable.
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  That's what's happened, and now we have these 30 beluga.
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  They're sitting there.
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  It just reminds me of Marineland, me as a kid going to Marineland,
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  you know, listening to the jingle.
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  Everybody loves Marineland.
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  It's a song that just kept happening over and over and over
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  in the eighties and nineties.
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  And when I was finally in university, I hadn't really learned about
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  the problems of captivity yet.
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  And I took my girlfriend, who's now my wife, I took my girlfriend to marine land.
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  It's like, let's go see the whales.
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  We're in Ontario.
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  It's really the only time where we can go see whales.
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  And I remember being on a show, we are super excited to see these
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  whales perform tricks and seeing what they do, how intelligent they are,
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  how magnificent they are in person.
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  And these dolphins came out of where they were stationed and they came
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  outta this gate and one animal kind of came out a little too early.
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  one of the dolphins.
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  And looked like he got caught in the gate a little bit.
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  He kept swimming into the pool where they were the main pool where they were doing
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  all the tricks and you saw a trickle of blood coming from his blowhole.
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  That trickle of blood increased and increasing, increased throughout the show.
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  People in the show and the crowd were like, Hey, you need to stop this dolphin.
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  It's bleeding, it's bleeding, it's bleeding.
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  And people were saying, look, we know it's bleeding.
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  We got people looking after.
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  'cause they were.
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  Looking after it, but it kept doing the tricks anyway, even after being
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  looked at including being bloody, all the thing, people were freaking out
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  and they were trying to say that this dolphin wants to do the tricks so bad.
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  It doesn't care that it's bloody.
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  That's the stuff that they were giving the audience, the information
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  that was giving the audience.
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  Long time after that, there was this guy who was a trainer who
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  actually worked at Marine Land.
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  He defected seeing all the stuff that was happening to the animals.
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  He was the walrus trainer and he saw what was happening to the walrus.
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  He saw what was happening to the orcas.
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  He saw what was happening to the bottlenose dolphins and the belugas,
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  and he was like, these people at Marineland are not paying enough
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  to take care of these animals.
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  Fast forward to today's day, and we're starting to see these belugas, which
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  basically the marine land is shut down
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  now.
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  We're starting to see these belugas.
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  30 of them that are in really bad water quality, really bad shape.
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  There used to be 52.
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  20 have died actually in the past since 2019.
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  all because of just they're failing to take care of these animals when
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  they try to transfer the animals to Mystic Aquarium down in Connecticut.
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  The animals died when they went down there.
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  Obviously not a good situation for the whales, not a good sign for marine land.
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  And so things just happen.
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  In 2021, we saw a law go in to protect these marine mammals, make
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  sure they're not doing shows, they're not part of the entertainment and
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  they're not being used for bread.
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  'cause that's another big money moneymaker.
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  Marineland tried to transfer these animals out and try to get paid for
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  that transfer to go out to go to another marine theme park in China.
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  Now, I'm gonna tell you, I've heard from scientists, from advocates and
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  from both who are saying the worst thing that people could do at Marineland
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  is transfer them out of North America and to Asia where the animal welfare
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  protections are not very good.
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  That's essentially what I'm gonna say, right?
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  And so now we have these animals that are kind of stuck there.
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  The marine land asked for a permit to send them to China.
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  The government said, no, you can't do that.
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  Okay?
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  Now what they're saying, we can't feed them.
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  We're gonna have to euthanize 'em.
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  And government said, absolutely not.
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  You're wrong for even saying that.
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  You need to take care of them because you are the ones who have them housed.
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  And that's been going back and forth ever since.
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  There's been a little bit of fundraising.
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  I've done this all another episode, another couple of episodes.
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  But during this entire thing.
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  During this entire fiasco, the name of the Whale Sanctuary project came
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  up a number of times 'cause people are wondering where can we put these animals?
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  If we can't keep 'em in captivity, if we can't ship 'em off to another
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  marine theme park, where could they go?
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  Two places were suggested.
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  There was up in the Arctic where there are beluga whales in the wild.
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  They would put them there.
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  That hasn't really manifested into anything.
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  The indigenous people who are up there, who are part of the commission haven't
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  come back with an answer as far as I know.
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  And so there's no real will at this point to do that.
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  Somebody suggested, and rumors, kind of flew around, but it
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  just still hasn't happened.
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  The other place was the Whale Sanctuary Project, which is
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  supposed to be in Nova Scotia.
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  Now this whale Sanctuary project is and has been around for about a decade.
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  Now nothing has really come of it other than they have found a location in Nova
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  Scotia where the organizers and the funders and the donors and everything feel
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  that there could be a spot in Nova Scotia where they actually found the location
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  would be perfect to house orcas or maybe a couple of dolphins, or maybe a couple
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  of belugas depending on the situation.
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  So a lot of people are like, oh, great.
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  Let's put the 30 belugas over there.
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  That's not happening.
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  This sanctuary would be a pen.
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  So essentially it would be a net, but it'd be in natural ocean waters
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  in the ocean in the North Atlantic.
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  There's a lot of problems with it in terms of the location, because these
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  belugas do not come from Nova Scotia.
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  They don't belong in Nova Scotia.
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  A lot of them have Russian ancestry of where their ancestors were located.
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  A lot of these animals were fed and bred in and born in captivity, so would
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  they be able to survive on their own?
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  There's a lot of misinformation around the sanctuary.
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  When I did the interview.
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  Lori would say, and I've also interviewed other scientists about
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  that, and they have said that, look, there's no expectation that these
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  animals are gonna survive on their own.
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  There's no expectation these animals will survive.
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  For a long time, there hasn't been a precedent that's really been set.
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  There've been some beluga whales that have been released into a
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  sanctuary, but they stay inside.
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  But they have a choice of going outside.
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  There was Keiko, the orca that was put in Iceland in a pen.
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  He survived for about five or six years, and he finally went out of his pen.
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  He was allowed to leave every once in a while.
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  He finally left, he went on his own, and he eventually passed away peacefully,
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  but he was almost 30 years old.
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  and also traumatized.
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  A lot of these animals are traumatized, so there hasn't been a lot of precedent, but
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  people are saying that these animals can't be put out because of these two things.
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  They're also saying that the whale sanctuary, where it's located in
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  Nova Scotia along the Atlantic Coast, is not good water quality wise.
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  Well, there used to be a gold mine back in the early 1920s, and so people were
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  like, well, there's gonna be gold, and there's gonna be all these different types
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  of metals that come around with mining.
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  They've done tests, they've done the environmental assessments.
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  Everything seems to be written off and checked out.
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  Everything seems to be fine.
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  Signed, delivered, sealed, delivered.
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  We've been fine with that.
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  They just didn't have the permits.
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  The sanctuary did not have the permits.
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  They did not have the provincial permits.
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  They now have the federal permits, which is like navigable waters
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  because they're gonna be putting in a pen, like a net, a massive net.
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  and they didn't have the landowners around there.
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  Their agreement, they have to have unanimous agreement.
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  There's rumors that two or three of them have said okay, but the other two haven't.
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  There's a lot of traffic that's gonna come in.
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  A lot of people are gonna visit this bay, and it's a small
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  area, like small town area where
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  They don't want a lot of visitors.
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  A lot of people just want to be peaceful and a lot of them are retired or they're
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  just growing up with Leon families there.
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  They don't want the big traffic that's there.
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  It's the bay that they live in.
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  They may not want whales in there that are not supposed to
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  be there on a natural basis.
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  Who knows what that's gonna do to the ecosystem environment.
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  There are still a lot of questions.
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  I actually think the whale sanctuary is a great idea.
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  It's something that we need to do as an experiment for these whales, and
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  I know when I say experiment, I don't mean to play with whale's lives, but
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  it's something that we need to do.
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  We owe these whales some kind of sanctuary after being bottled up into
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  these tanks for their entire lives.
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  They need to do something and you can't fit 30 belugas in there.
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  These 30 belugas probably won't be able to be in there because they
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  don't have the permits until today.
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  They have announced, it has been announced that Nova Scotia has provided the
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  permits for the lease for the area around the crown land that's around the bay.
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  They will have access to it.
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  So that's one of three major things that needs to happen.
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  Of course, they still have to have federal, so DFO, fisheries and
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  Oceans needs to sign off on and give them the permits to actually handle
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  the whales and take care of those whales as well as transport Canada,
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  which is like navigable waters.
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  They need to make sure that boats can go in and out, that
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  these nets are gonna be fine.
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  We've had this net stuff happen before in other sanctuaries.
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  So I'm sure we can come to an agreement, but the fact is they do
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  have a permit from the province of Nova Scotia, which is one of the big
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  hurdles that they had to get over.
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  And this is a huge thing.
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  This is something that I feel as though we are getting closer and
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  closer to having something that will work, to having something
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  that is closer to a physical thing.
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  And now I know there's a lot of people who are putting comments on my TikTok and
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  social media and stuff like that, that do not agree with this and say, look,
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  this has been planning for 10 years.
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  This is not gonna happen.
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  They don't have the funding, they don't have the people to care for it.
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  They don't have this, they don't have that.
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  I understand, I completely understand.
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  This is something completely new.
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  It's not gonna happen overnight.
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  We need to be patient with these things.
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  And of course, as we are patient, as we are waiting for other permits and
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  for landowners to say, Hey, you know what, we're okay with it finally.
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  Hopefully that will happen.
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  'cause I understand their predicament, there's gonna be dolphins and orcas
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  and belugas that died that may have been able to go into the sanctuary
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  if it was actually put in place.
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  But it isn't, and it's not gonna be done for a long time.
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  Even if we get all the permits and landowner's permission tomorrow,
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  it's still gonna take a while to put everything in place.
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  But I guarantee you this Whale Sanctuary project organization
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  knows what they're doing.
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  Because they have the backs of scientists.
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  They have the support of veterinarians, they have the support of advocates.
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  They have the support of marine biologists, they have the support
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  of local environmentalists.
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  There are a lot of people who will support us just as much probably
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  as people who won't support this.
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  This is very new and is very experimental.
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  We do not know if some of these orcas will last.
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  They probably won't be able to feed on their own ever.
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  or it'll take a long time.
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  That we know these animals have been psychologically battered for a long time.
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  especially with orcas, we know of their emotional awareness.
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  We know that they're sensitive.
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  We know that they've gone through a huge traumatic event for their entire lives.
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  Or some of them still were captured.
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  Some of them were born in a tank and they have never seen the ocean.
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  So we know that there's a lot of questions that need to be had, but we also owe
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  it to these marine mammals, these poor marine mammals who have been the
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  subject of entertainment, of breeding when they don't necessarily want to and
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  artificial insemination and so forth.
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  And it's just been horrible for them.
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  We know this.
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  And so it's up to us as human species to give them a chance.
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  And I understand why a lot of people are against this.
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  I completely get it.
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  But we owe it.
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  We need to help these animals out.
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  And it may not be perfect, but we owe them something.
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  And there are some people who believe that these animals could even die in these
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  pens at some point, maybe even directly.
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  And that is something that we might see.
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  If we can get this right, at some point, we can provide these animals
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  with the sanctuary that they need.
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  Now, not all the animals can fit in the sanctuary.
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  There are a lot of questions.
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  I get it.
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  But this is something that we're getting close to and it's probably
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  gonna happen at some point.
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  We just don't know when, so I would love to hear your thoughts,
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  whether you're for or against it.
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  No judgment.
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  Love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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  If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to your favorite
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  podcast app or you're watching this on your favorite social media app, I'd
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  love to hear your comments as well.
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  Or you can go to speak up for blue.com/contact and you
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  can just fill out the form.
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  You can email me.
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  Or you can even go to Instagram, DM me at how to protect the ocean.
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  Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin from the true nor strong and free and
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  home to eventual whale Sanctuary Project, seaside Sanctuary.
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  I hope you have a great day and we'll talk to you soon and happy conservation.