Attendance at the park has drastically declined, and this spring it did not open to tourists, as it usually did. Many assume bankruptcy is inevitable. <\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, they’re telling us they’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” Niagara Falls mayor Jim Diodati told Radio-Canada on Friday. “There’s no money.”<\/p>\n
Park officials say they cannot afford to continue caring for the animals, and so they must find them a new home. Marineland applied for a permit from the federal government to sell the whales to a theme park in Zhuhai, China. <\/p>\n
But Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson said the whales would face similarly substandard treatment as “public entertainment” in the Chinese park, and denied Marineland’s request.<\/p>\n
A number of organizations agreed with Thompson that the park in Zhuhai was not a suitable option. <\/p>\n
Then last week, the park shocked many when it told the government it may have to euthanise the whales. It has asked the Canadian government for funding to continue to care for the animals instead.<\/p>\n
A Marineland letter to the fisheries ministry, obtained by the BBC, said that whatever happens to the animals would be “a direct consequence of the minister’s decision”.<\/p>\n
That assertion was not well received by the government.<\/p>\n
“The fact that Marineland has not planned for a viable alternative despite raising these whales in captivity for many years, does not place the onus on the Canadian government to cover your expenses,” Thompson said in a letter to Marineland, obtained by the BBC.<\/p>\n
The current status of the whales remains unclear. Marineland did not respond to a BBC request for comment.<\/p>\n
But Phil Demers – who worked for 12 years as a senior trainer at Marineland and has since become an outspoken critic – told the BBC that there were limited options, besides the one in China, that could take all 30 whales at one facility. <\/p>\n
He believes the best-case scenario for the whales is any option that gets them out of Marineland, quickly. <\/p>\n
Without China, he thinks the best possible outcome is a coalition of US facilities each taking a handful of whales.<\/p>\n
“These animals need to be out of those waters, yesterday,” Mr Demers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attendance at the park has drastically declined, and this spring it did not open to tourists, as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-208544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}