By Richard Bell
The Whale Sanctuary Project held six meetings along the Shore in its search for a location for a 40-hectare (100 acres) site to create a sanctuary for 5 to 8 beluga whales currently living in very confined tanks at marine parks. Opponents of the Eastern Shore Islands Marine Protected Area (MPA) raised questions about connections between the sanctuary and the MPA, a connection that the president of the WSP emphatically denied in a letter to the Cooperator.
Whale Sanctuary Project President Lori Marino insisted that building a single sanctuary of less than 0.5km square for 5-8 beluga whales was “all we want to do and all we are proposing. Any more than that is not realistic for us given the expense and the limited ‘bandwidth’ we have as an organization.”
Marino emphasized the need for community support: “We recognize that even this single sanctuary cannot be done in Nova Scotia without the community embracing it and being proud to be part of it – and that includes the fishermen.”
She also spoke to concerns about what kind of place the sanctuary would be. The organization would “not be using the whales for entertainment or any other exploitive purposes. There will be no performances and no close public interaction with the whales. Visitors will be able to see the whales behaving naturally from a respectful distance and learning so much more about them in the process.”
Background
The Whale Sanctuary Project’s executive director Charles Vinick explained at the first meeting in Dartmouth that simply turning captive whales lose in the open ocean would be a death sentence for the whales. Almost all of these animals were born in captivity, and cannot catch fish on their own. He described participating in a frustrating multi-year effort to teach a captive killer whale to eat live fish.
Vinick was frank about the many unknowns involved in the proposal. And he was equally insistent that the Project would not select a site unless there was strong community support. He mentioned that the Project had looked at a potential site last year in Terence Bay, but that opposition from the fishing community there had led them to drop the location. (You can watch a video of the Dartmouth presentation by President Lori Marino and Charles Vinick on the Cooperator’s Facebook page.)
Concerns about No Take Zones
Opponents of the MPA have been concerned from the beginning about the creation of No Take Zones within the MPA, areas where no fishing of any kind would be allowed. DFO’s director of Martimes Oceans Management, Wendy Williams, tried to take this issue off the table at the end of January by announcing that the DFO team working on the MPA would not be recommending a No Take Zone.
When the Whale Sanctuary Project’s meetings were announced, some opponents of the MPA were concerned that a whale sanctuary could be a wedge for eventually imposing a No Take Zone.
Marino emphasized the need for community support: “We recognize that even this single sanctuary cannot be done in Nova Scotia without the community embracing it and being proud to be part of it – and that includes the fishermen.”
She also spoke to concerns about what kind of place the sanctuary would be. The organization would “not be using the whales for entertainment or any other exploitive purposes. There will be no performances and no close public interaction with the whales. Visitors will be able to see the whales behaving naturally from a respectful distance and learning so much more about them in the process.”
