"Killer Whales", Orcas, Orcinus orca are really part of the Dolphin Family, these amazing animals are a vital part of our Ocean's ecosystems. They are known as a "Keystone Species", a species that based on their actual number holds a much larger sway on an ecosystems' balance. And as a predator, that's what Orcas do, they keep their prey in check so that further down the food chain things stay in balance as well. It's how ecosystems work, food webs and our whole planet stays in check.
But as you know, dolphins, mostly bottlenose and Orcas, have been used for entertainment and "educational" purposes all over the world. They are the ambassadors to the Sea. And Shamu, the Orca has become a symbol for all Orcas, the smiling face of what really should be thought of as a wild animal and an important of our ocean's ecosystem and yes, a predator. Not cruelly but to survive, just like any other animal, that beautiful balance is also draped by brutality.
But they are also, loving family members, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. They live in family pods for a lifetime and they are not meant to be contained in concrete tubs of chlorinated water. They are not solitary creatures, that's not their nature either.
Ric O'Barry was one of the original dolphin and Killer Whale trainers, he made dolphins and Orcas famous by bringing them to our living rooms. Remember "Flipper"? Ric does, all too vividly...
For a generation of kids, Flipper provided a popular answer to the question What do you want to be when you grow up? Marine biologist! The hit show, which aired from 1964 to 1967, took place in an idyllic marine preserve and posited Flipper as a smarter Rin Tin Tin—and a proxy parent to the show’s two motherless children. In episodes like "Flipper and the Fugitive," the dolphin saved lives, apprehended criminals, and performed the famous tail-walking trick choreographed by O’Barry. "That dock in the show, where the kids would meet Flipper? I lived in that house that whole time," says O’Barry, who thrived in the sunny, hippie heyday of Coconut Grove, with neighbors like Tennessee Williams and David Crosby. O’Barry was good friends with Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang, who says he has a snapshot of "Ric riding a killer whale playing a wooden flute." Another pal, Joni Mitchell, sang to the dolphins.
Then, in 1970, just as all sorts of idyllic promises were wilting (Kent State, Manson, Vietnam troops returning home), O’Barry had a life-altering experience. After a spiritual trip to India, he visited Kathy, who by then was "retired" and living alone in a tank in Florida. She was noticeably anxious (something he now calls "captive-dolphin depression syndrome"). On the day that changed everything, she swam into his arms and ceased breathing, sinking to the bottom of the tank. O’Barry emphasizes that, unlike humans, dolphins are not "automatic breathers"; they can choose to stop. He’s convinced Kathy did just that, in essence committing suicide.
Two days later, O’Barry was jailed for trying to free another dolphin. After his release, he stopped training dolphins and began fighting full time. For the next 30-odd years, with little organizational support, he would battle the dolphin- entertainment industry he had helped launch, springing dolphins from captivity and fighting the Navy’s use of them for mine detection (all chronicled in his 1988 memoir, Behind the Dolphin Smile). O’Barry says he’d be running his own "politically correct dolphin sanctuary and making two or three million dollars a year" if it hadn’t been for Kathy. Instead, he’s singularly focused on places like Taiji, where fishermen—after capturing and selling the cuter females—slaughter thousands of dolphins to sell as food.
NY Mag
This has been his mission, ever since Kathy took her own life, he has been, for the last thirty years, trying to make it right. And in "The Cove" he talks about Kathy, that she would watch only herself on TV when he placed a black and white Television at the end of the dock. She didn't really care much about the other dolphins that also portrayed Flipper in the TV show, you see, dolphins are self-aware, they can recognize themselves.
Frontline asks the question I'm trying to ask here, What's wrong with captivity?
WHAT'S WRONG WITH CAPTIVITY?
What's wrong with captivity. There's a lot of things and I'm not sure I can capsulize it but I'll try. It probably starts with the capture. It's violent, it's kind of like rape and I've captured many, many dolphins. That's how I started, capturing dolphins for the ... Aquarium. You chase them down to exhaustion. You separate mothers and babies. You take the young. We take the very best, incidentally. 80% of the captures are young females taken away from their mothers. How this affects the gene pool nobody will ever know. I mean the science of that is very, very questionable. The word science doesn't even come up when they're doing that and the National Marine Fishery Service doesn't ask them to prove that this is not having a detrimental impact on the environment - the captive industry and the National Marine Fishery Service. It's only when you want to put them back do they question the science.
But to answer your question: what's wrong with captivity? The capture, bring them into a concrete chlorinated box, reducing them to circus clowns and then selling this as educational to the public. And I think it's extremely dangerous. This issue for me is not just about the dolphins. There's about a thousand in captivity and it's more about the millions of people who go and see the show, go and see Shamu. They're learning, it is educational, they're learning, however, that it's okay to abuse nature. That's what they come away with that these - it only serves - the Shamu experience or the captivity experience only serves to perpetuate our insidious, utilitarian perception of nature and it's an issue about education. To teach a child not to step on a caterpillar or a butterfly is as important to the child as it is the butterfly. And that's what's wrong with it.
Frontline
A wonderful site with lots of information regarding captive dolphins is the World Animal Foundation
Each year, orcas leap through the air for a handful of fish, and dolphins are ridden by human performers as if they were water skis. Employees at marine parks like to tell audiences that the animals wouldn't perform if they weren't happy. You can even see how content the do lphins are--just loo k at the permanent smiles on their faces, right? But what most visitors to marine parks don't realize is that hidden behind the dolphin's
"smile" is an industry built on suffering.
Families Torn Apart
Killer whales, or orcas, are members of the dolphin family. They are also the largest animals held in captivity. In the wild, orcas stay with their mothers for life. Family groups, or "pods," consist of a mother, her adult sons and daughters, and the offspring of her daughters. Each member of the pod communicates in a "dialect" specific to that pod.(1)
Dolphins swim together in family pods of three to 10 individuals or tribes of hundreds. Imagine, then, the trauma inflicted on these social animals when they are ripped from their families and put in the strange, artificial world of a marine park.
Capturing even one wild orca or dolphin disrupts the entire pod. To obtain a female dolphin of breeding age, for example, boats are used to chase the pod to shallow waters. The dolphins are surrounded with nets that are gradually closed and lifted into the boats. Unwanted dolphins are thrown back. Some die from the shock of their experience. Others slowly succumb to pneumonia caused by water entering their lungs through their blowholes. Pregnant females may spontaneously abort babies.(2)
Orcas and dolphins who survive this ordeal become frantic upon seeing their captured companions and may even try to save them. When Namu, a wild orca captured off the coast of Canada, was towed to the Seattle Public Aquarium in a steel cage, a group of wild orcas followed for miles.(3)
Adapting to an Alien World
In the wild, orcas and dolphins may swim up to 100 miles a day. But captured dolphins are confined to tanks as small as 24 feet by 24 feet wide and 6 feet deep.(4) Wild orcas and dolphins can stay underwater for up to 30 minutes at a time, and they typically spend only 10 to 20 percent of their time at the water's surface. But because the tanks in marine parks are so shallow, captive orcas and dolphins spend more than half of their time at the surface. Experts believe this may account for the collapsed dorsal fins seen on the majority of captive orcas.(5)
Dolphins navigate by echolocation. They bounce sonar waves off other objects to determine shape, density, distance, and location. In tanks, the reverberations from their own sonar bouncing off walls drives some dolphins insane.(6) Jean-Michel Cousteau believes that for captive dolphins, "their world becomes a maze of meaningless reverberations."(7)
Tanks are kept clean with chlorine, cop per sulfate, and other harsh chemicals that irritate dolphins' eyes, causing many to swim with their eyes closed. Former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry, who trained dolphins for the television show "Flipper," believes excessive chlorine has caused some dolphins to go blind.(8) The United States Department of Agriculture closed Florida's Ocean World after determining that over-chlorinated water was causing dolphins' skin to peel off.(9)
Newly captured dolphins and orcas are also forced to learn tricks. Former trainers say that withholding food and isolating animals who refuse to perform are two common training methods. According to Ric O'Barry, "positive reward" training is a euphemism for food deprivation.(10) Marine parks may withhold up to 60 percent of food before shows so that the animals will be "sharp" for performances.(11)
Former dolphin trainer Doug Cartlidge maintains that highly social dolphins are punished by being isolated from other animals: "You put them in a pen and ignore them. It's like psychological torture."(12) It's little wonder, then, that captive orcas and dolphins are, as O'Barry says, "so stressed-out you wouldn't believe it."(13) The stress is so great that some commit suicide.
Jacques Cousteau and his son, Jean-Michel, vowed never to capture marine mammals again after witnessing one captured dolphin kill himself by deliberately crashing into the side of his tank again and again.(14)
But it's not just the performing, it's the swimming with dolphins and feeding the dolphin pools that are just as harmful.
Petting pools are another popular by product of the Sea World phenom and it's just not right. I'm sorry, but these animals were not meant to be cramped into tiny pools and forced to interact with human beings twelve hours a day. This video does a good job of explaining just how wrong it is.
I understand our drive to want to understand and interact with the curious animals around us. It's our hubris and greed that tends to push that curiosity to levels beyond mere education and understanding though. These animals are an important part of our oceans ecosystem, just as starfish and otters, kelp beds and bluefin tune. Unfortunately, they hold a much warmer place in our hearts and can bring in a lot more money that starfish (although our love of Sushi isn't helping the Bluefin Tuna's numbers either).
But the other issue goes back to the Cove and the fact that these dolphins in captivity are not born there. That many dolphins found in aquariums around the world have been bought in Taiji, Japan and elsewhere, torn from their families forever.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society outlines why supporting Dolphin Captivity supports dolphin slaughter.
The Connection Between the Butchers of Taiji and the Dolphin Captivity Industry
Parts of the Japanese dolphin captivity industry, with their aquariums, water parks and "Swim with the Dolphins" programs, work in partnership with the butchers in Taiji, supporting them with large sums of money for live dolphins.
Some dolphin trainers who, in public, appear to love their dolphins, in reality work with the Taiji fishermen showing the same level of cruelty and lack of care for the dolphins.
The "selection for captivity process":
The fishermen force the dolphins into the bay.
The dolphins panic as nets close in forcing them into a confined space.
The dolphins are dragged out of the water with ropes around their tails.
While making their choices, the trainers line-up the dolphins on the beach where, being out of water for the first time in their lives, they are subjected to the forces of gravity exerting pressure on their internal organs.
The dolphins flail around on the beach, accidentally hitting each other with their powerful tails.
The trainers particularly look for young female dolphins, those which frequently have unweaned calves with them. Mothers and babies call out in distress as they separated.
While the mothers are often chosen for a life of captivity, the babies will eventually be slaughtered with the remaining dolphins.
The dolphins chosen for a life of captivity are moved on stretchers to cages next to the deafening roar of motor boats.
Others become entangled in their nets and slowly drown as the trainers stand and watch.
The rest are slaughtered.
It is the demand to swim with dolphins, with flipper, to touch and play with them that pushes for further demand and the high cost of these animals as much as $150,000 per dolphin that supports this slaughter.
It was before this week's incident at Sea World in Orlando that I had pledged to never again attend a captive aquarium that held dolphins of any kind. It was that movie that moved me to making this change of heart. I couldn't stomach the thought that by buying my ticket under the guise of supporting education and hoping to inspire my child to want to help protect the oceans through seeing these animals that I was myself, in MASSIVE denial.
I took Charlotte, then four years old, to Sea World in San Diego and she loved it. We "Dined with Shamu" and fed the Dolphins. She was awed by their sized and intelligence, she was overwhelmed with everything she saw. She came home with a new best friend.
And this is her, Charlotte, standing right next to where the Killer Whale comes up on the platform, just near her, my husband said the look on her face was beyond words.
Here he comes, to put his massive weight on this concrete platform just so we, the good paying customers, can get a better look at him and our moment of awe. And why? I don't know.
It was magical day for this little girl and every look of wonder and awe was something a lot of parents would want for their child, these amusement parks prey on your want to engage your child and entertain, they know it's captivating and awe inspiring. And they also think they are doing something in the best interest of the animals. It's hard to resist, it's hard not to want to see these amazing animals in person. They know you want to see them, they KNOW you will pay to see them and interact. It's why they are so profitable.
But I explained to Charlotte that we're not going back again and, amazingly enough, she understood. We're going to plan a whale watching trip off of Dana Point with a reputable company that does not interfere with the whales where we can see them in their natural habitat. We're lucky, we live in a great place to see whales and dolphins.
But the topic is fresh again in the media due to the very brutal death of a seasoned orca trainer.
Veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau, 40, was dragged by her ponytail into the water to her death by a killer whale named Tilikum. The orca thrashed Brancheau around underwater as a horrified crowd watched.
Thad Lacinak, the former head of animal training at the SeaWorld Olando, said the rules in place at the Florida park when he left in 2008 would not have allowed a trainer to lie down on a submerged shelf next to the whale as Brancheau did just prior to her death.
"She lay completely down, which is a very vulnerable position to be in with an animal like Tilikum. And apparently her ponytail drifted into the water. He just opened his mouth, sucked it in and pulled her in the water," Lacinak said.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/...
This is all coming together and Ric O'Barry also released a statement, as he should have. He was one of the first to actually train Killer Whales in Captivity, an Orca named Hugo.
Dear Friends,
It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Dawn Brancheau, who by all accounts was a loving and talented caretaker for Tilikum (Tilly), the killer whale who took her life at SeaWorld Orlando just days ago.
Along with sadness of this tragic event we can’t help feeling anger toward those who insist upon exhibiting these wild creatures in habitats that can drive them to violence. Dependent on sonar/sound to navigate their vast ocean homes, dolphins and whales are in constant state of distress living in cramped pools, bombarded by noise, stressed by food deprivation and forced to perform.
We understand the love these trainers must feel for the orcas they train, but make no mistake - this wasn’t just a terrible accident, it was a calculated risk on the part of a billion dollar captive dolphin and whale industry. Facts suggest that SeaWorld was well aware of Tilicum’s deadly attacks on trainers.
Captivity is Cruel; Don't Go To A Show
SeaWorld allowed public and trainer contact with an orca that was a known risk, and after 3 deaths they’re suggesting that it actually continue. SeaWorld has been admonished in the past by an official with the US National Marine Fisheries Service for failure to take prudent and precautionary steps with Tilicum’s health and welfare.
The latest claims that Tilicum was distracted by the trainer’s ponytail are absurd and force us to infer that SeaWorld is guilty of negligence and that it is now trying to cover up repeated deadly orca attacks by resorting to outrageous and disingenuous claims.
We believe this situation warrants the immediate initiation of a federal investigation into SeaWorld’s possible negligence and violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Further information suggests that SeaWorld has covered up additional acts of orca attacks in order to protect its multi-million dollar investment in these creatures and the millions more they make on the backs of their performances.
Finally, we find their claims about conservation and education shallow. If these shows are meant to encourage people to help save these precious creatures then why aren’t they doing more to end the brutal slaughter of thousands and thousands of dolphins and whales off the coast of Japan, Norway and the Southern Seas. Instead, they turn a blind eye, when they could dedicate significant resources to stopping it.
Overall, we believe the conduct of SeaWorld in this matter is reprehensible. SeaWorld’s actions are a gross threat to dolphins, whales, and people and should not be allowed to stand.
These animals belong in the wild.
We support efforts to stop the dolphin slaughter and capture in Japan as well as to educate the public about these magnificent mammals. In the past they led the effort to rescue, rehab and release the killer whale Keiko, made famous in the movie "Free Willy." Keiko went from languishing in small pool in Mexico City to swimming with wild whales in his native waters in Iceland. He ended up swimming to Norway and living there in a bay with some human care until he died.
After many years training dolphins (including, "Hugo" the very first killer whale in captivity in the Eastern USA), Ric O’Barry came to understand the cruelty that these mammals endure for our entertainment. After the loss of the dolphin "Cathy", one of the famous Flipper dolphins, O’Barry became an advocate of marine wildlife, working to ensure the safety of all dolphins including killer whales. The Oscar nominated documentary "The Cove" shows, through O’Barry’s eyes, the capture of these graceful creatures under terrible conditions, as well as the wholesale slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
Captivity is Cruel; Don't Go To A Show
Sign on the attached petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/...
Environmentalists talk about Ecojustice, this is an issue of ecojustice for dolphins, large and small. These are animals that have self awareness and live in family pods. These are animals that are deserving of a life beyond the confines of concrete pools for our entertainment. There is absolutely no rationalizing the continued captivity of any species of dolphin in our marine parks in the US. None, except for the most extreme circumstances when the reason is to heal and rehabilitate, that's it.
And there is a test out there right now, a fight to return Lolita to her family. The Orca network wants to return a captive Killer Whale to the wild. She is the test case, the way to show that we can return these dolphins to the wild and it's the right thing to do.
When Lolita Comes Swimming Home Again
Hopefully the USDA will inspect and measure the concrete bowl where Lolita has lived the past 39 years and will find it unlawful under the Animal Welfare Act, and $1-2 million can be found to examine her, transport her to a bay pen along the west side of San Juan Island, and set up a care station with a freezer full of fish and professional care staff. It's all been done before and poses no real risk to her or to her family, but many may wonder what will happen then for Lolita.
After her return to her home waters, as she regains her strength and is led out on swims to experience her waters again, Lolita will be the focus of tremendous attention in the Pacific Northwest and far beyond. Of course security at the bay pen will prevent direct observations except by authorized personnel and media, but live webcam coverage and stories about her can be expected to abound locally, nationally and internationally.
When someone reads or sees a story about Lolita they will usually tend to care a little more about how she's doing. The reports will also tell about her family, L-25 and the L-12 subpod as well as all the Southern Resident orcas. People will learn about the orcas' long lifespans, lifetime bonding and no dispersal traditions. They'll hear about these orcas' selective diet - about 80% Chinook salmon and 15% chum - and the need to restore salmon habitat and reduce Chinook catches all along the Pacific coast to keep the orcas around. This alone justifies her return home.
Scientifically, we'll learn if Lolita's family bonds and memories are so strong that she will be able to travel, catch fish and socialize with her family, and we'll see the process of rebuilding the trust needed to do so. If she's not able to rejoin her family, the care station will always be there for her with food and companionship if needed.
Humans live according to their stories, and whales provide great inspiration for all ages to learn more and then act to protect and restore the natural world. When kids hear about Lolita and her retirement where she was raised decades ago, many will want to know more, and will do research and feel moved to write their views about orcas and create artwork about them, developing important language skills and learning how to do good science.
The benefits of retiring Lolita in the Salish Sea won't be easy to measure in dollars, but as a learning and sharing experience among the human community, and as a motivator toward better stewardship and protection of our precious marine environment, Lolita would be a priceless teacher for us all.