The Summer Day At Marineland
Originally published in mathNEWS 156.1, September 13, 2024.
~
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
The parking lot was at, generously, one percent capacity. We had to drive along the entire length of a fence to get in, erected about a decade ago to keep out protesters. We passed the iconic Marineland sign; looking closer, we noticed that the picture of a whale that used to be on the sign had been hastily removed, leaving blood-red scars across the paint, which felt like a metaphor for something.
And through all of it, we were dead silent in the car. We didn’t speak. We didn’t hear anyone else speaking. It’s not even that the park was empty—I could count about 20 cars in the parking lot—but I couldn’t hear anything.
The lady at the ticket booth told us we were lucky, that the park’s last day of operations was just three days from when we arrived. We passed through and met two ticket checkers, who waved us in with a smile, without checking if we actually paid.
Those three were one-third of the active staff in the park that day.
~
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass…
I’ve written a lot about Marineland, and I’ve danced around the issue of animal welfare for a while, mostly because I didn’t think I had anything new or insightful to say. For just about my entire life, Marineland has been a cultural pariah. I could add to the consensus, but what would be the point of that? You know it’s bad. I know it’s bad.
I can’t do that anymore. Of course you knew it was there, but you could look away. You could distract yourself with pageantry if you really tried. Not anymore. All of that is gone. The rides are all closed, all the shops and restaurants are boarded up. They took the nozzle off the goddamn water fountains. Everything has left this place except for the animal in the tank and you.
I know what the moral argument is here: that these animals are intelligent and dynamic and are being put in positions that feel tantamount to torture for the sake of the hedonistic enjoyment of tourists. What gives us the right to inflict so much misery on another being? How dare we?
I happen to think that this argument is correct. I would, however, like to offer an additional point: watching these animals makes me feel fucking miserable.
These are intelligent, majestic creatures, and all they do now is swim in silence for no one, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no end in sight. The closest thing we humans can experience is solitary confinement, broadly considered by experts to be torture. But what if you had all the restrictions and isolation of solitary confinement combined with the deep humiliation of being observed by tourists at all times?
Everyone at the park seems to recognize this, too. I exchanged some looks with the parents who had brought their overexcited preschoolers to the park to burn off some energy. We're all playing the same game: I know this is wrong, they know this is wrong, but the kids don't know this is wrong, so we all say nothing. We just watch the tanks together.
The entire time I was there, I felt the overwhelming sense that I shouldn’t have been there. This park is deeply, deeply evil.
But there was something my eyes kept getting drawn to, if only to give them some means of escape. I kept looking at the kids with their faces pressed up against the glass, staring in amazement as a dolphin swims by. They were all, genuinely, in awe.
One of my friends quipped that this trip “ruined their childhood”, and suddenly everything clicked into place. I wasn’t watching the kids, I was watching me at age five. This park was made for them. This park was made for me.
I was watching ten years into the future, when those kids are old enough to realize the context of their trip, why their parents were so hesitant to go. They’ll realize, as I did, that these animals were tortured for them. And then they’ll realize the park had placed them into the center of a moral minefield without their knowledge, to be revealed only when they got old enough to understand it.
~
I feel guilty that this place exists. Should I?
I know, on some level, it’s ridiculous. I didn’t build this park. I didn’t condone its existence. I’ve spent frankly unreasonable amounts of my life vocally upset by its existence. But it was made for people like me, and in a past life, I enjoyed it. I proved them right.
When I see an injustice in the world that I did not cause, but still benefit from, how am I supposed to feel? I know what I’m supposed to do—fix it—but am I supposed to take on societal guilt? Should I feel personally bad about it, or is it enough to acknowledge it and move forwards? Logically I want to say the latter, but something in my gut feels like that isn’t enough.
Can I admit that I felt a bit of involuntary awe at seeing the dolphins and belugas? Can that awe be offset by the overwhelming guilt I felt next? Did the tanks get smaller, or did I get bigger?
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
~
John Holer founded Marineland in 1961, and ran the park until his death on June 23, 2018. Stewardship passed to his wife, Marie Holer, until her death on September 6th, 2024.
What’s left of them now? What did they give us to keep?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~
Oliver, Mary. “The Summer Day”. New And Selected Poems. 1992.
For detailed reporting on animal cruelty at Marineland, please read:
Diebel, Linda. "Marineland animals suffering, former staffers say." Toronto Star, 15 August 2012. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/marineland-animals-suffering-former-staffers-say/article_3a527a21-191c-5ce0-aa9b-bab31284bbea.html
Moon, Jenna. "The Last Orca." Toronto Star. 10 December 2021. https://www.thestar.com/interactives/everything-she-does-she-does-alone-marineland-s-kiska-has-been-called-the-worlds-loneliest/article_eea1add0-ffe8-11ed-a7b8-177aca4118f5.html