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Whale sharks turned into carnival ride
Georgia Aquarium endangering its animals with new program

By LORI MARINO, RANDY MALAMUD and RON BROGLIO
Published on: 02/14/08

Recently, the Georgia Aquarium sponsored a contest whereby visitors won a chance to swim or dive with the whale sharks. In fact, NBC touted this exploit on "Today," showing the three winners diving in the tank with the whale sharks. Now the aquarium has announced an ongoing program to provide paying customers an opportunity to swim with these animals.

We are disturbed that, after the deaths last year of two whale sharks in its charge, Ralph and Norton, the Georgia Aquarium has so little concern for the welfare of the remaining animals. A careful professional stance would have been for the Georgia Aquarium to minimize all possible negative impacts on the remaining sharks in order to maximize their chances of survival, which, we already know from Asian aquariums, are not good in captivity.

John Spink/Staff (ENLARGE)

'Today' (with Meredith Vieira) brought its cameras to the Georgia Aquarium on Tuesday, when winners of a contest with the prize of swimming with the whale sharks were announced. Allowing people to swim with the sharks stresses and endangers the animals, the writers say.

Instead, the Georgia Aquarium chose to promote a highly commercial circus atmosphere and make the animals into an amusement park ride. How could anyone concerned about the welfare of these animals support the risks of contamination and stress associated with having people (who may carry diseases and germs) invade these animals' delicate environment? While divers in the Pacific occasionally swim alongside whale sharks, entering the enclosed space of captive animals has very different implications and consequences for the animals, who have no escape.

We wonder if anyone at the aquarium has considered the psychological effects of this intrusion into the whale sharks' already compromised personal space.

On its Web site the aquarium presents 25 frequently asked questions about the dive program. We would add one more: How do you think the animals feel about the paying guests who pop into their water every afternoon?

The aquarium markets this contest as a way to educate the public and preserve whale sharks. The sincerity of this claim is belied by the blatant exploitation of these animals at a price of $190 to $290 a swim or dive for nonmembers.

The aquarium has produced no credible evidence supporting the claim that visits to their whale shark exhibit (or any other exhibit, for that matter) translate into better understanding of whale sharks (or any other species). Also, there is no evidence that swimming with captive animals (such as fish and mammals) increases understanding and appreciation for them. Even if there were such evidence, would it be a risk worth taking?

Whale sharks live in deep water, swim for hundreds of miles to feed and mate, and do not typically interact with people. It seems to us that the truly important conservation message that people need to learn is how to value these animals without needing to commodify them.

P.T. Barnum once said, "Clowns and elephants are the pegs on which the circus is hung." Were he alive today and in Atlanta, he might add "30-foot sharks" to his equation.

— Lori Marino is a senior lecturer at Emory University's Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology program. Randy Malamud is professor and associate chair of Modern Literature, Ecocriticism and Cultural Studies at Georgia State University. Ron Broglio is an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech.

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DOLPHIN 'THERAPY' A DANGEROUS FAD, EMORY RESEARCHERS WARN

Dec. 18, 2007

Beverly Cox Clark: 404-712-8780, 404-275-4771 (cell), beverly.clark@emory.edu

DOLPHIN 'THERAPY' A DANGEROUS FAD, EMORY RESEARCHERS WARN

People suffering from chronic mental or physical disabilities should not resort to a dolphin "healing" experience, warn two researchers from Emory University. Lori Marino, senior lecturer in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program, has teamed with Scott Lilienfeld, professor in the Department of Psychology, to launch an educational campaign countering claims made by purveyors of what is known as dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT).

"Dolphin-assisted therapy is not a valid treatment for any disorder," says Marino, a leading dolphin and whale researcher. "We want to get the word out that it's a lose-lose situation – for people and for dolphins."

While swimming with dolphins may be a fun, novel experience, no scientific evidence exists for any long-term benefit from DAT, Marino says. She adds that people who spend thousands of dollars for DAT don't just lose out financially – they put themselves, and the dolphin, at risk of injury or infection. And they are supporting an industry that – outside of the United States – takes dolphins from the wild in a brutal process that often leaves several dolphins dead for every surviving captive.

Marino and Lilienfeld reviewed five studies published during the past eight years and found that the claims for efficacy for DAT were invalid. Their conclusions were published recently in Anthrozoös, the journal of the International Society for Anthrozoology, in a paper entitled "Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions."

"We found that all five studies were methodologically flawed and plagued by several threats to both internal and construct validity," wrote Marino and Lilienfeld, who conducted a similar review in 1998. "We conclude that nearly a decade following our initial review, there remains no compelling evidence that DAT is a legitimate therapy, or that it affords any more than fleeting improvements in mood."

An upcoming issue of the newsletter of the American Psychological Association's Division of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities will feature another article by Marino and Lilienfeld, entitled "Dolphin-Assisted Therapy for Autism and Other Developmental Disorders: A Dangerous Fad."

"We want to reach psychologists with this message, because DAT is increasingly being applied to children with developmental disabilities, although there is no good evidence that it works," said Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist. "It's hard to imagine the rationale for a technique that, at best, makes a child feel good in the short run, but could put the child at risk of harm."

The Emory scientists have timed their campaign to coincide with a recent call by two UK-based non-profits – the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Research Autism – to ban the practice of DAT.

While Marino is against taking dolphins from the wild and holding them captive for any purpose, she finds DAT especially egregious, because the people who are being exploited are the most vulnerable – including desperate parents who are willing to try anything to help a child with a disability.

Many people are under the impression that dolphins would never harm a human. "In reality, injury is a very real possibility when you place a child in a tank with a 400-pound wild animal that may be traumatized from being captured," Marino says.

Dolphins are bred in captivity in U.S. marine parks, but in other countries they are often taken from the wild. "If people knew how these animals were captured, I don't think they would want to swim with them in a tank or participate in DAT," Marino says, referring to an annual "dolphin drive" in Japan. "During the dolphin drives hundreds of animals are killed, or panicked and die of heart attacks, in water that's red with their blood, while trainers from facilities around the world pick out young animals for their marine parks. They hoist them out of the water, sometimes by their tail flukes, and take them away."

Each live dolphin can bring a fisherman $50,000 or more, she says. "The marine parks make millions off of dolphins, so that's a drop in the bucket. It's an irony that dolphins are among the most beloved, and the most exploited, animals in the world," Marino says.

###

Emory University is one of the nation's leading private research universities and a member of the Association of American Universities. Known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities, Emory is ranked as one of the country's top 20 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

Subscribe to News@Emory RSS feeds for automatic updates of the latest news at Emory.

December 10, 2007
Dolphin therapy is all wet, Emory scientists conclude

By Carol Clark, Emory Report

Are you depressed? Suffering from a chronic illness? Do you have a child with a severe mental or physical disability?

Don’t turn to a dolphin for help, warns Lori Marino.

Marino, senior lecturer in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program, has teamed with Scott Lilienfeld, associate professor of psychology, to launch an educational campaign countering claims made by purveyors of dolphin-assisted therapy.

“Dolphin-assisted therapy is not a valid treatment for any disorder,” says Marino, a leading dolphin and whale researcher. “We want to get the word out that it’s a lose-lose situation — for people and for dolphins.”

While swimming with dolphins may be a fun, novel experience, no scientific evidence exists for any long-term benefit from DAT, Marino says. She adds that people who spend thousands of dollars for a dolphin “healing” experience don’t just lose out financially — they put themselves, and the dolphin, at risk of injury or infection. And they are supporting an industry that — outside of the United States — takes dolphins from the wild, in a brutal process that often leaves several dolphins dead for every surviving captive.

Marino and Lilienfeld reviewed five studies published during the past eight years and found that the claims for efficacy for DAT were invalid. Their conclusions were published recently in Anthrozoös, the journal of the International Society for Anthrozoology, in a paper titled “Dolphin-Assisted Therapy: More Flawed Data and More Flawed Conclusions.”

“We found that all five studies were methodologically flawed and plagued by several threats to both internal and construct validity,” wrote Marino and Lilienfeld, who conducted a similar review in 1998. “We conclude that nearly a decade following our initial review, there remains no compelling evidence that DAT is a legitimate therapy, or that it affords any more than fleeting improvements in mood.”

An upcoming issue of the newsletter of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities will feature another article by Marino and Lilienfeld, titled “Dolphin-Assisted Therapy for Autism and Other Developmental Disorders: A Dangerous Fad.”

“We want to reach psychologists with this message, because DAT is increasingly being applied to children with developmental disabilities, although there is no good evidence that it works,” said Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist. “It’s hard to imagine the rationale for a technique that, at best, makes a child feel good in the short run, but could put the child at risk of harm.”

The Emory scientists have timed their campaign to coincide with a recent call by two UK-based nonprofits — the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and Research Autism — to ban the practice of DAT.

DAT started in the 1970s, when Florida researcher Betsy Smith began experimenting with interactions between dolphins and autistic children. Smith later stopped her research, citing ethical reasons, and has since denounced the commercialization of DAT.

Florida remains the stronghold of dolphin-assisted therapy, but the trend has spread around the world, fueled by the growth in marine parks and aquariums. “DAT facilities are popping up all over — there are now hundreds of them, and no end in sight,” Marino says. “DAT is a big money-making venture and it’s merged with the swim-with-dolphins industry.”

While Marino is against taking dolphins from the wild and holding them captive for any purpose, she finds DAT especially egregious, because the people who are being exploited are the most vulnerable — including desperate parents who are willing to try anything to help a child with a disability.

Many people are under the impression that dolphins would never harm a human. “In reality, injury is a very real possibility when you place a child in a tank with a 400-pound wild animal that may be traumatized from being captured,” Marino says.

Dolphins are bred in captivity in U.S. marine parks, but in other countries they are often taken from the wild, she says. Marino describes an annual “dolphin drive” in Japan, when pods of dolphins are herded into coves, where they are killed for food or captured for marine parks.

“If people knew how these animals were captured, I don’t think they would want to swim with them in a tank or participate in DAT,” Marino says. “During the dolphin drives hundreds of animals are killed, or panicked and die of heart attacks, in water that’s red with their blood, while trainers from facilities around the world pick out young animals for their marine parks. They hoist them out of the water, sometimes by their tail flukes, and take them away.”

Each live dolphin can bring a fisherman $50,000 or more, she says. “The marine parks make millions off of dolphins, so that’s a drop in the bucket. It’s an irony that dolphins are among the most beloved, and the most exploited, animals in the world,” Marino says.

SKEPTIC Magazine

Current Issue
Volume 13, Number 3

Animals & Medicine

Do Animal Experiments
Predict Human Responses?
by Niall Shanks, Ray Greek, Nathan Nobis, and Jean Swingle-Greek

CHIMP SHOT DEAD AT ZOO

Chimp shot dead after escaping from U.K. zoo

'No Tunnels Found'

Joseph Brean, National Post

Published: Monday, October 01, 2007

Having mysteriously broken free from their "chimpnasium" on Saturday morning, two chimpanzees at a royal zoo in England were faced with a fateful decision: surrender peacefully to their frantic handlers or go for it.

Koko, a female in her thirties, followed a keeper back into the enclosure, bringing to an end her part in the unexplained escape. But 41-year-old Johnny, known to staff as "a bit of a thug," took the road less travelled into the zoo's public grounds, and was promptly shot dead before he could threaten the first visitors of the day, whom staff had just started to shuffle to safety.

Briefly free, he "certainly was not showing any inclination to return," and died from one gunshot wound, according to a zoo spokeswoman. A postmortem was to be conducted.

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The British Sunday papers reported that Johnny and Koko tunnelled their way out of their enclosure, and trumpeted the plot's similarity to the 1963 movie The Great Escape, in which Allied soldiers in the Second World War dig their way out of a German POW camp.

But zoo spokeswoman Alice Henchley yesterday denounced the tunnelling theory as mere speculation. "They did not tunnel out of the enclosure," she said. "No tunnels were found."

Staff at Whipsnade Zoo, a 240-hectare suburban partner compound to the much smaller London Zoo, are "devastated," according to zoological director David Field, who also expressed concern for Whipsnade's six other chimps.

The shooting has elicited much sympathy, because chimpanzees, so similar in both appearance and behaviour to humans, have a unique hold on the human imagination.

In Austria last week, for example, a provincial judge dismissed an application to have a 26-year-old male Sierra Leonean chimpanzee legally declared a person, and thus deserving of a court-appointed guardian, now that its shelter has gone bankrupt. Animal rights activists vowed to push the case to Austria's Supreme Court on behalf of the chimp, whom they have named Matthew Hiasl Pan.

Anita Singh, campaigns manager for PETA in London, said Johnny's death is a further illustration that captivity in a zoo frustrates animals and stifles natural behaviours, leading to boredom, anxiety, even self-mutilation.

"They were 30 and 41 years old. For all that time they've been wanting to escape," she said, adding that the zoo should have been able to tranquillize an escaped animal rather than kill it.

Leaving aside King Kong, other chimps on the run include Judy, a former pet who escaped from her cage at an Arkansas zoo this year and proceeded to clean a staff toilet with a scrub-brush; Bill, who fled a California zoo and was recaptured in a nearby backyard; and Chip, who bit off his handler's finger at a Salt Lake City zoo before being tackled and restrained by another keeper.

Though many of these escapes are resolved peacefully, a shooting death remains a likely fate for an escaped zoo animal, largely because human safety is a zoo's primary concern, and tranquillizers are not always instantaneous.

On Boxing Day 2003 at the Toronto Zoo, for example, a gate was accidentally left open and a Siberian tiger escaped into an area that was separated from visitors by only a waist-level fence.

As at Whipsnade, zoo staff had their firearms at the ready, but the situation was resolved by a quick-thinking handler who lured the tiger back into its cage with a chunk of meat.

jbrean@nationalpost.com

© National Post 2007

CHIMP SHOT DEAD AT ZOO

Atlanta-relevant; a good teaching & discussion prompt

The TNR Q&A

Of Dog Fights and Men

by Ben Crair
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 08.29.07

On Monday, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick plead guilty to federal charges of dog fighting, including charges that he personally endorsed the execution of underperforming dogs by hanging or drowning. For insight into the reaction to Vick's case, The New Republic spoke with ethicist Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His book Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, is considered the foundational text of the animal rights movement. He discussed the sorry lives of the American pig, the ethical difference between hunting and dog fighting, and why both of those are minor cruelties in the scale of things.

What do you make of the public reaction to Michael Vick's involvement in illegal dog fighting?

Well, I think in a sense it's quite fair. It seems from the allegation that Michael Vick did horrible things to dogs. If he did what's alleged, people should be disgusted and revolted by it. From my point of view, what is regrettable is that people only react so strongly to such things when they occur with dogs. If something similar had been done with pigs or chickens, the reaction probably would have been much milder. That seems to me to be wrong. I think pigs suffer just as much as dogs, and, in terms of what we do to pigs in this country in general, they suffer a lot more cruelty than dogs do because there are so many of them in factory farms in appalling conditions. That's the incongruity. It's not that there's an overreaction to the Vick business, it's rather that there's an underreaction to what's happening elsewhere.

Basketball player Stephon Marbury was widely criticized for telling reporters, "We don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dog fighting is a sport." Do you think his comparison was valid?

Well, the aim of a hunter is to kill the animal with as little pain as possible--or it should be. That's the ethic that you get in sport hunting, at least. I'm not condoning or supporting sport hunting but there is a distinction in that the good hunter will shoot the animal in a vital place where it will drop dead immediately. It won't suffer. It seems pretty clear that the dogs that didn't fight well that Michael Vick and his associates killed were not killed instantly at all. They were drowned, for example. Drowning is obviously a much more distressing death than being shot with a bullet through the brain or in the heart.

Has the reaction to the Vick case exposed a schizophrenia in the way the public judges offenses against animals?

That comparison that you just asked me to make between dog fighting and sport-hunting is interesting in itself because these are both really very minor cruelties in the terms of the scale of things. The big thing that is going undiscussed here is the industrial raising of animals for food. Just in terms of the numbers, it's so vastly greater than sport-hunting, which in turn is a lot bigger than dog fighting. We're talking literally about billions of animals each year being reared in conditions that don't enable them to have a minimally decent life and then being killed in mass-production factory ways that again often are not painless. So that's the schizophrenia, that all of this hidden suffering that's engaged in by supposedly respectable corporations and that people then buy in their supermarkets is the thing that is unspoken. It's not the recreational activities that we should be focusing on.

Has there been an increase of interest in animal cruelty recently?

I think so. At the 2006 elections there were a number of animal anti-cruelty initiatives passed. There's been a bit of an upsurge in it and I would say that the response to Vick is consistent with that. People are starting to realize that this is an issue that a lot of people are taking quite seriously now. Perhaps that is going to have some larger political ramifications as well.

Ben Crair is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.