Students in China are joining the campaign to refuse to watch marine mammal performance.

A series of events taking place on World Ocean Day saw a wider emphasis on eradicating all animal performance and the significance of the date meant marine mammals took centre stage.

Students from Chinese universities pledged support for efforts to eradicate the use of animals for public entertainment in a week-long series of events.

They used World Ocean Day to support Animals Asia’s on-going campaign to end the practice of keeping marine mammals in captivity and making them perform for paying customers.

Featured among the activities at four universities in Chengdu city were exhibitions of anti animal-performance posters, and information displays detailing the natural history of the animals and stressing the knock-on effects of keeping them in captivity. Campaigners also set up petitions and banners calling for these practices to stop.

The activities coincided with two illustrated presentations by Animals Asia Animal Welfare Director, Dave Neale, to audiences from two large coffee shop chains in China. His talks also highlighted the cruelty involved in denying wild animals their natural environment and keeping them captive for entertainment purposes.

Dave said:

“There has been something of a boom across Asia recently in using marine mammals for entertainment. We want to raise public awareness about the considerable welfare problems associated with keeping them in captivity. In many cases, young animals are ripped from their family groups in the wild, and placed within barren featureless tanks, a world apart from the natural environments in which mammals such as whales and dolphins thrive. They are wide-ranging, social mammals and captivity makes it impossible for them to maintain a family group or travel over large distances to meet their physical and behavioural needs. In many cases they are forced to spend a significant amount of time at the water surface, without the ability for them to dive to great depth as they would do within the wild.

“I am really encouraged by the fact that the university students feel as strongly about this as we do, and I’m impressed by their efforts to influence others on World Ocean Day. Their activity and the talks I gave to key business people and members of public in China underpin Animals Asia’s No Voice, No Choice campaign. Our captive animal welfare team work on the ground to raise awareness of why animal performance is wrong. If enough people turn their backs on animal performance – then it will end.”

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