OLYMPIA — A bill that would make Washington the first state to outlaw keeping whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity at zoos and SeaWorld-style shows brought a cetaceans’-rights debate before a Senate committee Thursday afternoon.
Advocates for the Puget Sound’s endangered orca population told the Senate Natural Resources and Parks Committee the law would buttress the federal ban that ended Puget Sound orca captures in the 1970s and help move the nation away from keeping the marine mammals — a group known as cetaceans — in unnaturally small spaces.
Critics of the bill, which included members of a national aquarium group, said it would undermine their efforts to teach the public about animals.
Each side produced marine biologists to testify for their claims.
“In captivity, these creatures that swim thousands of miles are put in a fish tank the size of the Washington State Senate floor, and I just think that’s just think that’s totally unacceptable,” bill sponsor Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, told the committee.
His bill would also ban capturing the animals, using them for breeding and importing cetaceans from elsewhere, even if they were born in captivity.
There are no orcas, dolphins or porpoises on display in Washington, although beluga whales were kept at Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo &Aquarium up until 2009, when they were sent to a Texas aquarium.
Historically, more than half the more than 400 orcas ever captured in the United States came from Washington waters, with the last one caught in 1976 under politically charged circumstances.
Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro told the committee Thursday that situation — including the final catch, which he watched — led the state into lawsuits against SeaWorld that won some orcas’ release.
“It was gruesome,” said Munro, who is a Republican. “We said, ‘Enough.”’
Munro led an attempt in 2000, during his final year in office, to pass a ban on keeping captive marine mammals, including cetaceans and manatees, but his bill failed to pass out of committee. He and other supporters of protecting the endangered Puget Sound orcas told the committee the orcas’ lives in captivity are often brutish and short.
Opponents of the bill from the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, whose website lists Point Defiance Zoo &Aquarium as a member, said the bill would criminalize their efforts to introduce the public to whales and dolphins, and limit the ways of doing behavioral research.
It is unclear if Ranker’s bill will succeed. Committee Chairman Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, said after the hearing he needs to study the issue more before he can say how he’ll vote.
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