emails take positions against whale and dolphin captivity.

The park board’s hearing on the aquarium comes ahead of a contract review scheduled for 2015.

A review of the aquarium’s work with cetaceans was requested by park board chair Aaron Jasper on April 9, 2014. The same day, Mayor Gregor Robertsoncalled for an end to whale and dolphin captivity at the Vancouver Aquarium. Several park commissioners have publicly voiced the same opinion.

The aquarium currently holds two beluga whales and two Pacific white-sided dolphins in its tanks in Stanley Park. In recent months, activists have intensified calls for a phase out of those exhibits and a prohibition on any more large marine mammals being brought into Stanley Park.

In a telephone interview, aquarium CEO John Nightingale told the Straight that upon the completionof an ongoing expansion, three additional belugas currently on loan to Sea World facilities in the United States could be brought back to Vancouver. He said the aquarium could also house more dolphins if, in the future, dolphins are found to require rescue and subsequently are deemed unsuitable for release back into the wild.

Nightingale noted that the aquarium can survive financially without cetacean exhibits. However, he claimed that research, conservation, and educational efforts will suffer if the facility is forced to give up its whales and dolphins.

“With cetaceans gone, with an inability to directly engage people and for them to see the real thing, and with an inability to do any of that research, the aquarium will be a vastly diminished place,” he said.

One of the submissions to