by David Kirby
After challenging the accuracy in some of the industry’s education materials, Lori tackled the much trickier and subjective second criteria: Was there evidence based on valid scientific measures to show that people truly learned something—or were moved to take action for marine conservation—after visiting a marine park? The industry said there was, but Lori wasn’t buying it.
“It is not proper to simply ask students whether they have learned or what they think they have learned, or how much they enjoyed the class,” Lori said. Direct testing of acquired knowledge, and not feel-good public opinion polling, was the only way to properly assess an education program. Industry-sponsored papers on the topic—few or none of which were published in peer-reviewed journals—“typically involve asking zoo and aquarium visitors whether they think they have been educated. But they do not actually test knowledge.”
One of the largest and most recent papers, Why Zoos Matter, funded by the National Science Foundation and published online by the AZA, surveyed more than fifty-five hundred visitors and twelve zoos and aquariums. It concluded that zoos and aquariums have a “measurable positive impact” on conservation attitudes among adults. AZA president and CEO Jim Maddy called it the “first time we have reliable data validating the positive impact zoos and aquariums have in changing visitors’ feelings and attitudes about conservation.” It was the “Holy Grail” the industry had been searching for, Lori said, “to validate their educational and conservation claims.”
But in a paper published in the journal Society & Animals, Lori and her coauthors determined “these conclusions are entirely unfounded.” Flaws in the AZA paper included lack of control over confounding factors that could bias the results, such as a nonrandom study sample. The AZA assessed neither attitudes nor knowledge, but simply evaluated “what visitors believed they felt or learned.” Surprisingly, even with those flaws, the authors still found “no significant gains in general knowledge” resulting from a zoo visit. The AZA was stretching the truth, Lori said. “It is, frankly, surprising that the authors based such strong claims on these flawed findings. There is no compelling or even strongly suggestive current evidence that visits to zoos and aquariums promote positive attitude change, learning, or conservation actions.” She then urged the reluctant NMFS “to exert greater control over this important issue and its very serious consequences.”
Lori was followed by the AZA’s Paul Boyle. He looked somewhat dyspeptic but kept his cool. “With 175 million annual visitors to our 221 accredited zoos and aquariums, AZA’s focus on connecting people and animals provides a critical link to helping animals in their native habitats,” he began. “Far-reaching conservation programs at AZA institutions have provided over ninety million dollars per year over the past five years to support over four thousand field conservation and research projects in more than a hundred countries.”
As centers for “conservation volunteerism,” AZA members offered the public a “great way to discover connections to their environment and to learn how they can make a difference in conservation.” Each year, more than fifty-eight thousand volunteers donated some 3 million hours of their time, Boyle said, “supporting virtually every aspect of zoo and aquarium operations.”
AZA members communicated “science-based educational messages about the importance of conserving marine mammals and their habitats” to their multitude of visitors, Boyle continued, 50 million of whom were children. AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums had trained more than four hundred thousand teachers in informal science education methods and provided over $85 million annually in educational support in the prior decade. Members also generated an impressive $8.4 billion annually in economic activity and supported more than 126,000 jobs.
Lori Marino’s testimony aside, Paul Boyle said that the “enormous value of informal education is proven” because research showed that effective learning can take place in an informal environment such as zoos or aquariums, which were “rich with educationally framed real-world phenomena.” They were places where people “can pursue and develop science interests, engage in science inquiry, and reflect on their experiences through conversation.”
He cited a 2009 study showing that visitors to dolphin performances displayed an “increase in conservation-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions” right after their experience. Three months later, they reported “engaging in more conservation-related behavior.” It showed that people did retain knowledge gained during the “marine mammal experience.”
Not surprisingly, Boyle opposed greater regulations on display permits under the MMPA. He had “great concern” that AZA standards would become “undermined by those who deny the now significant body of evidence” showing positive conservation and education outcomes.
“Some people speaking to you during this hearing claim that zoos and aquariums are not educational facilities. I challenge these claims as an unsubstantiated academic hypothesis that is unsupported by empirical research and represents a deluded view of what we know about how people learn,” said Boyle, now clearly on the offensive. “These naysayers are locked in the past, suggesting that the methods developed under rigorous scrutiny of an international community of scholars devoted to the study of informal learning experiences are somehow inadequate—nothing could be farther from the truth.”
The paper by Dr. Marino and colleagues was simply a “veiled attempt to discredit a team of respected researchers” and to rip apart their good names in order to claim that zoos and aquariums “can’t be educational environments.” But that criticism did not meet “even the minimum criteria for scholarly ethics, nor the basic rules of evidence for scientific research.” Marino et al. were attacking a “summary document.” They did not refer to any original research journals or any publicly available data. “I cannot imagine why these scholars chose to play so fast and loose with the facts. Dr. Marino and her colleagues clearly have no knowledge of the education standards for evaluation.”
The second panel was composed of Naomi; SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment curator Julie Scardina; Louie Psihoyos, executive director of the Oceanic Preservation Society and director of The Cove; and Dr. Rae Stone, of Hawaii’s Dolphin Quest interactive experience, a marine mammal vet and past president of the Alliance, which she was representing.
Julie Scardina went first. To Naomi, the curator looked tense, as if she would have been more comfortable back at SeaWorld, speaking to adoring schoolkids, rather than answering questions from potentially ill-disposed members of the US Congress. Where was Chuck Tompkins, Naomi wondered, where was Jim Atchison? SeaWorld threw this poor woman to the wolves, Naomi thought, with a bit more relish than sympathy.
Scardina echoed the AZA in stating flatly that the current standards followed by its members were perfectly adequate because they required “exceptional public education programs.” More federal regulation was simply not needed.
Meanwhile, SeaWorld parks had a “multifaceted” mission of being centers of both entertainment and education. “We work hard to ensure that our patrons leave our facilities having had an enjoyable experience, and with greater knowledge of and appreciation for animals and the natural world,” she said. In 2009 alone, SeaWorld staff conducted more than half a million hours of “structured teaching” with more than half a million guests. Since its founding in 2003, the nonprofit SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund had granted more than $6 million to four hundred projects in sixty countries for “species research, habitat protection, animal rescue, and conservation education.”
As for killer whales, SeaWorld research was having an “immediate impact on wild populations,” Scardina said. “Many recent examples” illustrated how venues such as SeaWorld were uniquely suited to conduct research that would not be possible in the ocean. Researching dialects in wild whales, for instance, had been difficult because “behavioral interactions cannot be observed underwater.” But thanks to the “unique characteristics of Shamu Stadium,” such as hydrophones and underwater viewing ar
eas, investigators from Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute made “significant progress in developing tools to identify calling whales.” Other studies on the development of dialect in killer whales “may cast light on the evolution of human language,” Scardina added, without explaining how this might produce an “immediate impact on wild populations.”
Another study, supported by the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, was working to determine “how whales have solved the complex relationships of energy intake and expenditure and what their food requirements are. Knowing how much energy a whale requires is fundamental to resolving a number of questions about the role whales play in their ecosystem.” Scientists were now able to assess the relationship between the metabolic and heart rates of killer whales at SeaWorld and use that knowledge to “evaluate metabolic rates of free-ranging whales and ultimately apply this information to the conservation and protection of wild whales.” A worthy goal, Naomi thought. But to her knowledge, this work had not yet been published in the scientific literature, where it might benefit research in the wild.
Killer whales at SeaWorld were also being studied by scientists at the University of Central Florida, who were measuring “physiological parameters” including heart rate, metabolic rate, and thermal balance, under controlled conditions, to evaluate how they might be “affected by age or body mass.” Naomi questioned how valuable physiological data from “controlled conditions” would be for studying whales in the open ocean.
Naomi was up next. She began by noting that a proposed rule to implement or amend public display regulations in the MMPA had been unveiled back in July 2001, but the rule was never finalized. Because of that, NMFS was not able to sanction any facility that failed to meet “professionally recognized standards” of the public display community. “In short, the public display community … has been largely self-regulating for sixteen years, to the detriment of the educational experience of those who visit these facilities and use their online resources.”
Among other criticisms, Naomi assailed the industry’s claim that the 2005 Harris poll proved that places like SeaWorld “educate the public to care about conservation.” The poll only asked “what they think or believe, not what they know.” As a counterweight to the study offered by Paul Boyle, Naomi cited a European analysis comparing the knowledge of students who received a marine mammal lesson in an aquarium setting, and students who were taught in a traditional classroom. The results suggested that, after several months, the aquarium group did not retain lesson materials any better than the classroom students. Informal settings might be fine for learning, but classrooms were just as good.
She also challenged that captive breeding programs were “a positive aspect of SeaWorld’s work with endangered and protected animals.” The company’s own breeding efforts were “not consistent with the generally accepted concept of conservation-based captive breeding” because that concept included “the final step of releasing captive-bred progeny into the wild.”
In the question-and-answer session following the panel, Naomi spoke from the heart, without a prepared script. Representative Bordallo asked her how the display industry could better champion the natural world, but Naomi was skeptical the industry even wanted to champion the natural world. Nature was not SeaWorld’s companion; nature was SeaWorld’s rival.
“I have heard again and again that people cannot go scuba diving or whale watching—it is inaccessible to the vast majority of people living in an urban environment,” Naomi said. “The fact is a lot of people can’t afford to go to SeaWorld either.”
SeaWorld was competing against the great outdoors for people’s dwindling dollars. From a purely business perspective, promoting nature was akin to promoting the new Harry Potter attraction at Universal Orlando that was denting SeaWorld’s revenue. “There are certain things that they are simply not going to tell people,” Naomi stated. “They don’t really have a vested interest in telling you how wonderful nature is either, because that’s their competitor, even though they are supposed to be educational facilities.”
Naomi said she was not alone in that belief. “I think that there are more marine mammal scientists who would agree with that statement than anything about [animal] welfare or other issues that are of great concern to me.”
When SeaWorld wasn’t ignoring the competition, it was misleading customers about the virtues of its rival, Mother Nature. “These are very large, brilliantly colored animals—and when you see them leap high in the air in a SeaWorld show, it is spectacular. But it’s not natural,” Naomi explained. “When you get entertained by a show that has not one scrap of natural history information in it—the preshow does and the signage does, but the show does not—and that’s what you came to see, that’s what you paid your seventy-nine dollars to see … to be entertained [and] I just don’t want people to be misled that they are also being educated.”
Visitors to SeaWorld were not learning “what really happens with these animals in the wild, how they really live. The fact is they portray nature as a scary place, full of hazards both natural and human-caused, and yet they equate them—‘predators are scary.’ Well, predators are like all sorts of things we have to deal with every day.… And that is what these animals have to deal with out in the wild. They have a job to do. And it’s challenging and it’s engrossing and, yes, it has hazards. But that’s natural, that’s normal, that’s nature. And they should be celebrating that instead of telling young kids, ‘SeaWorld is going to protect you from that.’ I feel very strongly that young kids get a sense that the animals are safe at SeaWorld, but it’s really scary ‘out there.’ I don’t think that’s a conservation message. I think that’s an anti-conservation message.”
Julie Scardina rejected Naomi’s assertions and held up a thick stack of SeaWorld educational materials, most of which were “geared towards children,” she said. She also brandished a sixty-six-page document listing published studies conducted by SeaWorld staff, including “peer-reviewed and also other information that comes out from people that work at SeaWorld.” She didn’t say what percentage of the research papers was peer-reviewed.
“We are making sure that we are putting out the highest standards of available information that not only our scientists and our educators find out and research, but also outside researchers through AZA and the Alliance as well as people in the scientific community—basically the greatest and most in-depth experience that there is on conservation and education in the world, if you are going to put it all together,” Scardina said.
The curator also defended the use of killer whales in performances for the public. “What you see there are the capabilities of these animals—I mean, why do we have the Olympics? Because people get to the greatest height of what they can do, and we love watching that. Well, our animals have been trained to do something that they are capable of. We can’t train them to fly because they can’t fly, but we can train them to do all these magnificent things that people are inspired by.”
Then Scardina took refuge in the familiar fold of the “ocean as scary place” defense, without grasping the irony, Naomi thought, of providing bad education at a hearing on education.
“You know, Dr. Rose talks about nature being a place where there are only natural dangers. And if that were the case, we really wouldn’t have too much of a need for additional education, but that hasn’t been the case for many, many years. You add [all] the changes that humans have made over the last couple hundred years, and that’s why we have so many threatened and endangered animals right now. There’s pollution in the oceans that’s greater than it has been certainly at any time in history—and today, that we shouldn’t inspire people to care enough to change their behavior, to make sure that we take care of the oceans, just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”
Naomi thought Scardina was getting rattled. Before she finished her answer, the curator got personal; never a good idea at an oversight hearing.
“She talks about us and our effo
rts as we show off these animals and inspire people in our parks that, at the same time, we are making money,” Scardina said of the HSUS scientist sitting by her side. “But I would like to point out that HSUS makes money when they try to convince people that, that we are the bad guys and that there’s nothing going on outside in the world, that they want people to give money to them. So just remember that it’s not Dr. Rose coming from a purely unbiased standing and that we are not the bad guys here.”
Bordallo asked Scardina if the benefits of killer whale shows outweighed the risks.
“Yes,” she answered. “They do.”
Naomi did not agree. She noted that fewer than two hundred killer whales had ever been held in captivity, and of those, about two dozen had injured or killed their trainers. “That’s more than a ten percent accident rate. If a brand of can opener had that kind of accident rate, it would be pulled from the shelves. So I think the risks absolutely outweigh the benefits.”
The chairwoman then announced “probably the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question to round out this hearing, and that goes to Ms. Scardina: What happens now to Tilikum?”
Julie Scardina mustered a pleasant smile. “We are definitely committed to taking care of that animal for the rest of his life. He didn’t do anything wrong. We are caring for him in the social pod that he knows, with the people that he knows, with the excellent care that he receives.”
Once again, Naomi was itching to take issue with the SeaWorld official—and her rosy depiction of Tilikum’s life. “I am a killer whale biologist and I spent hundreds of hours on the water watching these animals and their social interactions. And in fact, I specialized in male behavior,” Naomi began, reminding everyone that her knowledge of killer whale social behavior likely exceeded that of anyone else in the room (if not on Capitol Hill altogether). Tilikum was no longer being touched in the wake of Dawn’s death, she noted, “because they are keeping trainers back to a safe distance.” He was still allowed to interact with other whales, “and that of course is good. But he must know that something is different, perhaps even that something is wrong, because he is not being touched by his trainers.… It must be very confusing for him, at the very least, and potentially very depressing for him. And I am not trying to be anthropomorphic: These animals are intelligent, they are social, and they can feel things like depression.”
