We agree on most of this, but I think those conflicting and ill-informed opinions should be given more credence than you allow. If there's one thing this episode has proven, it's that public perceptions of animal welfare can have major ramifications for collection planning/management decisions, regardless of their veracity. We ignore that at our peril.
I'm not saying we should pander to ignorance, but we do need to meet visitor expectations. To my mind, that means reframing the eternal "visitor needs vs animal needs" debate. Within the "visitor needs" category, we have to consider not only factors such as animal activity and visibility, but also visitor perceptions about animal needs. If that means providing more space and disguising containment barriers, it's hardly the end of the world.
Likewise, if I complained at a museum or theme park, I'd be fairly miffed if the manager told me their galleries/rollercoasters were fantastic and I should "put up or shut up".
If all my post receives is nitpicking, then I'm happy
Actually, you're misquoting me. I mentioned dorsal fin erectness as a welfare metric because Tim referred to it as such in his post. What I called "obvious" was this:
"I've never understood the "where do you stop?" argument. Surely the answer is obvious: with species/exhibits where captivity doesn't demonstrably and negatively impact welfare."
Granted that is my "personal answer", but nothing in your post suggests you disagree. I'd be interested to hear if you did, though. The main problem with it (at least in the context of this debate) is that demonstrating compromised welfare can be difficult. However, it has the benefit of moving us along from counterproductive arguments about how an inability to adequately care for one species means we must admit defeat on everything.
As for dorsal fin erectness, I won't repeat jibster but it concerns me that this sort of question has not and cannot be answered because of bias from both sides. I think you're setting the bar rather low if you'll be satisfied with an explanation simply because it's "plausible".
And to the point that average age is not an accurate measure: agreed (partially). Again, I questioned it because longevity was the metric given by Tim, who also argued that captive orcas have "prospered for generations". Given that statement, the poor record in the 60s and 70s was relevant, whereas it wouldn't have been if he'd only argued they were prospering now.
Having said that, too many SeaWorld apologists believe lifespan is irrelevant because it will improve in the future, but such complacency ignores a major issue. With Blue World cancelled, we'll unfortunately never know whether enclosures of that scope and complexity would have addressed it.
Incidentally, I found the latter half of Jurek's post fascinating.
I don't know if plausible is quite appropriate,as the surface tension explanation is used by most by researchers and by SeaWorld itself. The other theories were grabbed directly from "seaworld of hurt",a ridiculous propaganda website,and from Blackfish,so so far surface tension is the only
explanation that makes sense,is used by actual scientific sources (depending on whether or not you consider Ingrid Visser/Naomi Rose scientific,I do,depending on the day) and wasn't grabbed from a propaganda film/site.
Personally,I don't believe lifespan is irrelevant,however,we don't even have an idea how well orcas who live even in the current tanks fare as no animal yet has lived its whole life from birth to average lifespan in the current tanks. I'd only assume that Blue World would have been better,but sadly Joel Manby doesn't seem too keen on wasting money on a phase-out species. I really dislike that man. We could have orcas left from anywhere from 25 (at probably the very least)-50 years. A 25-50 year investment can hardly be considered a wasted investment if it brings in better crowds.
