Tank World
Tank World has built a new whale tank, 'Friendship Cove,'
specifically designed to allow tourists
to come up close and personal
with these amazing friendly killer giants of the sea.
You thought the mini-sized vegemite jar was small,
well, this tank if far bigger than that!
It's even bigger than the biggest vegemite jar.
'Friendship Cove' actually allows the whales to choose
if they want to develop a 2 minute friendship
with 30,000 visitors a day.
By giving them an extra 6ft, insecure whales
are able to hide behind a polystyrene rock.
Then they are best viewed from the top.
"We want to make it more like thousands of miles
of wild ocean," Tank World said, "This is a good start."
This way when people drop marshmallows down into the water,
the whales can move sideways
to avoid being blinded, or hit in the head.
Soggy marshmallows make very powerful weapons,
and whales have a right to avoid any damage
that might result from such actions."
"How many times does Keiko have to swim around the border
of a swimming pool to travel 100kms a day?"
Tank World threw him a hoop, which he proceeded to swim
through. "Keiko's an attention-seeker," the tank said.
The Interactive Experience - Humans Touch Animals:
Quila, the 30-month-old Beluga,
is force-weaned, and separated from her mother,
Estimated separation - too long or a long time.
Quila will be forced to share her accommodation,
with members of the public in a fit of crass commercialism.
"The tanks were just too spacious and needed utilising.
We thought we could fit a few more in there
like they do on the trams in the peak hour traffic.
The tank extension cost a lot of money and it's a shame to see
it go to waste like this.
It needs human hands to complete the exhibit,
water to be gently lifted and swirled around a little bit."
Tank World has also allowed children to play
with other marine life in their tanks,
including octopus, shellfish, eels and lizards.
Children have been known to get agitated
and to engage in fish fights, using the octopus
as one would use stones or skipping ropes.
Tank World has recently installed underwater prams, dollhouses
and train sets in order to stimulate the animals.
"It's a bit boring for the kids just touching them on their own,
and it will keep the animals entertained as well," the tank said.
He was Tank World's largest tank,
the brightest idea of them all!
Touch them, interact with the tanks and captive oceans.
Your hands can reach in and experience soft skin.
There is nothing stopping you. Touch them.
We reached in to lift the tiny corpse out of 'The Affection Section'.
Two Beluga whales died after being injected
with an anti-parasitic medication.
Somehow toothpaste and shaving cream got mixed up
with the medicine. Tank World said,
"It was an accident and I believe with a little more care,
one that could have been avoided.
I've never lasted long in a relationship with people
who leave the lids off toothpaste
or squeeze the tube from the wrong end,
and now I know why."
A harbour seal died due to poor water quality.
The tank water was trying to protect the seal
from the water in the wild. "I failed," said the tank water.
Dolphins are better off in Tank World than in the wild:
"Eleven dolphins have been born in tanks.
Nature can breed dolphins on its own, but tanks are better."
The oyster catchers are drowning in oil off the bay,
the fairy penguins stagger along the beach,
the sea lions swallow the fishing nets,
the gulls lose their legs to the line, the one-legged cormorant,
the six rings of the six pack strangle the turtle,
(yes, they're still making them).
This would never have happened to any of these animals
if they were safely inside Tank World.
"Our world class tanks closely resemble the ocean,
with sandy-bottomed pools teeming with fish
in a complex ecosystem,
and the high quality of the water in the tanks
is maintained with an advanced filtration system."
Who needs sun, plankton, ocean currents, millions of species,
more drastic terrain than countries and continents,
when we have Tank World?
The Midday Show is filmed on location at Australia's tanks,
a few second-rate actors and dumb TV personalities
swim with the intelligent captives. Tank World is Ray Martin
with a fluoro pink bikini top thrown over his head.
The wild has become a dangerous place.
There were shells on the beach, I remember.
There were whales out there in the water like islands that turned over.
There were enormous tails that slapped down to create the surf.
Now those whales are extinct.
Now those dolphins jump through hoops
or balance shells on their noses.
It they could make shells dance,
they would use them as performers in Tank World.
But the shells were very dead and very empty.
They howled inside and spoke of the absence of wild.
They howled like the beach I used to know.
The problematic shells will not dance for Tank World.
So they string them together and sell their death in the souvenir restaurant ship.
They have gouged out the pulp with a knife.
That was the living resident of the shell,
if anyone wants to know ...
They make this necklace of shells and plastic dolphins.
The pulp is floating dead in the ocean.
The dolphins are entertainers in the tanks of Tank World.
Tank World says, "We will conserve only what we love,
we will love only what we understand
and we will understand only what we are taught."
The tourists are loving those necklaces.
They love them, the dolphins and shells, protecting and preserving
a successful tourist industry, they love them.
After 27 years in a tank JJ was merely a gentle splash
being eased off the side of a Coast Guard cutter.
The only glimpse of her experience
now came through blips ...
sent from transmitters attached to her back,
which are intended to track her for up to 18 months.
Each time JJ breaks the ocean's surface
her transmitters send a signal to a satellite.
Sticking her nose out of the water she was seen by a ship.
She has made some tremendous vocalisations,
sounding out like a cliff face as the tide crashes in.
The depth and duration of her dives
expand and lengthen, into 150 transmissions a day.
Since her release she has stayed mainly along the city's coast.
She hasn't been in close proximity with other whales yet,
she's just investigating her environment.
Only time will tell if she'll utilise her internal compass
and join the other whales
migrating to the northern Alaskan coast.
Just now, new fish, new sounds, new terrain.
It's just like growing up.
She's testing the waters for herself.
She didn't get that chance as an infant weaning from her mother.
She was found abandoned in the surf, malnourished,
comatose and undersized,
her umbilical cord still wrapped around her body.
She begins her new sea-life, like a turtle easing into the ocean.
A flipper along sand grit dragged by foam,
you bite your lip, the tears come salty and thick,
a captive animal going home to its life,
it is one of the great things.
Meanwhile Tank World is funding research projects,
new understandings of hunt down and tag.
The captive marine mammal is released
into the freeway of the ocean.
Aquatic miles are drawn in through
the small windscreen of the eye.
The tag swims through the ocean, the tag can never find freedom,
the tag swam right around Antarctica,
the tag moved through two hemispheres, the tag punctured the ear,
the tag was a radio transmitter speaking in the mouth of the river,
the tag was life in the gut of the Murray Cod,
he was pregnant with the tag, he was slow to swim with the tag,
he was a dead weight hanging in the water
beneath the submerged red gum in the Goulburn River.
It was something he could never escape,
caught in the current like a pig in a humid paddock
without a scratching post.
Tank World tags the wild dolphins,
the tag is gulped down into the centre of a cyclone
that hungers to smash,
to smash tags and palm trees against islands, to smash
waves against reef and reef against waves,
whilst down beneath the dolphin's tag answers the cyclone.
Imagine if you carried a transmitter in your stomach,
so that all the dangerous and stupid people
in your neighbourhood knew your every move.
The lucky dolphins from Tank World are tagged and released,
they swim around the planet three times
in order to outswim the tag but they cannot.
The continents are drifting and plates are dividing
through the world's water.
We are small but we are tagging that movement.
After 28 years of captivity, Yakka the killer whale is free.
Life cut short by being kept in a tank instead of the ocean.
The third-oldest Orca in captivity dies young.
"How old were you when you died?" "I was young."
Female Orcas in the wild have a life expectancy of 80 years.
During her 27 years with Tank World,
the 32-year-old 20-foot, 10,000-pound Orca
displayed her high-leaping aquatic talents
to more than 30 million tank visitors.
Pneumonia brought on by a respiratory fungal infection
was probably what killed her on Wednesday.
The trainers and a team of veterinarians were all there with her,
when she sank to the bottom of her tank around 1.30pm.
Yaka's remains were taken to a rendering plant,
to be divided between scientific agencies for research
and to be sold as fertiliser.
Tank World said, "I'm sure that if Yakka was still alive,
she would have wanted nothing to go to waste."
I was so distraught, I grabbed at my own throat.
The star attraction, Yakka was marvelled at from the stands.
Her surviving partner Vigga, the female Orca,
has since been carrying the act.
The shows which feature full breechings and whale kisses
draw thousands of school children every year.
The most popular spot at the shows is right up front,
where kids can get soaked
as the gigantic mammals leap into the air
and flop back into the water.
'I'm totally glad to have water splashed onto me
before she died," a student said, "If she had died first,
I would never have had this experience."
Vigga's doing fine. She's jumping through hoops
with her little tutu and party hat on.
She's acting as normal as possible under the circumstances. |
