Many years ago my family and I went to Canada and we went to see a pod of killer whales ( a ‘pod’ means group), we saw these pods out in the ocean.

We were on a small boat and the killer whales were swimming around us, it was one of the most wonderful experience of our lives, they were all happily swimming close together, they also had a baby whale (baby whales are called calf’s).

The whales came to the surface of the water to breathe air, the baby was not strong enough to break the water (‘break’ means comes up and out of the water) so the mommy breaks the water first and then the baby follows. It was amazing to watch the baby whale copy its mother.

They kept jumping out of the water and splashing back down again and slapping their fins against the water, this is called breaching, they communicate like this over long distances.

Some people think it ok to capture these marine mammals and make them do tricks, they put them in small tanks where they do not have room to swim. Whales and dolphins swim large distances daily in search of food, in captivity the get thrown some fish at certain times of the day, this is not natural for them.

They get very sad and scared and they get poorly, they just keep swimming back and forth in the same place and they hurt themselves.

However, the Canadian government have passed a law banning whales, dolphins and porpoises from being held and bred in captivity, this means that no one in Canada can go into the ocean and capture them.

This came into action on June 11th 2019.

which is great news, isnt it?