“Q: are you pro-cap, except for orcas?”
Because I already wrote a fairly good summary of my feelings on the subject, here’s the reasons I’m pro-cap in general, and here’s the reasons why I would love to not be pro-captive cetaceans, but due to a whole bunch of things, I am for it.
This subject is approached as such a black-and-white issue when it is anything but. The solution is not “free the animals”, that is the goal. You can’t release captive animals into “the wild”, because “the wild” no longer exists. It is polluted, fragmented, and diminishing. Captive breeding programs in zoos have proven, time and time again, that they can prevent extinction - just look at black-footed ferrets, the Arabian oryx, and the California Condor - and we need those programs if we aren’t going to kill off millions of species before we can fix what we’ve done to the earth.
On top of that, aquaria are a much younger concept than zoos - the first public aquarium was opened in 1853, while terrestrial animals have been kept in “zoos” since about 3500BC. The first captive orca was only brought to an aquarium in 1965. For a field that is only 50 years old, the fact that accredited aquaria have improved so much already is a god damn miracle.
All I ask is just that everyone THINKS about this whole topic before forming an instantaneous opinion. Find out what conservation programs your local zoos and aquaria are running. Learn more about the AZA and what it takes to become an accredited facility. Please.