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The Food's Dead, The Weather's Hot, The Job's a Joke. Can Someone
Come Get Me Out of This Place?
by
Leslie Strom
photograph of Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium by Howard Garrett
photograph of K-1 by Leslie Strom
Back home in Haro Strait near the San Juan Islands of Washington
State, it's difficult to know if Lolita's relatives miss her.
They live their lives as they have for millennia. They have parties
and reunions, avoid their rivals, they rub on beaches together,
mothers and aunts take care of babies, the young males go off
and play in the kelp beds and wave their penises in the air,
babies play with their food by bouncing fish on their noses,
mothers play with their babies by bouncing the youngsters on
their noses. They sleep together, hunt together, they are constantly
talking to each other. You nearly never see them alone. Put a
microphone in the water and it is a sea dense with sound.
Their survival depends on their kinship and their sonic world.
The fact that Lolita the Killer whale has survived without kinship
and in a hostile acoustic environment for 28 years tells us how
very adaptable she is. Nonetheless, she is listless in her confined
tank and there is some concern that her life will end before
the Free Lolita campaign can rescue her from her slavery.
On Mother's Day, May 9, the Tokitae Foundation is conducting
a peaceable demonstration in front of the Miami Seaquarium.
They hope to raise awareness and diminish the success of displaying
captive Killer whales for profit, so that soon, one whale in
particular can be rehabilitated and returned as a resident in
the Pacific Northwest.
Activist Howie Garrett moved from San Juan Island,
Washington to Miami. Florida in order to work on Lolita's behalf
in October of 1997. As he hands out leaflets in front of Miami
Seaquarium, he also remembers his first time with Killer whales.
"The first time I ever
saw a whale was in August of 1976 when I visited Ken (Balcomb,
Garrett's brother) in the middle of his first year conducting
field research on the Southern Resident community. I drove the
boat, a 19' Boston Whaler, as Ken and Camille shot dorsals and
saddle patches. I was there for three days, and those happened
to be days when a group of L-pod orcas were toying with a baby
harbor porpoise. Who knows what happened to its mother, but the
orcas actually gave the baby porpoise rides on their backs, by
swimming tightly together with the porpoise riding in the air
in the groove between the whales. Then they flipped the porpoise
into the air a few times. "
These sorts of stories abound in the research community. People
like Ken and Camille are seemingly tireless in their work with
whales because it's intoxicating work. There is nothing in an
aquarium setting to match the magic of even the most uneventful
day on the water with whales. Garrett could have simply enjoyed
his occasions on the water and the company of his relatives watching
Lolita's relatives, but he was soon drawn into a campaign to
free another orca celebrity, Keiko of "Free Willy"
fame.
"My first direct exposure to whales in captivity came
after learning a great deal about the marine park industry from
the Keiko controversy and capture plans off Victoria in 1982
that I helped prevent. My first actual sight of a captive orca
was a visit to Lolita at the Seaquarium in 1994."
"In 1993 and early 1994, Ken and his son Kelley and I
worked on devising a plan and publicizing Ken's proposal for
Keiko. That's when we learned about the methods of resistance
by the marine park industry, which included misrepresenting the
whales to the public. In other words, information has been withheld
from the public that would encourage the idea that they can be
released after long term captivity. So in addition to the brutal
consumption of whales and dolphins for the park industry, a coordinated
effort to misinform the public was and still is being perpetrated
by the industry to convince people that release is impossible.
At that point we knew we had to help Lolita, and at the same
time begin to re-educate the public that whales and dolphins
are far stronger, physically, mentally and especially socially,
than the parks and even the general education via universities,
have been telling people."
Garrett's experience with whales is hardly typical. More people
have better access to a captive orca than a wild one. The campaign
to close down such exhibits is hard to sell when there are so
many people who want to be close to a whale, and so many people
who are willing to sell them the experience. A movement to end
a display industry takes time and persistence to build. And why
should anyone care about one animal in a zoo?
"I'm trying, along with a growing global cultural movement,
to take that new cultural development into new realms, into the
world of non-human lives. In this movement, Lolita is both a
living, breathing being who needs help to be returned to a normal
life in her home waters with her family, and at the same time
she is a symbol of our choice as a society, either to exploit,
abuse and destroy her life for our momentary thrills, or to extend
our understanding to her plight, empathize with her suffering
and do what we can to relieve the pain and correct the transgression
against her. By acting out of empathy, we reinforce our ability
to empathize, both within ourselves and as a global society.
I believe we need to do this because we are too efficient,
and we are too many, to continue exploiting wildlife at the rate
that we have since the first hominids began to walk. We are in
the midst of the most rapid mass extinction of life on earth
that has ever occurred. That has to turn around. The Lolita campaign
is just one way to enact the change in heart and in so doing
create a new standard of human behavior."
The big break
Garrett can leaflet and letter-write until he's as blue as
the Caribbean Sea. But unless the Miami Seaquarium hands over
the whale, how does one measure success of a movement like this?
A young male Killer whale from Iceland started the ball rolling.
With all Keiko's celebrity from the movie "free Willie"
he might be mistaken for Uberwhale... one who was chosen to go
first from the tank to the wild. Actually, Keiko wasn't the best
bet for rehabilitation when he was acquired in January of 1996
and shipped from Mexico to Oregon for fattening up. He was "chosen"
for stardom by default, since no marine park in the United States
or Canada was willing to jeopardize its entire business by being
part of a story so solidly against the industry.
Keiko was taken from his mother at age 2, before he was able
to learn to hunt. He endured extended captivity in a Mexico City
seaquarium, stewing in his own waste and the stupefying Mexico
City air pollution, alone in a small tank far from any sea water.
His battle for health was an ongoing round of antibiotics and
infections. He is now in Iceland, adapting to the environment
he came from and may someday have the survival skills to be wild
again. He is at a good weight, strong and active, and no longer
requires constant medication. So if Lolita is given the same
opportunity, her chances of successful return to the wild are
excellent. Keiko's family is unknown in Iceland, and Lolita's
family is right under the noses of millions of Puget Sound residents.
"Progress in the campaign is evident in the whole wave
of public awareness and passionate dedication to the miserable
plight of captive whales and dolphins. I don't know how it can
be measured, but people are waking up to these cases of inhumane
treatment of captive animals for petty human purposes. There
hasn't been a whole lot of media attention about Lolita, but
it's increasing slowly, and the Lolita campaign is riding the
wave of excitement generated by Keiko, which I think deepens
the educational impact of that project. So it's a synergistic
process and the overall result is that people are awakened to
feelings of compassion within themselves and they also learn
a lot about the creatures we share our planet with. I think that's
a very good thing."
Making slavery unprofitable
Convincing an entire industry based on display of one species
to shift gears is a tough sell. Garrett and others have come
up with some inventive, profitable alternative business models
that could keep the marine park thriving in a whole new way,
without the controversy and expense of keeping live whales. Letters
and proposals can be found on the Tokitae
Foundation site but the Tokitae Foundation recognizes that
in order for Lolita to be free, her captors have to replace her
with something equally compelling and profitable. Losing profits
can also have an effect.
Boycots do work. Recently the Seaquarium finally complied
with a request by Eastman Kodak to remove their logo from
the whale stadium at the Seaquarium. Where it once was displayed
prominently on both sides of the Seaquarium logo, now there are
only big blank red squares. Kodak had been convinced by public
pressure that association with a captive Killer whale show was
no longer good for theirbusiness.
"It's the indifference of the majority and the slavish
loyalty, by many of those who should know better, to an ignorant
and brutal dogma to justify captivity that is hardest to deal
with. The Seaquarium owner says I'm a phony trying to defraud
the public of course, but that reduces his stature more than
mine, so that's just part of the campaign."
The Marine park industry, including Busch Gardens and Sea World, has a lot to lose by parting with their trademark.
They also have money for lawyers, spin-doctors and public relations
mouthpieces to hang on to what they have. Even the scientists
who work for the parks have everything to lose. When the park
is out of whales, the researchers are, too. It's a sad symbiosis.
"It's a case of us against them as presented by the marine
park industry. The public relations efforts of the industry has
been to vilify and ridicule those who are suspected of sympathy
for the incarcerated whales and dolphins. It's cause for instant
dismissal and permanent blackballing from any employment in the
field. The park industry provides virtually all the employment
in the field of marine mammals, plus access to the animals for
studies (though that is seldom allowed), so any independent scientist
who would dare to say that captivity may harm the animals loses
his or her place in the scientific community. There are some
specialized scientists who are saying things recently that can
be construed to contribute to the argument against captivity,
but they leave it to others to make the generalization from their
esoteric studies. Vilification of those with whom one disagrees
is a venerable human habit.
"Art Hertz called me a pest in the Herald Sunday,"
reports Garrett. At least the owner of the Miami Seaquarium is
feeling the pressure. And this coming Mother's day, Mr. Hertz
will hear about a park full of bigger pests than Howie Garrett,
all who want some justice for one tired animal. One can hope
that in her small tank Lolita will also hear the pests who love
her, and live to see her family again.
Leslie Strom likes nothing more than being whales. They're the best kind of
company to Get Lost with.
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