I was a fan of “Sea World”. I had grown up watching dolphins both in the wild and in Orlando (when on vacation). One of the most unforgettable experiences in my life involved a pod of wild dolphins swimming alongside our boat in Puerto Rico when I was a little girl. I can still close my eyes and see them. Right there, a few feet from me. Fast, magnificent, awe-inspiring…free.
To be honest, I never thought about it, dolphins and whales in captivity. I was as happy as the next person to think “well, they’re better here without having to worry about catching food or being killed “. I saw their “smiling faces” and assumed that they liked doing stunts and enjoying being watched by people.
My life was changed when I started watching “Whale Wars“. I went from cataloguing people like the “Sea Shepherd” society and “Greenpeace” as the hippy-crazy-ecoterrorists to actually being in awe of them. To actually understanding their quest, envying their commitment and passion to something, to helping a cause. I discovered a feeling that was more than compassion, I discovered a deep passion. Passion for this cause. Passion for saving whales. My desire to stop whaling and the hunt of whales quickly encompassed dolphins when I realized that there were areas in the world that were hunting and killing them, especially when I saw a YouTube video and reports on the Faroe Island slaughter.
Then recently something awful happened: the US government, a long time adversary to whaling nations decided that they would support the lift of the “whaling moratorium” in exchange for “strict” whaling quotas. This attempt was naive at best, completely misguided, dangerous and horrifying at worst. The most shocking thing to me was that no one cared. No one cared that we were on the verge of allowing commercial whaling to resume, to be back at the place where whales were almost hunted to extinction. There were no huge marches on Washington, no huge outcry in Facebook, nothing. My own pleas for help returned with exactly 2 people helping sign a petition to continue the whaling moratorium.
For clarity, the IWC (International Whaling Commission) is the world organization that “controls” whaling and discusses cetacean concerns. It was the IWC that established the commercial whaling moratorium when huge concerns were raised about the extinction of whales (especially the humpback and fin whales). The moratorium, unfortunately, has a pretty big loophole that allows whaling for “research”. Three countries use this loophole to continue whaling (Japan being the worst, Iceland and Norway). Japan sends whaling ships yearly to the Antarctic ocean to catch and process whales for “research”. The loophole also establishes that if a whale is caught for “research”, its meat can be sold for profit. Although only 1% of the Japanese population eats whale, it’s expensive enough to entice Japan to continue whaling. There are other schools of thought about why Japan continues whaling and one theory is that the Japanese do not want to be told what to do, therefore they stubbornly refuse to stop. This is the premise of “Whale Wars”: Japan hunts, the Sea Shepherds harass them to stop.
Yesterday, Dennis and I watched “The Cove“. I had been wanting to watch it for a long time but since I was pregnant and the movie is violent and graphic, Dennis had vetoed the idea. However, I rented it with the whole purpose of watching it. I am firmly of the belief that anyone that refuses to see what really happens in this world is at best naive and at worst a coward. These things are going on and if they are going to disturb our “Perfect” little worlds while we watch it. If they haunt our dreams afterwards, then good! We shouldn’t be ignorant of them because we are afraid of being disturbed.
Dennis and I watched the move and the expected happened: the Japanese fisherman at Taiji scared the dolphin into a cove and then proceeded to spear them repeatedly until they died. The process was horrifying to watch, cruel to an extreme, vicious and truly showcased how horrible we can be as humans. At the end of the kill, the cove was full of blood. In a great visual example of total disregard to the dolphins and the slaughter, a fisherman goes to the cove, fills a cup with bloody water and uses it to put out a fire. The narrator can be heard in the background saying that at one point they had asked the fisherman how much money would it take to keep their boats in the harbor, to keep them from killing the dolphins. You know what they said? That it wasn’t about money, that they dolphins were PESTS. The Japanese believe dolphins and whales put pressure on the fisheries because they “eat a lot”. The village of Taiji kills 23,000 dolphins a year.
Ric O’Barry was the original trainer of the “Flipper” series. He says he feels guilty about the dolphin slaughter because he inadvertently helped start the swim-with-dolphins craze. He talks about one of the “Flipper” dolphin, one named Kathy, who used to watch herself in the show (he would take the TV down to the dock where she was) and he would see how see she would be self-aware and know when it was her vs the other Flipper dolphins. In addition, he said that he started being an activist to release dolphins into the wild after Kathy committed suicide in his arms. His story is chilling and narrates how Kathy had been acting depressed for a while and one day she swam into his arms and stopped breathing. For dolphins, unlike humans, every breath is a conscious decision. They do not have to breathe, they choose to breathe to survive. Kathy took a breath and then refused to take another. She sank down into the tank and died. He has been an activist and proponent of releasing dolphins ever since.
Earlier in the movie they showed an image that has stuck with me and I doubt I will ever forget. One of the dolphins had escaped the killing cove by swimming over several of the nets. It had not escaped being speared however, and as it swam for the shore and towards the activists, you could see a trail of blood behind it. It swam fast, even desperately and the activists stood on the shore watching it trying to make its way towards them. Slowly, it seemed to lose steam and started coming up for air less and less until it never came back up. That shot, that image, will stay with me forever and I have but to think of it to feel the tears coming into my eyes and despair in my heart.
Ric O’Barry said in one of the interviews that you are either “an activist or an inactivist”. I have been an “inactivist” for most of my life. As I get older I find it harder to watch something like that and forget. To go on with my daily life as if nothing is going on in the world just because nothing is going on in my front yard. I care.
Maybe I can’t go and join the crew of the “Steve Irwin” , maybe I can’t cut the nets at the Taiji cove. I will however, do something.
This is for you, little dolphin.
http://www.savejapandolphins.org/obama.php