{"id":11949,"date":"2016-06-20T12:02:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T11:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/?p=11949"},"modified":"2016-06-23T11:21:14","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T10:21:14","slug":"chinas-marine-park-boom-is-driving-the-capture-of-whales-and-dolphins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2016\/06\/chinas-marine-park-boom-is-driving-the-capture-of-whales-and-dolphins\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s marine park boom is driving the capture of whales and dolphins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"China's<\/a><\/p>\n

by Todd Woody<\/p>\n

ZHUHAI, China\u2014If Dr. Seuss designed a marine park, the result might look something like Chimelong Ocean Kingdom<\/a>. On a sweltering Saturday in June, I join thousands of people\u2014families pushing strollers, grandparents with toddlers in tow, gaggles of teenagers\u2014streaming through the portal to the park, an undulating faux-coral canyon the size of an airport hangar called Deep Sea Fantasy. Tree-high anemones in Day-Glo yellow, pink, and orange sprout from the sandstone-colored walls. High above hovers a football-field-long manta ray, its belly a horizontal LED screen pulsating with gigantic hammerheads and psychedelic-colored fish that swim toward the 10-story-tall statue of a bright blue whale shark that looms over the Ocean Kingdom as if it had just burst from the sea.<\/p>\n

A techno-color meld of SeaWorld and Six Flags, Chimelong\u2019s roller coaster and splash rides snake around the world\u2019s largest aquarium and exhibits of whales, dolphins, seals, polar bears, walruses, penguins, and manatees. Seeking relief from the double-digit heat and humidity, I stroll past the Happy Bump Bump Bump bumper cars toward the Polar Horizon section of the sprawling 326-acre park on the southern China coast in Guangdong province. Inside a building adorned with fake snowflakes and icicles, people are crowding around a picture window, peering into a dimly lit tank. After a minute, a ghostly white beluga whale<\/a> glides up to the window and is soon joined by four others, provoking gleeful cries from onlookers as they raise their selfie sticks and start snapping away. It\u2019s easy to see why. The belugas\u2019 flexible necks allow them to nod their heads, and their otherworldly facial expressions give them the appearance of friendly and inquisitive aliens. A Chimelong employee tells us that 13 of these Arctic marine mammals live in this small rock-lined tank. In the wild, belugas, which are classified as \u201cnear threatened\u201d by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, typically dive 1,000 feet or more in search of prey. But their tank at Chimelong is barely deep enough for the 13-foot-long, 3,000-pound animals to plunge more than three feet. These white whales live in a fluorescent world\u2014no natural light penetrates their tank or the adjacent 4,000-seat Beluga Theater, where the animals perform 30-minute Las Vegas\u2013style shows up to five times a day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for the first show, and the stadium-style seating that faces the stage\u2014a raised semicircle-shaped pool with a see-through front\u2014is filling up. While an announcer keeps up a rapid-fire patter, eight belugas swim into the pool and face eight trainers standing on a ledge. The whales dive, raising their tails to \u201cwave\u201d to the clapping and cheering audience before diving again, gathering speed and leaping high out of the water, falling on their backs with a splash. At the trainers\u2019 signal, the belugas prop themselves up against the glass front of the stage and start \u201csinging\u201d to the audience. (The highly social animals live in family groups and communicate with one another in the wild through whistles, squeals, chirps, and clicks, but not in unison and not in a chorus line.) Submerging themselves and gulping, the whales jump up into the air and spit jets of water toward the front row of the theater. Four audience members chosen at random come down to pet the whales and receive a \u201ckiss\u201d from the animals. Two white spheres are lowered from the ceiling of the theater, and belugas leap out of the water to tap them while other whales use their tails to catapult big red and blue balls into the audience.<\/p>\n

One by one, the trainers, who reward their charges with a fish after each task, dive into the water to be pushed across the pool by the belugas, two of which beach themselves on concrete platforms. The trainers stay in the water to \u201cdance\u201d with the whales, which lift their bodies out of the pool and twirl around. For the grand finale, the trainers turn the whales into living surfboards, balancing on the animals\u2019 backs just behind their necks as they ride around the pool waving to the audience. Taison Chang, a research associate at the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society who has accompanied me to Chimelong, shakes his head as he takes photos with a long-lens camera to document the whales\u2019 treatment. \u201cThose are not natural behaviors,\u201d he says grimly.<\/p>\n

Nor are they isolated ones. China is in the midst of a marine park building boom, with 39 facilities in operation and at least 14 more under construction. They range from Disney-size parks like Chimelong\u2014considered the industry\u2019s flagship\u2014to shopping mall aquariums that shoehorn belugas and other animals into tiny tanks. China holds some 500 marine mammals in captivity, according to government records and an investigation by the China Cetacean Alliance,<\/a> an international coalition that includes the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society<\/a>. The alliance\u2019s goal is to persuade the Chinese public of the immorality of keeping highly intelligent and social animals in captivity. It\u2019s a tough task: A year after its opening, Chimelong became the world\u2019s 13th-most-visited theme park<\/a> in 2015, attracting 7.5 million customers paying $53 a ticket. That\u2019s a 40 percent increase in attendance from 2014. China\u2019s seemingly insatiable demand for whales and dolphins is driving a shadowy international trade in the capture of wild marine mammals that conservationists fear threatens the survival of several species.<\/p>\n

The country has yet to perfect the captive breeding techniques that allowed marine parks in the United States to stop capturing wild marine mammals 30 years ago. Here, when a dolphin dies it must be replaced by one captured from the wild, keeping in business the brutal annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan. Taiji has supplied at least 70 dolphins\u2014each worth between $150,000 and $1 million\u2014to Chinese marine parks over the past four years, according to Ceta-Base<\/a>, a nonprofit that tracks the marine mammal trade. The country has also imported 209 wild bottlenose dolphins since 2010, along with dozens of other dolphin species. The United States government last year prohibited the Georgia Aquarium from buying<\/a> 18 beluga whales from Russia owing to uncertainty over the impact on the wild population. China, meanwhile, has imported as many as 114 wild belugas from Russia <\/a>since 2010, including the 13 being held at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. A single beluga can fetch a quarter-million dollars or more.<\/p>\n

Even as SeaWorld moves to end breeding of killer whales <\/a>and activistshope to resettle captive orcas in sea pens<\/a>, the ocean\u2019s top predator is being hunted in Russia to supply marine parks in China willing to pay $3 million to $5 million or more for an orca. Decades after other countries banned the capture of killer whales, the Russian government permitted the catch of more than a dozen between 2013 and 2015, according to Ceta-Base. That deeply worries marine mammal experts. Killer whales are highly social marine mammals that live in lifelong family groups. The particular population targeted by hunters for sale to Chinese and Russian marine parks may number only in the hundreds. \u201cIf there\u2019s only a few dozen being caught, that\u2019s a lot of captures,\u201d says Erich Hoyt, a renowned killer whale expert who serves as senior research fellow at the conservation group Whale and Dolphin Conservation in the United Kingdom and codirector of the Far East Russia Orca Project. \u201cYou\u2019re not just eliminating a breeding unit, which is significant in itself. You may be affecting the future of the species.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another reason Chang and I have come to Chimelong Ocean Kingdom. No killer whales so far have appeared at any marine park in China. Yet records from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species show that seven killer whales have been exported to China from Russia since 2013. The Chinese government, meanwhile, has confirmed to activists that nine killer whales have been imported from Russia to Guangdong province, and multiple industry sources have told them the buyer is Chimelong.<\/p>\n

The Russian Connection<\/h2>\n

Jeff Foster made his living in the 1970s and \u201980s capturing killer whales<\/a> in the Pacific Northwest and Iceland for SeaWorld and other marine parks. He quit the business in 1990, increasingly troubled by tearing orcas away from\u00a0their families. Then in early 2011 came the call that almost lured Foster out of retirement.<\/p>\n

On the line was a European animal broker who said his clients were prepared to pay Foster $7 million to capture eight killer whales off Russia\u2019s Pacific coast. \u201cHe was working for the Chinese and the Russians,\u201d says Foster, who had embarked on a new career as a marine mammal researcher and anti-captivity advocate. \u201cThe Chinese were the buyers, and the Russians had the permits. They wanted to bring me in to do the capture and transport and initial training of the animals. The Russians had been trying to capture killer whales for 15 years, and they just didn\u2019t have qualified people showing them how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster never learned the identity of the Chinese buyers. \u201cThe broker kept it very vague. He just said they were Chinese, and they had a lot of money.\u201d Apparently so. On top of the $7 million capture fee, the buyers would have had to pay the Russians between $25 million and $80 million for the orcas and bear the multimillion-dollar cost of transporting the giant animals thousands of miles. Foster\u2019s job would be to capture the killer whales and train them to eat dead fish and to perform basic \u201cbehaviors,\u201d such as submitting to a medical exam. \u201cYou blow the whistle and give them a fish when they do something right,\u201d he says. When the orcas were ready, Foster would oversee their transport to China.<\/p>\n

With the capture of wild orcas banned in the United States, Canada, Iceland, and Europe, the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East has become one of the last legal hunting grounds for killer whales. \u201cThey felt they would only be able to catch animals for two or maybe three years before the environmental activists would become a problem,\u201d Foster says of his potential clients. \u201cIt was more money than I\u2019ll ever see in my lifetime, so it was tempting. But I couldn\u2019t do it. I just couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hunt, however, went on.<\/p>\n

Russian companies learned how to capture killer whales, and in October 2013, seven orcas were taken in the Sea of Okhotsk, Ceta-Base records show, and at least five more were taken in 2014 and 2015. Obtaining information on the hunts and the fate of captured killer whales in a remote region of Russia is difficult, according to activists. Outsiders are not welcomed, but Hoyt and other scientists at the Far East Russia Orca Project have spent 17 years studying the area\u2019s killer whales and receive data from informants about the hunts. It is known, for instance, that after capture the animals must endure a more-than-600-mile journey by truck to small holding pens in the port city of Nakhodka. \u201cIt\u2019s really difficult to get into the holding facility, but people have sent us photos,\u201d says Hoyt. \u201cThe pens are always small, but that\u2019s part of their game. They\u2019re trying to get the orcas used to living in a little box.\u201d<\/p>\n

A series of photos show an orca being lowered by crane into a box barely bigger than the animal. The shipping container is lined with a blue tarp, and two men are filling it with water. A crane then lifts the closed container onto a tractor-trailer. In other photos, an orca floats in a small holding pen. \u201cIt looks like some of them are going fairly quickly to China,\u201d says Hoyt. \u201cWe don\u2019t know much about how they get there. That\u2019s the stuff done in the dead of the night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchel Kalmanson knows. \u201cSome of them get flown, some are shipped by truck, and I was involved with one of them that moved by barge coast to coast,\u201d says Kalmanson, a Florida-based marine mammal consultant and broker who specializes in the transportation of animals. He says a London insurer hired him to monitor the preparations for transport of killer whales from Russia to China in 2014. By truck. The journey took seven to 10 days. He won\u2019t reveal the identity of the buyer and says he doesn\u2019t know the fate or the orca that was subjected to what must have been a grueling ordeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransporting by truck puts far more stress on the animals,\u201d says Kalmanson. \u201cIn a truck, you have road hazards, you have to change the water in the container, you have to filter out urine and feces, and you have to have a lot of ice. And the animals can only lay down so much. You have to go over mountains on narrow roads.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds insane. Why take such risks with a multimillion-dollar \u201casset\u201d and make a killer whale suffer distress? \u00a0Money, for one thing. It can cost several hundred thousand dollars to put a killer whale on a plane, according to Kalmanson. Activists, for another. \u201cMost people won\u2019t talk about the marine mammal trade because it\u2019s underground\u2014not because it\u2019s illegal but because of the activists,\u201d he says. \u201cWe use unmarked aircraft, unmarked airlines, and out-of-the-way runways to move these animals because they don\u2019t want activists to know about it. A truck is a lot easier to hide than a plane.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, apparently, are nine killer whales.<\/p>\n

The Sea Lion in the Bathroom<\/h2>\n

Once marine mammals arrive in China they\u2019re kept out of sight until they\u2019re trained to perform in shows. \u201cThey have a lot of holding areas, and they\u2019re marginal,\u201d says Kalmanson, noting that he has worked as a consultant to Chimelong. \u201cI was in North China one day, and they had just brought in 11 beluga whales. They were being held in a pool with a bad water-filtration system that was inside a building that you\u2019d think was an apartment complex if you were walking by on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naomi Rose<\/a> is a marine mammal scientist and a veteran anti-captivity activist with the Animal Welfare Institute, which participated in the China Cetacean Alliance\u2019s investigation of Chinese marine parks. \u201cThese marine parks look like they\u2019re from the \u201960s, and they\u2019re brand-new,\u201d says Rose. \u201cPaint is chipping, and everything is rusting. There appears to be no construction standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

One mainland investigator working for the alliance went into a restroom at one marine park and encountered a sea lion pup in a stall, according to Rose. \u201cShe thought it must have escaped, but an employee told her that they were deliberately holding the sea lion there as they had run out of space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photos published in the alliance\u2019sDecember 2015 report<\/a> also show beluga whales, an Arctic species, housed in a tank adjacent to one holding bottlenose dolphins, which live in temperate and tropical climates. \u201cWhatever the temperature, it\u2019s too cold for the bottlenoses and too hot for belugas,\u201d Rose says.<\/p>\n

Chang, 28, worked at Hong Kong Ocean Park<\/a> monitoring water quality until he became disillusioned with captivity and joined the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for a person who loves animals to work there,\u201d he says. While Ocean Park\u2019s veterinarians were well trained, he notes that many mainland marine parks lack the staff and expertise to properly care for marine mammals. \u201cIn some facilities in China they don\u2019t even have a vet for the animals,\u201d says Chang. \u201cThey don\u2019t have the professional staff to care for belugas or know what is a suitable environment for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, considered to have the highest standards of the mainland marine parks, we see conditions that would trigger protests by animal rights activists in the U.S. or Europe. The opening act for the beluga show, for instance, is a performance by five Pacific white-sided dolphins. Again, the animals, accustomed to temperate to cool oceans, are swimming in the same pool as cold-water belugas.<\/p>\n

Chimelong representatives did not respond to requests for comment on conditions at the park.<\/p>\n

We head over to Polar Horizon, walking past North American and Asian brown bears lying on rock ledges outside the exhibit building as the sun beats down. Inside, a polar bear paces along the perimeter of its enclosure while another polar bear floats, Buddha-like, in a glass-bottomed pool, its back to a glass wall. A parade of people files past, snapping photos inches from the Arctic predator. Others stare up at the bear from a viewing area beneath the pool. Behind another glass wall, five Arctic wolves run endless circles around a small room outfitted with rock walls and painted-on snow. Arctic foxes lie limp over a rock wall in another small enclosure.<\/p>\n

Samuel Hung, the chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society, says it\u2019s difficult to assess how many marine mammals have died at China marine parks, unlike in the U.S., where such facilities are required to report deaths to regulators. But comparing import records to the number of animals held at the parks gives a rough estimate. For instance, Chimelong has imported 18 belugas, according to the cetacean alliance investigation, but only 13 are on display.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re simply consuming them,\u201d says Rose of China\u2019s marine parks. \u201cRussia has been exporting on average 20 belugas a year to China. There isn\u2019t enough capacity in China to absorb that many beluga whales, meaning that they\u2019re dying and being replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chang is particularly interested in Chimelong\u2019s whale sharks. The park boasts of holding eight of the world\u2019s largest fish in the world\u2019s largest aquarium. It is visually impressive. On the other side of an acrylic window 130 feet long and 27 feet high, majestic 40-foot-long, 40,000-pound whale sharks sail through the 6-million-gallon aquarium amid giant manta rays and a plethora of tropical fish. We only count six whale sharks, which are listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The supersize fish can live as long as 100 years in the wild, but a study<\/a> of whale sharks at a Japanese aquarium found they only survive an average of 502 days in captivity. A Chimelong staffer insists there are eight whale sharks in the aquarium. \u201cYou just can\u2019t see them all,\u201d she says. Then it\u2019s feeding time, and all the whale sharks gather around a boat at the surface, each shark holding its body vertical and motionless, its mouth open to receive food. We count again. There are only six.<\/p>\n

As we roam around the park looking for where the nine killer whales might be held, I learn the orcas have indeed been sighted in China\u2014on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Where Are China’s Orcas?<\/h2>\n

The photo shows a killer whale floating in a darkened pool, its head peeking above the surface, the water reflecting fluorescent lights. The location is tagged “Chimelong Ocean Kingdom,” and the image was posted in February on Instagram by Chen Guoliang, a marine mammal trainer at the park. One of Chimelong\u2019s Russian trainers, Maria Mirtova, \u201cliked\u201d the photo. A second photo posted by Chen shows two orcas side by side poking their heads out of a pool. Chang says the photos were quickly taken down, along with other photos of the marine park and any indication that Chen worked at Chimelong\u2014but not before activists took screen shots.<\/p>\n

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\n\"China's<\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Chang says a source who works for Chimelong told the activists that the orcas were being held nearby. \u201cWe have solid information that the killer whales are being held on a military base, though we don\u2019t know the exact location,” he says.<\/p>\n

A Chimelong Ocean Kingdom representative told TakePart in an emailed statement that the marine park does not have “kill whales for shows.” There are indications, however, that Chimelong is preparing for orca exhibits. The marine park\u2019s director of training and zoological operations<\/a>worked as a killer whale trainer at Loro Parque, a Canary Islands marine park affiliated with SeaWorld. Chimelong\u2019s former director of aquatic operations was another SeaWorld alum. As part of a $7.5 billion expansion, Chimelong Group, the marine park’s parent company, began construction in January on a marine park adjacent to Ocean Kingdom to be called Chimelong Ocean World<\/a>; it’s set to open in 2017 and transform Zhuhai into the \u201cOrlando of China.\u201d \u201cBefore the opening of Chimelong, we saw a theme park map showing a place called \u2018Orca Stadium,\u2019 \u201d says Hung.<\/p>\n

When the world\u2019s biggest marine park, Haichang Polar Ocean World, opens in Shanghai next year, it will feature killer whale shows, according to an environmental impact statement<\/a> the China Cetacean Alliance obtained.<\/p>\n

Marine mammal scientists worry that once Chimelong or Haichang puts on orca shows, competitors will follow suit and rush to acquire wild killer whales. Such fears are well founded, according to theme park consultant Dennis Speigel, who has worked on projects in China. \u201cWhat typically happens in China is that when something is introduced and accepted, it inspires copycats,\u201d says Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati, Ohio. \u201cOther parks will want their own killer whale shows, and that will drive up the price of those animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite frankly, I\u2019m not sure you could do this anyplace other than China, given the current feeling about captivity and the Blackfish <\/em>aftermath,\u201d he says, referring to the 2013 documentary that alleged mistreatment of killer whales at SeaWorld.<\/p>\n

The only places left for China to acquire wild marine mammals are Japan and Russia. \u201cChina has the highest number of marine mammals in captivity, and it\u2019s still expanding,\u201d Hung says. \u201cIf the industry keeps growing in China, it\u2019ll give us no hope to stop the slaughter of dolphins at Taiji.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping the Cove in Business<\/h2>\n

Thousands of dolphins are rounded up each year and driven into a cove at Taiji, where some are killed for their meat and others are spared for sale to marine parks and aquariums. With the sale of dolphin meat in decline, demand from marine parks willing to pay six- or seven-figure prices for live dolphins underwrites the slaughter, according to Ric O\u2019Barry,<\/a> founder of Ric O\u2019Barry\u2019s Dolphin Project<\/a>, which has fought the hunt for the past 13 years and tracks the dolphin trade. (The Dolphin Project is a member of the Social Action Network run by Participant Media, TakePart\u2019s parent company.)<\/p>\n

\u201cChina\u2019s dolphins are coming almost exclusively from Taiji,\u201d says O\u2019Barry. \u201cYou can go to Taiji or contact brokers on the internet. There\u2019s three different brokers there, and you just place your order. You can get them turnkey, so they\u2019re fully trained and ready to do a show. For a so-called green dolphin right out of the ocean, untrained, the price is much lower.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Russia, marine scientists fear demand for killer whales threatens the survival of a distinct type of orca called transients, which eat marine mammals and display behaviors different from fish-eating orcas, which are called residents. (Nearly all the 56 orcas in captivity are residents.) Hoyt and other scientists who have spent years studying killer whales in the Sea of Okhotsk believe the population of mammal-eating orcas is small, given that they have only identified 55 transients in the area, while they have counted more than 1,500 individual residents. The researchers have determined that most, if not all, of the orcas captured for export to China are transients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe live capture of killer whales raises concerns because it takes place in a limited area in the western Okhotsk Sea,\u201d Hoyt and his colleagues wrote in a 2014 paper<\/a>. \u201cAll killer whales encountered there during studies belonged to the transient ecotype. In that area whales often travel close to shore looking for seals, which makes them susceptible to being captured from small boats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoyt says that while the Russian government, which estimates there are 3,130 orcas in the region, sets yearly quotas for the capture of killer whales, it does not distinguish between the two types of orcas. In other words, the government is allowing transients to be caught without considering the impact on the population. \u201cAbsolutely, Chinese interests are driving capture of killer whales,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Robin Baird is a wildlife biologist at the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Washington, who has studied transient killer whales<\/a> in the Pacific Northwest for 30 years. He notes that transients live in tight-knit social groups and work together to hunt seals, porpoises, and whales. \u201cThey\u2019re similar to elephants really, as the older animals carry a lot of cultural knowledge, and killer whales are slow to mature and reproduce,\u201d says Baird. \u201cTaking nine animals out of a population is a substantial number when a lot of these populations number in the low hundreds. Depending on the age and sex, it could have tremendous implications for survival of the rest of the populations.\u201d He noted that the Pacific Northwest\u2019s resident populations are still recovering from captures in the 1960s and \u201970s for SeaWorld and other marine parks.<\/p>\n

Another concern: The survival of the captured transients depends on trainers\u2019 ability to get the animals to forgo a life of hunting and consuming seals and other tasty marine mammals and persuade them to eat frozen fish. Hoyt and Baird note that at least one transient captured in the Pacific Northwest died after rejecting a fish diet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very lucrative business,\u201d says Hoyt of the orca trade. \u201cIf Chimelong follows the SeaWorld model, they will want to start breeding killer whales and selling them off. It could get very messy and awful for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

China’s Anti-Captivity Movement<\/h2>\n

Before SeaWorld announced in March\u2014amid falling revenues and attendance\u2014that it would stop breeding killer whales and making them perform, the anti-captivity movement spent decades agitating against a single company to raise public consciousness about the morality of exploiting marine mammals for entertainment and profit. That was the easy part, given the hurdles the nascent anti-captivity movement faces in China.<\/p>\n

An authoritarian government that controls the media and polices the internet will not exactly tolerate protesters dressed in orca suits waving signs and urging people not to buy tickets, activists acknowledge\u2014especially because provincial governments are eager for the jobs and tax revenues that marine parks generate amid a slowing industrial economy and a growing middle class seeking diversions. Local governments often provide land for marine parks as part of economic development deals, according to industry executives. \u201cWe are being very, very careful,\u201d says Hung. \u201cWhenever you become an opponent to anything in China, you\u2019re taking big risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge here, as in the U.S., is changing people\u2019s attitude toward the morality of keeping animals confined in cages, activists say. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about a country that eats everything on this planet,\u201d says Hung, half joking. \u201cThey think putting animals into captivity is better than eating them.\u201d Chang is more diplomatic. \u201cPeople still believe everything the parks are telling them, that they\u2019re doing conservation, that they\u2019re rescuing animals because they\u2019re not doing well in their natural habitat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The China Cetacean Alliance issued its report at a media event in Beijing last December that attracted scant media attention in the country. The alliance now has a presence on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service used by more than 260 million people. (Though the government blocks Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, there are ways to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall of China.) \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to get the message out,\u201d says Chang. \u201cWeibo is always watched by the government, and activists can be caught. We still have our freedom in Hong Kong; we have the internet. We can say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hong Kong may offer a blueprint for changing hearts and minds on the mainland. The 1997 agreement that handed Hong Kong to China after 140 years of British rule largely preserved its autonomy under the guise of \u201cone country, two systems.\u201d The city of 7 million people is home to Hong Kong Ocean Park, a nearly 40-year-old nonprofit U.S.-style marine park that is owned by the local government. Ocean Park ended its orca shows when the last of two killer whales it owned died in 1997. When it sought to import beluga whales as part of an expansion, the dolphin conservation society and other animal rights activist groups opposed the move. Ocean Park, which stopped importing wild dolphins more than a decade ago and operates a captive breeding program, paid for a four-year study to determine whether the belugas could be taken from the wild without harming the viability of the population. The research, reviewed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, determined the take would be sustainable. Activists kept the pressure on, and in 2011 Ocean Park decided not to import the whales, the company\u2019s chief executive, Tom Mehrmann, tells me when I visit his modest office outside the park entrance. \u201cAt the end of the day we said it was not worth the battle and the negative sentiment we would have to deal with, even though it\u2019s a minority,\u201d says Mehrmann, an American and a veteran of the California amusement park industry. \u201cThe facility itself can still tell the environmental messages through other animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur acquisition policies are very clear: We will only acquire animals that are surplus stock from other facilities that are born under human care or that are rescued and cannot be released,\u201d he adds. \u201cAs China is entering this new world of themed entertainment and animal parks, there is a bit of a throwback, I think, to what we all probably knew in the United States in the \u201950s and \u201960s\u2014you go out in the wild and get more animals if you need them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mehrmann says he is working with mainland marine parks to improve their care of whales and dolphins and educate mainland customers, who accounted for about half of the 7.4 million visitors to Ocean Park in 2015. \u201cSometimes we have to reeducate our own market because our guests somehow think we have dolphins jumping through hoops or touching balls, behaviors that were eliminated years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cAs market sentiment shifts, and it will over time, mainland parks will adjust their offerings to be more conservation oriented and educational.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite mainland marine parks’ promotion of whale and dolphin shows, Speigel, the veteran theme park industry consultant, thinks \u201cthe clock is ticking on that type of entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at SeaWorld and the issues they dealt with, it was the millennials that voted with their feet and stayed away from their parks,\u201d he says. \u201cAt some point in time those sentiments will get to China, and it will come with the education of the young people and their ability to access the web and see what else is happening around the world as it relates to this type of animal entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saving the Pink Dolphin<\/h2>\n

Before I leave China, I join Chang and three other young members of the dolphin conservation society on a boat as they survey the waters of the Pearl River Estuary around Hong Kong for the rare Chinese white dolphin. As mainlanders flock to amusement parks to see marine mammals from faraway places, the pink-hued dolphin is disappearing before their eyes. Since 2003, the white dolphin population around Hong Kong has plunged 60 percent to just 62 animals<\/a>, in part because of a series of development projects designed to bring tourists and commerce to Zhuhai and to other mainland destinations.<\/p>\n

\n
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<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As we motor out of a marina, we see Hong Kong International Airport across the estuary. Dredging is set to begin next year to build a runway in an area frequented by most of the surviving dolphins. \u201cIt will almost destroy their whole habitat,\u201d says Chang. Heading toward the southwest, we cross near the huge pylons of a $10.6-billion, 31-mile project under construction that will connect Hong Kong, the casino mecca of Macau, and Zhuhai. It consists of a bridge, a tunnel, and two artificial islands dredged from the estuary.<\/p>\n

Rounding the tip of Lantau Island, we see a pair of pink dolphins leap in the air, and Chang and his colleagues jump up to snap photos with long-lens cameras so the animals can be later identified. Over the next few hours we see six more of the diminutive dolphins as they dodge the nonstop high-speed ferries plying the waters between Hong Kong and Macau, along with freighters and barges delivering sand to the mainland for construction projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have wild cetaceans living along the coast of China, but no one really pays attention,\u201d says Hung. \u201cNo one wants to clean up the water or stop development. People just want some entertainment sugarcoated with education.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after I visit Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, new subjects arrive there from a Singaporean marine park: pink dolphins.<\/p>\n

Todd Woody is TakePart’s editorial director, environment.\u00a0<\/strong>This article was first published by Take Part<\/em>. Read the original article here: China’s Marine Park Boom Is Driving the Capture of Whalesand Dolphins | TakePart<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The article is part of a series by Take Part \u00a0about the growing movement to free captive marine mammals. You can view all the articles in the series here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"take_part_logo_closed_100313\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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