A CRUMBLING CASE FOR CETACEAN CAPTIVITY?

Masked hearing threshold was measured in a beluga whale at VA. Authors hope findings are
relevant for noise in the natural environment.
Web of Science yielded 27 original articles on wild or captive cetacean hearing and the effects
of noise. Most of these were the same as the 19 citing articles noted above. Many of these
articles are heavily cited as well.
12) Delfour F, Aulagnier S (1997) Bubble blow in beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas): A play
activity? Behavioural Processes 40: 183-186.
Recorded the occurrence and pattern of bubbleblows in five belugas at VA.
Web of Science yielded one paper on captive cetaceans by same first author.
13) Nordquist C, Hutchins M (1985) Killer whale shares food with gulls at the Vancouver
Public Aquarium. Zoo Biology 4: 367-374.
A young orca at VA was observed sharing food with gulls.
No citations were identified.
Peer-Reviewed Research on Captive Cetaceans at ML
In order to identify original peer-reviewed scientific papers from ML, the company’s website
www.marinelandcanada.com was reviewed with no references to research papers being found. A
search for the term “Marineland” was then conducted in the Web of Science database (with no date
limits) and a total of six research papers over the past 10 years vii were identified describing studies
conducted at ML. A search on Web of Science for the authors of those papers was then conducted with
no further results.
In order to conduct a citation analysis of each of the six papers from ML, Web of Science was used to
count the number of peer-reviewed original scientific papers citing each article. In cases where no
citations were found by the Web of Science, the findings were confirmed using Scopus or GOOGLE
scholar.
Results
The six peer-reviewed papers from ML are listed here with brief descriptions followed by the results of
the citation analyses:
1) George EM, Noonan M (2014) Respiration rates in captive beluga whales (Delphinapterus
leucas): Effects of season, sex, age, and body size. Aquatic Mammals 40(4): 350-356.
A Crumbling Case for Cetacean Captivity? 8