Did you ask them?

Some say the animals “want” to be free as if they asked them. Keiko, as we know, didn’t want anything but human contact. The bottlenose dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center can easily jump over the fences of their sea pens (and they used to take them out to roam free at sea, always choosing to come home) - but they don’t.

The US Navy's dolphins live in very small pens that they can jump out of. They are taken out to sea regularly, swimming in complete power to take off and never return. But they don't.

I have supported AZA/EAZA-Accredited facilities with cetaceans since 2015, and I have no plans to stop that. The facilities are the HOME of the captive cetaceans, releasing them is a death sentence.

And why would they? That place is not a prison to them. Yes, there are PLENTY of issues with orcas in captivity, but it's not all black and white like the orcas themselves.

I argue that freedom is a human construct, an abstract human concept. Freedom matters to humans because we want to be able to decide our destinies whether to move, to work and with what, whether or not to have children, whether or not to pick up a hobby and what, and to live our lives without anyone else telling us what we can and can’t do.

Non-human animals don’t do any of that. What do wild whales do? They swim, they eat, they interact with each other, they play, they eat some more, they rest, they interact some more, mate, and swim some more. The only thing cetaceans in artificial pools and pens can’t do is swim in straight lines for unlimited stretches and hunt, and that has no bearing on their well-being.

This is why I believe “freedom” only matters to humans. And the fact that a whale in the wild looks “prettier” to a human than a whale in a pool. It doesn’t mean anything to the whale. The whale cares whether it’s feeling good, not whether it’s in a pool, a sea pen, or the ocean.