stupid dolphin tricks

If you are responsible for an animal, your responsibilities include keeping it safe. If you are responsible for an employee, your responsibilities also include keeping that employee safe, or at least as safe as he can be.

Let’s say I run a zoo. I have to worry about the welfare of the lions that live there. I also need to make sure the guy who cleans the lion enclosure gets home to his family in some other than “burger” condition. Simple enough: when the enclosure is cleaned, make sure the lion is somewhere else, with a physical barrier between the lion and the employee.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, while visiting the Miami Seaquarium, looked at the orcas and their trainers and saw lions and males cleaning the lion enclosure, respectively. Keep them separate, OSHA said.

Since 2013, the agency has required barriers between trainers and orcas, following the death of a trainer at SeaWorld several years earlier. Last summer, Seaquarium was fined for allowing trainers to work with the park’s orca, Lolita, without what OSHA said was sufficient protection. Although the park initially planned to appeal, it announced earlier this month that it would settle.

The problem with OSHA’s position is that Seaquarium is not a zoo in the traditional sense. Orcas, and certainly trainers, are arguably in the entertainment business. The ethical argument for banning the taking and trade of wild whales and dolphins is compelling and I support it. But the fact is that for animals currently in captivity, the reality of their lives often involves putting on shows for crowds, participating in a much more active and direct way than zoo animals who are largely left to their own devices inside. their habitats.

There are some forms of entertainment work that can perhaps be made more secure than they otherwise would be, but they can never be perfectly secure. Think racing drivers, professional soccer players, circus performers, or Hollywood actors who specialize in stunts. These jobs are inherently dangerous. Removing all risk from the job would erase the job itself.

We don’t tell race car drivers that there must be a physical barrier between them on the track when racing each other, or that they must race one at a time against a clock to avoid the possibility of collisions. That change would make the sport so much less entertaining that soon there would be no more professional racing drivers.

Or imagine the NFL said, “No more concussions. No more tackles. From now on, we’re going to play flag football.” You can guess how well that would go.

OSHA may have simply taken the wrong view of the trainer’s job, which is not simply to be the whale’s custodian, but rather to be the whale’s partner in some sort of trapeze act. Or maybe OSHA decided on what amounts to an animal rights agenda and, in an act that he considered to be kind to the whales, essentially deliberately banned a large part of their aquatic vaudeville routine.

Some viewers will no doubt applaud this change because they believe that the whales are being exploited and should be released into the wild or, at the very least, removed to a water pen. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded that Lolita be fully released and has urged people to boycott the Seaquarium until she is sent to a sanctuary.

While I am strongly in favor of ending the trade in wild orcas, the idea of ​​simply removing those already in captivity ignores the reality that these unemployed whales will be very expensive to maintain and that some of them probably will not be kept. fine as a result. Sadly, some may not stick around at all, subject to abandonment once they no longer attract paying visitors.

It is also quite possible that some orcas whose only social contact comes from humans will miss that contact if deprived of it. Keiko, the animal star of the movie “Free Willy,” searched a Norwegian fjord after he was released in waters near Iceland. There, he took the local children, none of whom benefited from OSHA’s precautions. Keiko seemed to view human interaction as his job, even when given his freedom. Lacking the company of his fellow orcas after nearly 20 years in captivity, he sought what solace he could from humans until his death.

OSHA’s decision may well stem from genuine concern for the welfare of both orcas and the humans who work with them. But that doesn’t change the fact that this decision has sent the whales and at least some of their human trainers out of business. For the whales that remain, they can look forward to a life where they will be seen swimming idly in their tanks or reduced to swinging balls and performing other stupid dolphin tricks.

Everyone may be safe, but it’s not a happy ending.