In February and March of this year Bjossa, the only surviving orca in the Vancouver Aquarium, was very sick and there were fears that she could die. Up to 23 cetaceans (orcas, belugas, narwhals, and pacific white sided dolphins) have died so far in the Vancouver Aquarium.

Facing a potential public relations disaster, and with public opinion being against a new orca being brought into Stanley Park to serve as another mascot for the Aquarium, on April 28th the Aquarium announced that the killer whale display will end and that Bjossa will be shipped down to Sea World in California. There have been orcas imprisoned in the Aquarium since 1967.

At the same time Aquarium representatives speculated about bringing in other captive dolphins and about capturing from the wild some walruses and more sea lions for display as a replacement for Bjossa.

Sea World is a mega-marine amusement park , the marine version of Disneyland. It is tragic for Bjossa to be shipped to Sea World where she will continue to live under abusive and exploitative circumstances. She will be forced to perform circus acts for food. She may again be impregnated, even though she has already lost three babies during her 20 years of captivity in Vancouver.

The ethical course of action for the Vancouver Aquarium would be to reunite Bjossa with Vigga and to find resources for their rehabilitation into Icelandic waters. Keiko, the Free Willy whale, is presently undergoing a similar program of rehabilitation and is scheduled to be released of Iceland later this year.

For over two decades Bjossa earned the Vancouver Aquarium tens of millions of dollars a year. The Aquarium should now have the decency to grant her freedom and to help her regain some quality of life.

It is equally morally bankrupt to capture walruses and sea lions from the wild for public display. They too live in complex social formations in the wild. They too make annual journeys of hundreds of miles through the oceans. They too live in a habitat that is rich in biodiversity, in stark contrast to the sterile, antiseptic facilities of the Aquarium.

In the year 2000 there is no longer any justification for keeping marine mammals in captivity. They belong in their natural habitat. The whale and dolphin captivity program in the Aquarium needs to be phased out. "Phase-out" means not importing new captive whales or dolphins, ending all captivity breeding programs, and putting resources towards the SAFE rehabilitation into the wild of suitable candidates among existing captives. These animals were born to be wild.