Posted: Jan 05, 2014 11:57 pm
I think it's a cheeky reference to this thread.
Sad thing is, prior to live captures for display and performance in aquariums, killer whale-fishery interactions in the Pacific Northwest resulted in a lot of shooting at orca. They were competition so they were a pest. It was government-encouraged activity. It was also assumed there were thousands of them out there so killing a few didn't matter, which we later discovered was untrue. Through the implementation of Mike Bigg's photo identification techniques, we learnt there were never that many. Fishers were seeing the same orca throughout the day, not different ones everywhere they went. They were just covering extremely long distances. Shortly thereafter, live captures became popular and mature orca with bullet wounds were rejected, their kids snatched. for aquaria.
People are less eager to shoot at orca now because we know they're not mindless killers. I suppose we owe aquaria some credit for teaching us that. We stuck orca in tanks, made them dependent on us and, wow, they were gbenerally nice to us and very accommodating. We've learnt all we can from keeping them locked up though. Jacques-Yves Cousteau said it best: "There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement."
Sad thing is, prior to live captures for display and performance in aquariums, killer whale-fishery interactions in the Pacific Northwest resulted in a lot of shooting at orca. They were competition so they were a pest. It was government-encouraged activity. It was also assumed there were thousands of them out there so killing a few didn't matter, which we later discovered was untrue. Through the implementation of Mike Bigg's photo identification techniques, we learnt there were never that many. Fishers were seeing the same orca throughout the day, not different ones everywhere they went. They were just covering extremely long distances. Shortly thereafter, live captures became popular and mature orca with bullet wounds were rejected, their kids snatched. for aquaria.
People are less eager to shoot at orca now because we know they're not mindless killers. I suppose we owe aquaria some credit for teaching us that. We stuck orca in tanks, made them dependent on us and, wow, they were gbenerally nice to us and very accommodating. We've learnt all we can from keeping them locked up though. Jacques-Yves Cousteau said it best: "There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement."