The Food's Dead, The Weather's Hot, The Job's a Joke. Can Someone Come Get Me Out of This Place?

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.