During weekends and holidays, for a refreshing kind of relaxation, have you ever considered immersing yourself in the open sea? If visiting the real beach or ocean became an inconvenient thing to be conceived, I believe you have several ideas popped out for visiting aquariums, even watching those cute little cetaceans and pinnipeds performing. Do you think it’s a friendship demonstration between humans?and animals?However, as more experts started to?discover?the truth, animals were?actually?suffered too much from being in captivity and performing in front of the public. The beautiful ruse behind such cruelty?had deceived lots of people around the world.?There presented?people having?no exposure to the truth, while?also presented?some others?understanding?the?factual information happening to those animals.?For us possible to eliminate the negative effects of animal performances, several alternative ways could be considered. For instance, regarding the consideration of the economy of?the?ocean tourism?industry, overall wellbeing for the animals and people implicated with their performances, alternating the structure of aquariums, providing natural contact opportunities,?and bringing people with chances to explore the sea through?leading-edge?technologies?are several ways that can change this current trend to having more goods, least harm.

To begin with, in order to keep the attractive aquarium tourism sites continuing on its way of prospering, it is important to “take the essence and discard the dregs” for such industry, which means having the aquarium to only exhibit the appropriate type of fish, sea mollusk and arthropods in fish tanks. Because the ultimate origin of the sea animal performances we are now desisting is the tourism of aquarium, and the aquarium itself will not be that detrimental to animals if proper raising technique to smaller beings is applied. For instance, a lot of sea mammals stuck in captivity were tortured a lot from pains and suffering of training and strange living condition, which in turn brought them unnatural behaviours such as wall crashing, even attempts of killing people. Also, to an even higher degree, those animals can die easily in any chance possible in such a weird environment for them.?So, these harmful factors posed to those performing cetacean and pinniped beings severely interrupted their life as who they should be like in nature. However, for smaller ocean creatures like fish, aquatic mollusk,?and arthropods, which have the tolerance of a wide range of temperatureas ichthyologist Lynne Parenti suggested, what we need to do for them is just simulating their right habitat.This less complicated requirement of habitat can help this kind of animal presentation possible with a?non-negative?result for the animals. Also, to the majority’s aesthetic view of those exhibited creatures along with their habitat design, it was not really something ranking below the interest of watching sea mammals performing in front of us, which this can in turn still bring aquariums profits of having public attention. With maintaining the aquariums’ attraction along with their friendly protection and care to the animals, such?an?approach can both satisfy people doing the aquarium businesses, as well as the animals involved in such businesses.

However, regardless of the establishment of new aquariums, demands for seeing the real sea mammals like cetaceans and pinnipeds are still needed aside from seeing those smaller creatures. For viewing the real animals along with maintaining their physical and mental wellbeing, tourist should encourage more whale watching and underwater diving that are eco-friendly. Since now we have more demand of viewing the reality, such as the attractive-looking cetacean and pinniped beings, we hope to see, it is necessary for us to have such area’s fulfillment with less harm to the animals we are viewing. In captivity, the dolphins were stuck in a law-required dolphin tank having an average width of 14 feet, length of 28 feet, and depth of 7 feet; but in reality, they need 100 miles of swimming per day, which is highly impossible of achieving in such 2744 ft3enclosure. Also, when stuck in captivity to perform, the music played during performances and the self-echoing happening in this enclosure sharply harmed the cetaceans’ auditory system and mental health (the latter one creates an annoying echo chamber effect for them).?These aspects of captivity severely harmed the well-rounded wellbeing?of?the sea mammals we are all expected to see, so several alternatives of having a?mutually beneficial contact needed to be considered. Whale watching industry had already benefited 2.1 billion USD in 2009 with its gradual building of an eco-friendly approach of reducing the loudness ships made while travelling to whales’ home. During the trip of whale watching, it was not only available for people to see the whales, but it’s also possible that people can see other animals around the land near whales’ habitats, such as sea lions, seals, walruses, and so on. For attaining multiple possibilities for seeing mammalian marine animals, whale watching is such a worthy one for being profitable. On the other hand, although the underwater diving industry was not that widely proposed like whale watching does for friendlier communication with wild animals, it was very popular for coastal cities to have underwater diving as a tourism attraction since there’s even a higher chance for people to see the real animals. Such diving activity will have a minimal negative impact on the animals, such as whales and dolphins, we hope to see, in turn having benefits for the animals living their life without too many interruptions.?So, with the logistic consideration for the animals in nature we are viewing, for tourist sites to strengthen their projects of whale watching and underwater diving will be a nice time people get in touch with the real sea animal, as well as a constructive effort for the tourism businesses to have their worthwhile income.

Not to mention, nowadays people have the demand of not just viewing the reality, but also the reconstruction of reality, which is technology. So, for experiencing intimate experience with animals, the involvement of technology in presenting animals virtually can be used to help more people get certain know-how related to sea mammals, or any animal they hope to see.?In turn, for satisfying these?wills, it will be a unique and refreshing way for them to try out this along with the attraction of advanced modern technology like?Virtual Reality?and?Augmented Reality.?Especially for VR technologies, they are currently experiencing steady growth in high ends and inexpensive systems, as well as the gradual adoption of technological and social features. According to the report of America’s well-known magazine—Forbes, 2019 was a growth year for those two technologies (better known as their names of VR and AR), which was having its growing demand aside from entertainment (not to mention how strong and popular those entertainment had already been). In 2020, VR and AR started to step their way into educational experiences. In fact, regarding the fact of how entertainment and education both developed their success in VR and AR technologies, having experiences with sea animals can be a truly appropriate objective for such development to be applied on. With the virtual or accumulated reality of the sea animals we love in front of us, it will totally be an attraction for people to participate in the technological interaction which is much vivid than watching documentaries. With the satisfaction for people of gaining interaction with the animals they love, as well as having totally no harm to those animals throughout this virtual process, applying VR and AR technologies to viewing the marine animals can be an alternative business attraction.

On the contrary, some people believe that sea animal performances should be irreplaceable since they were believed to be very attractive to the audience. Most importantly, they believe that these activities possess the educational values of teaching people about hard-working and perseverance through animals training desperately the tricks. But in reality, those points they made in their thinking were not the whole story.Professional human acrobats, athletes,?and dancers,?as they commonly have an analogy to,?were indeed having intensive, even?severe?training since a young age apart from family. But back to my original point,?those hard-working people?were not facing the same situation as the animal performers did. During one of?the speeches scientist Dr. Naomi made in TED talk, she mentioned thoroughly that unlike humans, to orcas, family is everything. Without proper family accompany, the orca’s mind and behaviour will gradually grow in a distorted way.?Her statement, thus, clearly gave us an implication that being away from home for human beings is much easier than for orcas. So, to those dedicated professional acrobats, athletes,?and dancers, separation from family is not a heart-breaking and detrimental thing at all. Nevertheless, those people chose their career because they really hoped to devote all of themselves in such cruel experience, or their families were having economical struggles so that they had to practice such activities for subsisting home. However, performing sea animals had neither this sense of personal will nor this dilemma in family subsistence for performing in aquariums. In fact, the animals were the tool used by the businessmen in such?a?compelling industry for making more money for the human themselves. Unlike humans, they were NEVER treated in the way their instinct can adapt to aside from swimming in the water they relied on living. Such kind of beautiful deception should never be something comparable to the praiseworthy hard-work and perseverance of human, so this reason will never be something appropriate for remaining sea animals performing in public.

Sometimes, changes are?hard for us to?accept when it’s related to several big and attractive events, but this has to occur for more goods and less harm to the majority of communities. In the end, I would like to say that this is just describing the way how we should face the sea animal performances by changing it into the alternative ways producing most benefits and less hurt to both human and animal sides. Yes, sometimes changes are hard to accept when the previously unknown truths were revealed, but we do have the chance to seek for the best solution considering the care for various different aspects. To sum up my previous points made of benefiting human interest and economy, as well as animals’ wellbeing aspects,?alternating the structure of aquariums, providing natural contact opportunities and bringing people with chances to explore the sea through technology are several ways that can change this current trend?of viewing sea animals?to having?more goods, least harm.

?

Work Cited

?

Cowperthwaite, Garbriela, director.?Blackfish, 19 June 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=abKJg6auL70.

Psihoyos, Louie, director.?The Cove, 7 Aug. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtB36cztCh0.

?Boyd, Lou. "6 Reasons Why You Should Never Go To A Dolphin Show."?Mpora, 28 Oct. 2015.

Kutner, Jenny. "7 Reasons You And Everyone You Know Should Boycott SeaWorld."?The Dodo, 25 July 2014.?

Li, You. "Sea Lion Abuse Lingers in China Animal Performance Industry."?Sixth Tone, 18 Mar. 2019

Parenti, Lynne. “Fish.”?Britannica, 2019

Hoyt, Erich. “The Whale-Watching Industry.”?Cambridge Core, 2014

Sprogis, Kate R, et al. “Vessel noise levels drive behavioural?responses of humpback whales with implications for whale-watching”?eLife, 20 Jun. 2020

Marr, Bernard. “The 5 Biggest Virtual And Augmented Reality Trends In 2020 Everyone Should Know About.”Forbes, 24 Jan. 2020

Sherstyuk, Andrei, et al. “Towards Virtual Reality Games.”?Avatar Reality, Unknown Year