The Vancouver aquarium is about to turn fifty, and what better way to celebrate its birthday than with a controversy involving park board officials, animal rights supporters, and Vancouver residents?
The aquarium has proposed an $80 million expansion and revitalisation of its outdoor pools, which currently house beluga whales, dolphins, and endangered sea lions. The proposed expansion would increase the existing size of the aquarium by 28 percent, a bone of contention with critics who say it will encroach upon land that belongs to Stanley Park.
Expansion plans include a redeveloped dolphin facility, a new sea otter pool, and an underwater tunnel for viewing the sea lions. The aquarium, which has stated that it wants to acquire more dolphins, also wants to take over a nearby concession that is currently run by the park board.
A resolution that had been in place since 1995 would have forced the aquarium to hold a citywide referendum before going ahead with the expansion, but during a meeting of the Vancouver park board on May 29, board commissioner Marty Zlotnik put forward a motion to rescind this resolution. After an emotional debate, the motion passed by a margin of 4–2.
"Referendums are not what governments get elected to do; governments get elected to make decisions," Zlotnik said. "The public has a referendum, and that's called an election."
At the same meeting, the park commissioners scrapped a planned 2008 referendum that would have asked Vancouverites whether they were in favour of phasing out the captivity of dolphins and whales in Stanley Park. According to the park board's website, the purpose of this question was "to test public opinion in the interests of long-term planning for the next lease renewal with the Vancouver Aquarium, in 2015."
Kelly Bunting, spokesperson for The Coalition for No Whales in Captivity, says the board's action is "undemocratic and disrespectful" to the previous park board and others who worked hard to put the referendums and motions in place.
"It took years and years for us to get those referendums in the first place, and that was after huge public consultation. Thousands of people wrote letters to the Parks Board, signed petitions, and went to public meetings," says Bunting.
But Zlotnik says the purpose of the referendum was to attempt to "satisfy the people who are against whales and dolphins being in the aquarium. It's got nothing to do with the operations of the aquarium."
John Nightingale, Executive Director of the aquarium, says that groups who are against the captivity of whales and dolphins in the aquarium are "misguided" and are "basically not doing anything to help ensure that our great-grandchildren have a quality of life that is at least as good as we know today."
Nightingale wants to use the mammals to "get into the hearts and heads" of the 900,000 people who visit the aquarium each year and to motivate them to be more environmentally active and aware.
Bunting insists it's impossible to provide for the needs of dolphins and whales in captivity, and says living in pools is a "really miserable existence for them." She says the pools at the aquarium are too small, and the surrounding concrete causes their echolocation to just bounce around.
"In the wild they travel hundreds of kilometres a day, dive hundreds of metres deep into the ocean, and reach speeds of up to 50 kilometres an hour. They are very social, they stay in their family pods, they interact with each other. They use their echolocation, which is their primary sensory source, and none of that can be done in a pool."
A series of community meetings will be held throughout Vancouver in place of the referendums. Nightingale says they will run from around the end of June until the end of September and that notices of the meetings will be widely published. The meetings will be organised and facilitated by a professional consultation firm, as well as by the Vancouver Park Board.
According to Nightingale, the park board will use the polling results, comment cards, and responses from specific constituency groups collected at the meetings as a gauge to measure public opinion, then make a final decision after the consultation period ends.
"We just had ten years of public consultation to get the referendums put in place, and now we have to start all over," laments Bunting.
The referendums were to be voted on during the 2008 civic election, meaning the aquarium would have had to wait for the results before going ahead with the proposed expansion. Zlotnik says the aquarium wants to have the expansion completed in time for the 2010 Olympics.
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