METRO NEWS SeaWorld orca breeding ban ‘doesn’t change anything’ at Vancouver Aquarium Vancouver Aquarium GM says it hasn’t had orcas since 2001 and has been trending toward educational presentations as SeaWorld announces sweeping changes. The Vancouver Aquarium’s general manager doesn’t expect it to change after SeaWorld announced sweeping changes on Thursday. In the face of falling revenues and intense public pressure, the U.S. theme park operator announced it is ending its orca breeding program effective immediately and doing away with circus-like public performances in favour of more educational programming. Clint Wright, senior vice-president and GM of the Vancouver Aquarium, told Metro it hasn’t had killer whales in captivity since 2001 and has been gearing toward more educational presentations with its remaining captive sea mammals (several belugas, a Pacific white-sided dolphin and a false killer whale) “for a long time now”. “I think, for us, [the SeaWorld announcement] was a little bit of a surprise because we didn’t have a lot of notice beforehand,” said Wright, calling from Valencia, Spain, where the aquarium recently won a bid to take over operation of Oceanograpfic. “In terms of the work and research being done, it’s along the lines of what we committed to doing in 2006. So for us, it doesn’t change anything.” Wright said the remaining orcas in SeaWorld’s facilities are still expected to live for several decades and trusts they’ll be well looked after. He also defended breeding programs and generally keeping cetaceans in captivity, despite the heated debate swirling around the issue. “I think it’s absolutely vital what we do,” he said. “It’s such a limited resource for researchers to work in a controlled setting and then apply that to the wild. We can’t ignore that. Belugas are facing issue like they’ve never had before. Connecting people to real issues in the Arctic is something we feel is really important.” The Vancouver Aquarium was facing questions over its whale and dolphin breeding programs two years ago when the Vancouver park board tried to impose a breeding ban on it. That bylaw was only abandoned after the Non-Partisan Association took control of the board from Vision Vancouver in the 2014 municipal election.