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AGAINST THE CURRENT
Whale and
Dolphin Celebrity
By Captain Paul Watson
FREE KEIKO, FREE LOLITA, FREE CORKY
These are wonderful and very
appealing ideals,but not all captive cetaceans can or should
be freed.
Not all facilities holding marine
animals are the enemy. Not all whale and dolphin conservation
organizations have the best interests of the animals as a priority.
And the huge sums raised to free a few individuals from captivity
might be more positively directed toward ending the horrendous
slaughter of tens of thousands of nameless whales and dolphins
on the world's oceans.
Tens of millions of dollars are
raised each year to protect whales with names. The bigger the
celebrity status of the animal, the greater the funds raised.
Keiko, star of the famed Hollywood
movie Free Willy has generated some sixty million in donations
earmarked for his freedom. Despite having two multimillion-dollar
tanks built for him, despite taking up residence in three countries,
and despite the creation of his very own well-funded fan club
- the Free Keiko Foundation - he still remains a captive from
the wild. Never in the history of the animal protection and conservation
movement have so many given so much for so few and so many given
so little for such large numbers.
Just as celebrity humans make
loads of cash while the common people work harder to get by,
so it is with whales. Keiko is a movie star. Corky and Lolita
are both causes causes c?bres. The save-the-whale-and-dolphin
movement is divided into two camps, each with a different perspective
and each with different priorities. One camp seeks to save the
few with names from captivity, or from nature. The other group
looks on the bigger picture and seeks to address the wholesale
slaughter of the nameless millions in the oceans.
This would not be such a bad
thing if not for the fact that the first camp attracts the media
and the money, with comparatively little spillover to the second
camp. The media love a celebrity whale story where the cetacean
hero is in a struggle against the elements to survive or is up
against a corporate bad guy that has "jailed" a whale.
The media are very reluctant to give the same attention to the
whales and dolphins slaughtered at sea by the Japanese, the Norwegians,
or indigenous communities.
Several times a year when a whale
or dolphin gets lost up a river, stuck on a sand bar, or trapped
in ice, the media descend in a frenzy of sound bites, the animal
receives a name like "Humphrey the humpback," and the
baptism allows citizens to fret as they follow the animal's plight
and applaud a "rescue" which may be no such thing.
A seal strays south to the Virgin Islands, and the media name
her. The public gives tens of thousands of dollars to transport
her to freedom in the Gulf of St. Lawrence - where the slaughter
of hundreds of thousands of seals like her is simultaneously
underway and unremarked.
Media glorification of animals
in distress specifically focuses on animals in conflict with
nature. When nature is the culprit, humans identify with their
fellow creatures. Thus the Russians spent more money to rescue
two California gray whales from ice entrapment in the Arctic
in 1988 than they made from slaughtering 200 of them the same
year off the Siberian coast. The media knighted them as liberating
heroes for rescuing two and ignored the massacre of 200. To this
day, the Russians remain the world's largest killers of gray
whales. At the same time, then President Ronald Reagan was a
hero for championing the cause of the two trapped whales, even
as he refused to sanction Iceland for illegal whaling.
The media costs for covering
the trapped whale exceeded six million dollars. But these three
whales had names. The world rejoiced as Siku and Poutu swam to
apparent freedom. No one knew their fate afterward. The public
wept as the baby gray named Bone sank beneath the dark chilly
waters and died. Greenpeace embraced the cause and sent a team
to rescue the whales. This is the same Greenpeace that today
supports the Russian and Makah whale hunts of gray whales without
names.
The media have even reported
trapped dolphins and pilot whales being heroically rescued in
Japan, Iceland, and Newfoundland, by the very people who regularly
kill the same species, without questioning the contradictions
involved. When the Shedd Aquarium captured three dolphins off
the southern California coast in 1994, some groups rallied a
high profile campaign to oppose the capture. The effort would
have carried more credibility if the same groups had shown concern
for the gill-netting operations in the same area that resulted
in dozens of dolphins being killed each night. However, the media
were not interested in nameless dolphins killed by driftnets,
but gave great coverage to the dolphins named Freedom, Hope,
and Faith captured by the Shedd Aquarium.
This year, the Norwegians, Faroese,
Japanese, Koreans, Portuguese, Russians, Canadians, and Americans
will slaughter thousands of whales. The victims will include
endangered bowheads, under native subsistence quotas, in addition
to hundreds of minkes and unknown numbers of pirated sperms,
grays, pilots, and belugas. The Yangtze River dolphin will be
exterminated to make way for the Three Gorges Dam in China.
We like to think that dolphins
are safe because one can buy dolphin-safe tuna in the supermarkets.
But the reality is that the tuna industry reflagged their vessels
outside of the US when hit with regulations requiring dolphin-safe
fishing practices; the same ships continue to slaughter thousands
of dolphins each year. Last year, the US, under pressure from
industry and from Latin American tuna-fishing nations, removed
the dolphin protection regulations. Dolphin mortality is rising
again, and net profits are rising accordingly. This move, initiated
by Vice President Al Gore, was a major defeat for marine mammal
conservation. Yet this was the same Al Gore who wept at the plight
of the ice-entrapped gray whales in Alaska.
The Norwegians, Canadians, Russians,
and Namibians will slaughter nearly a million seals this year.
Albatrosses are dying by the thousands as they are cruelly hooked
on twenty-five-mile longlines or become ensnared in fifty-mile
driftnets. The US shrimp industry devastates sea turtles (even
Forest Gump was a turtle- killer). Once seemingly limitless fish
populations are at the brink of extinction. The North Atlantic
cod fishery has collapsed. A dozen salmon runs a year vanish
from the Pacific Northwest. Even the recently pristine Galapagos
islands are under assault by fishers, who kill seals, dolphins,
and tortoises on the side.
The reality is that our generation
is presiding over a marine biological Armageddon. Money is needed
to restore and protect spawning areas. Money is needed to lobby,
legislate, and litigate against the fishing, whaling, and sealing
industries. Money is needed for research, investigation, and
enforcement. Money is needed at every level, from government
agencies to nongovernmental organizations to individuals in the
field. Yet the money is not available. The great tragedy of the
commons is that there is every economic incentive to exploit
the oceans and little economic incentive to protect them.
Many animal protection groups
respond by going where the money is: to celebrity, a form of
currency which can be traded quite profitably within the media
marketplace. It is easy to entice schoolchildren and the general
public to fork over funds to "save" Dotty the dolphin
or Sally the seal. It is easy for people to relate to the plight
of the individual, especially through endearing pictures. It
is quite another thing to capture people's attention over the
horrific slaughter of thousands of animals in the name of profit.
Pictures of this only make most of us want to avert our eyes
- and thoughts. Thus raising millions to build tanks and to transport
Keiko is relatively easy. Keiko is a lovable whale. He has a
name. His cousins in the sea, the nameless ones, do not fare
as well against the harpoons, the nets, pollution, and rifles.
Some groups raise support for
wild whales by setting up so-called whale adoption programs.
Donations to save all whales are attracted by placing the publicity
focus on individuals, who respond to protect "their"
whale as they never would to an appeal for all the whales. Unfortunately,
the money raised from "adopt the whale" programs is
usually spent on maintaining the administration and fundraising
projects of the adoption programs, and relatively little actually
goes to protect real whales and dolphins.
In recent years attention has
also centered on captive dolphins held by oceanariums. This has
attracted a great deal of support, more support than work on
behalf of animals in the wild: the oceanarium animals have names.
They can be seen. Unfortunately, the attacks on the oceanariums
have been a media blitzkrieg of indiscriminate irrationality,
pushing all facilities into one category: the enemy. Any dissent
within the movement, i.e., any questioning of the overall strategy
and tactics, is stifled. Those who champion the captive animals
become the good guys, no matter what, and those who keep the
animals are the bad guys.
Reality is, of course, never
so simple. In truth Sea World rescues more animals in the wild,
chiefly from strandings, than all animal advocacy groups combined.
Also forgotten is that Sea World does not capture dolphins or
whales from the wild, and that the much maligned Shedd Aquarium
is involved in breeding, maintaining, and restoring more than
100 species of African fresh-water fish called cichlids. The
truth is that the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas holds animals rescued
from inferior facilities. Many of the Mirage dolphins were at
one time cruelly abused. No expense is spared now to give them
the best care available. They are not forced to perform. In addition,
some 60,000 schoolchildren a year from the state of Nevada see
dolphins, and this has motivated thousands of children to be
concerned about an animal they may never have thought about.
Julie Onie-Wignall, the director
of marine operations for the Mirage Hotel, believes that it is
important for marine wildlife facilities to fund and undertake
the research needed to protect cetaceans in the wild: "The
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin is a species in trouble, and few
have heard about it. It is important for oceanariums to secure
some of these animals so that we can learn how to protect them
in the wild. Perhaps we can save them with breed and release
programs. What we do know is that they are fast disappearing
and our hands are being tied, preventing us from helping them."
The anticaptivity movement, however,
dismisses these arguments by saying that all animals are simply
held to make profits - a form of slavery. Again, the facts are
otherwise. The Mirage subsidizes the dolphin facility to the
tune of $1.5 million dollars a year. No profit has ever been
made nor is one planned. The dolphins cannot be returned to the
wild; they have never known freedom and would simply perish.
The Vancouver Aquarium is a nonprofit organization. The Monaco
Aquarium has pioneered a breeding and restoration program for
coral. Breeding and release programs at other facilities worldwide
are positive activities.
Actually, oceanariums in many
ways are victims of their own success. They did succeed in exposing
the public to dolphins, whales, and other marine life. This exposure
resulted in public admiration and identification that has grown
into a genuine compassion for these wonderful animals. Some of
this compassion is now being turned back on the oceanariums because
they are a visible target for those who are concerned for whales
and dolphins.
A public aquarium is easily identified
and easily picketed. On the other hand, finding a whale-killing
ship on the high seas is not only difficult, it is a very abstract
objective. The oceanariums have themselves failed to aggressively
educate the public about the slaughter in the wild. Many facilities
like the Vancouver Aquarium and Sea World do not risk overt criticism
of the Japanese whaling industry. The fact is that tens of thousands
of Japanese tourists love to look at lovable dolphins, and pay
good money to do so. Unfortunately, too many insist upon keeping
dolphins and whales on their sushi plates.
A spokesperson for Sea World
who did not wish to be identified said that "there are some
who would like to inform the public about the reality in the
oceans, but the public simply does not want to know anything
that is negative. We give them what they want. They are paying
for a positive experience."
Of course, most of the facilities
are profit-motivated corporations that view the captive dolphins
as commodities. All the facilities profess to be educational,
although most educational programs offered are simplistic and
superficial. Oceanariums like Sea World also fail to contribute
to the protection of whales and dolphins from the killing industry.
Sea World is a corporation that also exploits celebrity whales
and dolphins. At Sea World, the orcas and dolphins are unpaid
labor, forced to perform for the amusement of the public. The
public pays tens of millions of dollars each year to watch Shamu
do ridiculous tricks. The animals are even exploited after death,
as when the Vancouver Aquarium sold Skana for dog food after
she died. Sea World spared no expense to rescue a baby whale
they named J.J.. She was cared for and released at a cost in
excess of one million dollars. It was a great public relations
campaign. A year later when the Makah Indian tribe slew a juvenile
female whale that matched J.J.'s description perfectly, Sea World
refused to comment. At the same time, some people who ignored
the Makah whale hunt became incensed by reports that the slain
baby whale might have been J.J.. DNA samples were taken to compare
to DNA samples held by Sea World. Sea World did not want to know
and reportedly refused to allow the comparison. It was apparently
mystifying why people would be concerned if it was J.J. where
they had not been concerned if it was a Jane Doe whale. The answer,
of course, is that J.J. had been made real by the hype of the
media, and the poor baby whale butchered on the beach in Washington
state was merely a big lump of blubber and meat.
Meanwhile the conservation side
of the animal protection movement needs ships to police the Galapagos
and to protect the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, where the
Japanese killed at least hundreds of minke whales this year alone
and might have killed whales of other species with no one the
wiser because no one was even there to watch, let alone to defend
the whales. We need to police overfishing and pirate whaling.
Unfortunately, these far more serious threats are out of sight
and out of mind. The victims are nameless, and their loss is
considered media-insignificant.
If the oceanariums, the cetacean
rights groups, and the conservation groups could agree to cooperate
on saving whales and dolphins at sea, then a real difference
could be made. It is only fair that if money is being made to
watch whales perform, a percentage be directed toward efforts
to protect their species at sea.
My purpose here is not to belittle
the efforts of those who champion individual animals. The strength
of any movement is diversity, including diversity of strategies
and tactics. Conservationists, animal welfare activists, and
animal rights advocates have many objectives in common. At the
same time, there must be tolerance of other opinions and understanding
of the importance of agreeing to disagree.
Animal welfare is humanity in
action. Animal rights is the philosophic attempt to better that
humanity. Conservation is simply survival, and thus the foundation
of our collective concerns. To address the issues of animal welfare
and animal rights while ignoring the foundation of conservation
is to collapse the structure of all. There should be concern
for individual animals, and I am not saying that animals with
names should be ignored. However, it is imperative that the interests
of species receive priority attention. Individuals will inevitably
die: that is the ultimate fact of life. Once a species is gone,
it is gone forever, and with the species gone, there will be
no individuals left to be named.
It must be recognized that there
is much to be learned from all phases of activity within the
cetacean protection and conservation movement. The hardcore vegan
animal rights advocate and the Shedd staffer working to protect
a vanishing species are each involved in what they perceive to
be the best strategy to help animals. It is not that one is right
and the other wrong. Both are right within the context of their
individual values. The bottom line is that both are positively
active. Positive criticisms of each other's strategy are positive.
Unfortunately, the animosity between different approaches is
becoming increasingly more negative and destructive.
The cry of "Free Willy!"
is exciting and inspirational, but what does it really mean?
Free Willy to an ocean where whales and dolphins are slaughtered
in the hundreds of thousands? To an ocean stinking with pollutants
- an ocean of abuse? A future where as one of the masses, the
celebrity whale will be just another target for a harpoon, in
a world that doesn't give a damn for what it can't see and can't
name?
There are hundreds of dolphins
held in tanks around the world. There are millions whose numbers
diminish daily in the largest human-controlled killing tank of
all: the ocean. If we don't halt the wanton killing in the wild,
the only place dolphins will survive will be in captive facilities.
It's time to fight the real enemy, out there on the high seas,
he killing grounds where the scarlet blood of dolphins, whales,
seals, sea birds, turtles, and fish flows forth each day in a
river of a million tributaries, into the azure blue and toward
the inky blackness of oblivion.
This article appeared in the
Summer 1999 issue of Ocean Realm magazine and appears
here by permission.
P.O. Box 2616, Friday Harbor,
WA 98250 (USA) Tel: 360-370-5650 Fax: 360-370-5651
Copyright © 2004 Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society. All rights reserved.
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