CSWIP symposium at CPA/CSHPS

CSWIP/CSHPS/WSP at CPA Symposium: "The Whale Sanctuary Project: Scholar Advocacy and Interspecies Justice"

June 9, 9am to 12pm ADT

In person: Rm 2176, Marion McCain Bldg, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS

On Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83778656721

Questions? Contact [email protected]

Speaker: Dr. Lori Marino; Founder/President; Whale Sanctuary Project

Speaker: Dr. Letitia Meynell; Professor; Philosophy, Gender and Women's Studies, Dalhousie University

Speaker: Dr. Andrew Fenton; Professor; Philosophy, Dalhousie University

Chair: Rebecca Ring; PhD Candidate; Philosophy, York University

In 2019, the Government of Canada passed the "Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act". It prohibits the taking of cetaceans into captivity, and requires permits for importing or exporting cetaceans. It is now a criminal offence to use or display cetaceans for entertainment purposes. However, there are exceptions to the ban on cetacean captivity. These include using captive cetaceans for scientific research, or even for entertainment if a licence is obtained from a provincial Lieutenant Governor. Further, any cetaceans in captivity at the passing of the bill are 'grandfathered' so their owners are permitted to keep them captive for the rest of their lives, but not force them to perform. In Canada, there are approximately 30 belugas and 4 bottlenose dolphins remaining in captivity at Marineland, Niagara Falls. The contentious theme park closed in 2024 and now wants to offload the animals at its park, including the whales and dolphins.

France has recently passed a similar law ending the captivity of cetaceans. Marineland Antibes is also looking to offload its last two orcas in captivity, Wikie and Keijo, who are mother and son. After proclaiming that the Port Hilford Whale Sanctuary is the most responsible and ethical option for Wikie and Keijo, the French Government announced that instead they will allow their transfer to a similar aquarium in Spain. These cetaceans are among the more than 3000 that remain in captivity in the world. Some governments are certainly doing the right thing in legislating an end to the cruel practices of cetacean captivity, but there exists a lacuna between policy and practice. What justice is owed to the non-human animals we humans have treated so badly, and how might we implement reparations?

The CSWIP/CSHPS panel will present and workshop the problems and solutions for achieving interspecies justice, including the roles of scholar advocacy.

Dr. Lori Marino will speak about the 100-acre ocean sanctuary at Port Hilford, Nova Scotia. It is the first of its kind in the world and aims to be ready to receive its first residents this year. Marino is an internationally renowned neuroscientist, whose research includes the evolution of the brain and intelligence in cetaceans, primates and farmed animals. Her expertise includes issues in marine mammal captivity, such as dolphin assisted therapy, and the educational and science claims of the zoo and aquarium industry. She is the founder and executive director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, which focuses on bridging the gap between academic scholarship and praxes in animal advocacy.

Dr. Letitia Meynell will put sanctuaries and species inclusive justice in conversation with feminist philosophy. Scholar advocacy has long been a part of feminist praxis. Meynell will investigate what it means to make that praxis species inclusive. Importantly, moving individuals from entertainment-based, for-profit aquaria to non-profit sanctuaries changes our relationships with them. Seeing them as exploitable, fungible objects is transformed to seeing them as vulnerable particular others, to whom we have obligations. This transformative power makes projects like WSP radically important, but it also explains the resistance that such projects face. Such resistance lays bare the lacuna that exists in interspecies justice. The thirty belugas languishing at Marineland and the two orcas being trafficked to another concrete tank are particular others to whom we humans owe species inclusive justice.

Dr. Andrew Fenton will show how species-inclusive ethics intersects with what the WSP is enacting. Both the WSP and changes afoot at the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) raise issues of societal-level obligations to other animals when transitioning away from ethically objectionable uses of captive animals. Fenton will discuss the changes afoot at the CCAC on the national "governance" level concerning the scientific use of non-human animals. He will argue that further changes are required to bring Canadian entertainment and scientific industries in alignment with species inclusive ethics. We Canadians cannot ethically export away our legally recognized duties to captive non-human animals, including cetaceans. Neither can we "humanely kill" our way to meeting duties to non-human animals used science, education or entertainment.

Rebecca Ring will chair the session. Her research is on culture in non-human animals, with a focus on cetaceans. She argues that cultural practises and heritage imply meaning, value and agency for those enacting such practises. Achieving interspecies justice for cetaceans in captivity requires taking their cultural lives into account.