Captain Paul Watson's Moral Compass Loses Its Way

Paul Watson standing in front of the renamed Sea Shepherd Vessel the Steve Irwin. It is ironic that Steve Irwin was not only a conservationist but a zoo owner and his daughter, Bindi Irwin, is now an ambassador for SeaWorld.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals [...] Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher. Paul Watson, 1995"

Many might be aware of the activities of the conservation organisation Sea Shepherd and its controversial founder Paul Watson. In recent years, Sea Shepherd seems to have lost its way and has drifted into the realms of animal-rights. Rather than just opposing the killing of whales and dolphins in whaling and drive fisheries, in such countries as Japan and the Faroe Isles, they have moved their sites to attacking the maintenance of whales and dolphins in captivity.

In a recent commentary on their website Paul Watson decries the death of a killer whale at the Marineland in Antibes, France. The whale called Valentin died some time after a serious flooding incident that seriously affected not only the marine park but also the surrounding area and involved the death of at least 19 people.

Watson berates the death and  - without any supporting evidence - makes the statement that it was the flooding that killed this animal due to the ingress of contaminated water into the killer whale exhibit. In actual fact, the post-mortem revealed that the animal died of a twisted gut (torsion) which veterinarians believe is unrelated to the flooding incident. The other whales in the same exhibit remain at the time of writing healthy and well.  He also blames Marineland for being built on a floodplain. Although, during its 45 years of existence this is the worst flooding experienced by this facility. Moreover, as stated, this didn't just affect the park but the large area surrounding it.

Watson finishes his polemic in a predictable way with the now familiar rhetoric and unrealistic aspiration that:

"Marineland must be shut down and the animals rehabilitated and released to the wild [...] These tanks must be emptied and these facilities shut down. Marineland, SeaWorld and other cetacean prisons around the world are a disgrace to humanity and an ongoing ordeal of suffering for hundreds of animals denied their rights to be free and to live a full and productive life..."

This is of course a totally unrealistic objective for many and various reasons. The first of which is that all the killer whales at Marineland (including the recently deceased Valentin) were all born in captivity and have never been in the wild – as is the case for the vast majority of the 50+ killer whales currently displayed around the world in zoological collections.

Further, as the well-known failed release of the wild caught killer whale Keiko demonstrated,  that even with wild caught animals such endeavours are highly risky and likely to not only be hugely costly but also inevitably not successful. It is interesting to note that this fact has also now been accepted by Jean-Michel Cousteau whose organisation Ocean Futures were directly involved in the Keiko experimental release. 

Interestingly, this hasn't always been Paul Watson's position regarding whales and dolphins is in captivity. In a commentary in the June edition of animal people magazine in 1995 entitled The Cult of Animal Celebrity his position was very different.

Watson makes the very good point that:

"Not all facilities holding marine animals are the enemy. And the huge sums raised to free a few individuals could be more positively directed toward ending the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of nameless whales, dolphins, and seals on the world's oceans"

He goes on to say something that many believe are truisms when it comes to the public's changed perception over the years regarding whales and dolphins.

"Actually oceanariums are in many ways are victims of their own success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales, and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about these animals before 20 years ago now cares a great deal. Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead turned against the teacher."

His final statement here is indeed very ironic because Watson is now engaging in the very behaviour he rightly criticises in this cited article.

In the closing passage of this article he makes a judgement that many feel is not without truth.

"There are hundreds of dolphins held in tanks around the world. There are millions whose numbers diminished daily in the world's largest human controlled killing tank of all: the ocean. If we don't hold the wanton killing in the wild, the only place dolphins will survive will be in captive facilities." 

So why has Watson apparently changed his mind completely regarding the captive care of whales and dolphins? Certainly, the situation for these animals in the wild has not really changed substantially. Animals are still being killed as is graphically shown in documentaries.  Watson's own efforts to highlight the drive fishery killings in Japan have failed to have little impact on the continuation of these hunts.

What seems to be happening is that Watson and others have decided that there might be a more lucrative return in targeting the small numbers of animals that are currently being caught in the Japanese drive fisheries for display in aquaria as this would generate better publicity and more public donations. The fact that these operations (which run in tandem within the drive hunt) have only been going on for decades compared with the hundreds of years history of the drive hunts seems unimportant.

This fact became very clear with the release of the 2009documentary The Cove. Whilst this film was very successful one criticism of its presentation was the overemphasis of the role of the live capture of dolphins in the drive hunt against the slaughter of the majority of the animals.  This of course comes as no surprise as the main protagonist featured in this documentary was the former dolphin trainer now animal-rights activist Ric O'Barry.

Whilst, there seems to be a considerable amount of common ground between the animal-rights lobby and the zoological communityregarding the use of drive fisheries for the acquisition of animals for captive display.  It should be noted that the USA and mainland European zoological collections now exclusively use self-sustaining captive breeding for the acquisition of display animals and not wild capture.  Unfortunately, opinions about the role that the captive display of whales and dolphins can positively provide in awareness to the protection and conservation of their wild counterparts seems to have been polarised. 

Sadly and ultimately the only ones that will suffer from this consequence will be wild dolphins, whales and the marine environment.  A situation recognised by Paul Watson in 1995 but seemingly now lost .

Further reading and links

Drive Hunts and Animals Acquired for Dolphinaria.

Cove Cultists?

Blackfish: Please Release Me Let Me Go

John Michel Cousteau Wants To Save SeaWorld. Really?

 "...Marine-animal expert Jean-Michel Cou­steau — who worked on the successful release of Keiko, the star of “Free Willy,” into a seaside pen (before he died in the wild) — said SeaWorld Entertainment can move its orcas to seaside sanctuaries without costing it money.This brief news article is the musings of John Michel Cousteau (the son of Jacques Cousteau) whose organisation Ocean Futures was involved in the release project of "Keiko" the killer whale..."

  
The comments in the above-linked article in the New York Post by Claire Atkinson are of course misleading. Let us make it clear the "Keiko" project was not a success. In making this statement, I mean that the plan to reintegrate this animal back into a population of wild killer whales off the shores of Iceland did not succeed despite huge amounts of time, money and planning. This is not just my opinion this is the conclusion of the peer review paper published in 2009 in the journal Marine Mammal Science HERE.

John Michel Cousteau himself has also made it clear that he does not now consider it viable to release long-term captive killer whales back to the wild.  

My blog goes into more detail regarding returning captive cetaceans back to the wild HERE.

The releasing of former captive cetaceans has been given some extra impetus in 2012 with the Born Free Foundation's project to release two former captive Turkish dolphins after extensive rehabilitation. Although, details of this project have never been published in any scientific journals. Moreover, as with all these projects, there needs to be a considerable amount of context to understand what they actually mean. These two animals released had in fact not been in captivity for any particularly long period of time; they had been caught within the area they returned to and they were young male bottlenosed dolphins. These three criteria are the actual reason that this release project was likely to have a high degree of success. In addition, it should be noted that it followed a protocol that was used in a successful experimental capture and release project by the late Dr Ken Norris and cetacean biologist Dr Randall Wells published in 1998 HERE.

As to Cousteau's involvements with the eight bottlenose dolphins currently displayed at the Baltimore Aquarium (of which only one was caught in the wild) I have blogged this in some detail linked HERE.

As an opinion, I would say that removing these animals from an urban aquarium to Hawaii goes completely against any value that displaying these animals could have had as there are a number of both captive and wild dolphin viewing opportunities in this particular part of the world. The fact that somebody like Cousteau does not understand the value of urban zoological collections (particularly displaying animals that people are unlikely to experience) speaks volumes and sadly smacks of rather distasteful celebrity elitism.

Do dolphin commit suicide in captivity?

One of the perpetuating myths that surround dolphins in captive care is the accusation that animals have committed suicide. A review of the published evidence reveals various possible sources for this myth. 

Perhaps the most populist source for this myth comes from the animal-rights activist and one of the former trainers of dolphins for the 60's TV series Flipper is Ric O'Barry (formerly O''Feldman). He claims that Kathy one of the number of animals that played Flipper committed suicide in his 1989 book "Behind the Dolphin Smile". He maintains that this animal committed suicide in my arms and as dolphins "are not automatic air breathers" she decided to stop breathing. A position that has actually now been scientifically disproved. See veterinarian Michael T. Walsh comments below.

John Cunningham Lilly, M.D (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Prior to this the scientist Dr. John Lilly, a neurologist who began work with dolphins in the period between 1955 and 1968, also made this claim. Although Lilly original research led to some interesting discoveries about dolphins, he has been a very controversial figure due, among other things, to his claims regarding dolphin intelligence and his habit of mixing empirical research with imaginative speculation. He also left dolphin research for some period of time and researched in the human mind using isolation flotation tanks; this work also involved him in the use of hallucinogenic drugs, such as LSD.

It was during his initial research that he discovered that general anesthesia could be lethal to dolphins unless their breathing was supported by artificial means. He, therefore, considered that dolphins were voluntary breathers.
From this, he speculated that if dolphins have to 'think to breathe' dolphins could commit suicide by stopping breathing. In his 1979 book Communications between Man and Dolphin he states:

"If, in a oceanarium, any dolphin/porpoise/whale is kept in isolation in solitude...social deprivation may be so severe that the cetacean commits suicide by voluntarily ceasing either breathing and/or eating."

He claimed that at a research facility he set up on the Virgin Islands (The Communication Research Institute) that several of his research animals died in this way.

However, contemporary records of that time in his book Man and Dolphin, note that his first two resident animals at the St. Thomas facility called Lizzie and Baby did not die from suicide. Lizzie died three weeks after arriving on the island from a brain hemorrhage due to an accident when she was dropped prior to transport and also had evidence of a lung infection. When Baby died it was found that he also had a chronic lung infection. Interestingly, Lilly noted that both animals had 'bad-breath' and a nasal discharge when transported from Florida. 

Further to this, other animals he used in more contemporary research he undertook in the 1980's did not die by committing suicide. In fact, two, called Rosie and Jim, were the subject of a 'release project' and returned to the wild.

In fact, published research on this subject has cast some doubt on Lilly's original belief of voluntary breathing in cetaceans. At the 1991, Conference of the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine, veterinarian, Michael T. Walsh, presented a paper aptly entitled "Cetacean Facts and Fallacies". As regards cetaceans being voluntary breathers he states:

"There is no physical or scientific evidence to verify this supposition. It appears to be based partially on early investigations with anaesthetic agents and popular myths. Current clinical investigations into the use of sedatives and anaesthetics have shown that these individuals are involuntary breathers."

Interestingly, Dr. Lilly's opinions on the broader issue of oceanaria and dolphins in captivity are not as damning as may be thought and have seemly (and with good reason) been overlooked by many of the animal-rights groups who are willing to quote him in other areas regarding dolphins.

In his book Communications between Man and Dolphin, he makes his feelings on this issue quite clear, he states at the beginning of chapter twelve in this book:

"Eventually the Oceanaria may be closed by conservation groups...: I hope not."

He then goes on the outlay his own particular feeling on the future development of such facilities.

In an Appendix in the same book, outlining his plans in 1979 to return to work with dolphins, he states why he has not attacked publicly the oceanaria for keeping dolphins:

"The oceanaria have done a very great services for the dolphins and killer whales in acquainting literally hundreds and thousands of humans with their existence and with their capabilities in a circus way. The dolphins and whale are indebted to the oceanaria for educating the human species."

The other source for this accusation of captive suicide may have come from the early research work of diver and broadcaster Jacques Cousteau's experience with captive dolphin whilst making one of the episodes of his television series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau; later to be published as the book The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques Cousteau: Dolphins published in 1975.

The animals Cousteau used for his early captive research were common dolphins a species known to be a nervous and which remain difficult to maintain in captivity even to this day. In fact, only one institution, the now-closed Marineland in Napier, New Zealand, has been successful in maintaining these animals in a captive environment for an acceptable period of time with their last dolphin caught in 1974 dying in September 2008.

Cousteau admits that their attempts to keep dolphins, at that time, were 'clumsy' and the failure was due to knowing so little about marine mammals. He states in the book, Dolphins published in 1975:

"The species of dolphin that is usually seen giving performance in American marinelands is a species common in Florida's waters, the Tursiops truncatus or bottlenose dolphin. This species adapts fairly well to captivity and has a robust constitution. It is also found in the Mediterranean: but there, the most numerous species is the Delphinus delphis or common dolphin, which is smaller and lighter than the bottlenose dolphin. It is also considered more delicate then the latter, as we were soon to discover."

Photos of Cousteau's dolphin capture and experiments can be found HERE

In October 1957 Cousteau's staff caught a female common dolphin, Kiki, for research at his Oceanographic Museum in Monaco. The animal was at first housed in a 'tank' of undisclosed size at the museum. However, in early November it was moved and housed in a hotel swimming pool and joined by a male Delphinus, Dufduf. Unfortunately, he subsequently died March 1958; his post-mortem revealing he had swallowed pieces of wood and cloth.

Kiki, the original female, was returned to the tank at the Oceanographic museum two weeks after Dufduf death. Here a newly caught pregnant female joined her. However, this new animal died of head injuries due to crashing into the tank wall after it panicked on introduction to the water and escaped from the arms of a handler guiding it around the tank. 

The importance of careful handling of newly caught or transferred animals is highlighted in the 1972 book Mammals of the Sea; Biology and Medicine. The book editor, Professor Sam Ridgway - research veterinarian of the US Navy, stated on the issue of newly introduced captured dolphins:

"Occasionally, a new cetacean will have difficulty orienting itself and swimming when place in the water...Sometimes human assistance is needed to keep the porpoise (common term in the US for dolphin) from running in the walls of the tank and to start swimming on its own...Attendants should position themselves around the edge of the tank. if it appears that animal is going to strike the wall the attendant should turn it..."

Aside from deciding to catch an open ocean dolphin species with a highly nervous disposition, Cousteau's animals were caught at sea and removed to the tank at the museum within hours. As mentioned by Ridgway above - in these situations it is common practice to ensure that persons a placed in the water to guide the animal whilst it adjusts to its new surroundings. Clearly, due to his clear lack of knowledge in this area, Cousteau allowed a disorientated animal to run into the tank wall.

It is not by chance that the bottlenose remains the dolphin of choice for captive management, because it adapts to the captive environment well, unlike some other species, such as Cousteau's ill-fated common dolphins.