I stumbled upon an inverted map of the world: land became sea and vice versa. It abruptly reveals how vast the earth’s oceans are. We spent so much time researching information regarding other planets and life in space but until recently, we had little information about our own planet. Children fantasize about life as a mermaid or living in the ocean, but life for humans underwater is irrevocably impossible.

In Listening to Whales, Alexandra Morton explores the communication and culture of whales off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. She was one of the first researchers who more closely observed the communication between the orcas or dolphins themselves rather than interspecies communication. She truly appreciates and respects these gigantic mammals’ culture and refrains from forcing our way of life onto them like pushing a puzzle piece into the wrong spot but somehow making it “fit.” Her empathetic way of studying orcas trumps any aquarium’s rationale. People made it possible to observe magnificent sea creatures through the creation of aquariums and aquatic parks or visiting centers; however, these creatures act completely different in captivity from how they would act in the wild. Whales become so close-knit that they form pods that basically speak different languages. Aquatic parks, such as Marineland and Sea World, hinder the animals’ abilities to communicate with each other when they capture the animals from different parts of the world and store them in an area as big as a box compared to their normal “world.”

Parks justify their horrific behavior by stating that they serve as an area for education. The documentary Blackfish takes a close look at how these parks operate revealing immoral and cruel treatment towards specifically killer whales. Trainers withhold fish/food from them as negative reinforcement so that they appear to be trained animals and perform for human entertainment. The amount of education from parks like Sea World is slim to none. Children dream of having a relationship with a whale or dolphin one day, directly encouraging the domestication of wild animals. A recent article published in National Geographic discussed humans’ desire to tame wild animals. Some argue that these animals should be allowed to be held as pets while others argue that this is simply morally wrong. Last year, I cared for my family friends’ five Labrador Retrievers, one of which was pregnant. Over the course of the month the family was gone, I frequented the vet and rushed home to see if the mom had gone into labor.

When I first noticed her growing stomach, I sent a frantic email to the family basically asking what I need to do to care for her and the future puppies. The owner, only accessible through email, responded with, “Ana, dogs have been birthing puppies without human help for many years…the mother will figure it out.” Reading that email humbled me quickly. My primary focus became to make the mother comfortable without overstepping any boundaries such as forming a relationship with the puppy. Even for a domesticated animal, we must give animals the ability to independently live as much as we can. We constantly want others including wild animals to conform to our lifestyle even if that means making a wild animal depend on human.

If we domesticate every animal, we will kill our natural world. The amount of factory farms would increase solely to feed the captivate animals unable to explore and search for their own food. While some people may be able to visit a park and learn about orcas, most people learn about how to train and domesticate something that should be free. Blackfish successfully conveys the terrors that go on in aquatic parks such as the small tanks housing multiple unrelated orcas, separating families based on profitable opportunities, and the sagging fin caused by a whale’s depression.

Listening to Whales takes it a step farther and reveals whales’ massive emotional capacity, synchronized movements, and extreme closeness within a family and pod. The lessons especially children learn from these types of parks are to dominate and domesticate the world.