Translator: Elena Montrasio Reviewer: John Ockey
I had a dream, as a child.
I dreamed of working with whales and dolphins in the wild.
While I've been spending decades working with these animals,
I've come to learn that they're individuals, just like us.
One of the things that I found with orcas
is that if you learn about them as an individual,
it's an amazing way to inspire others
to learn, to love, and understand them, as well.
The awe that people feel for these animals,
if they know them as individuals, is a really powerful tool.
So, I'd like to introduce you to an orca called Pickle.
She's the littlest one, in this picture.
She's at the back, and next to her older brother,
and she's traveling here with her mother and the rest of her family.
Pickle was born in 2010, and she has lost the top of her dorsal fin.
This makes her incredibly easy to identify,
and easily recognizable to everybody.
The loss of her fin is a mystery to us.
We don't know how it happened.
But it's certainly something that has emboldened Pickle.
She's become a curious and adventurous little individual.
She travels about 100 km a day with her family,
as she travels around the New Zealand coastline.
But she will often venture off on her own,
and spend time away from everybody.
When she was only one year old,
I discovered that she was already successfully hunting
and capturing stingrays,
a very high-risk prey item for any orca,
particularly a young one like this.
Pickle spends a lot of time with her older brother, Funky Monkey.
Now, Funky Monkey also has a very distinctive dorsal fin,
as you can see,
and he has a very distinct personality, as well.
The thing about Funky Monkey is that he really likes
spending a lot of time with his younger sister,
and of course that isn't common in any society, be that orcas, or us,
but Funky Monkey is a really interesting guy,
and when he spends time with Pickle, he will also food share with her,
and provision her, providing her part of his catch.
Now, Pickle, when she's off hunting for rays by herself,
will often seek out other animals on the shore,
like these sheep that you can see just standing underneath the trees, here,
and she's very curious about them, and will stop and watch them.
She loves rough weather, and she'll surf down waves,
and she's often right out, in the front of the group,
leading the way, as her family travels around New Zealand.
And to me, Pickle really epitomizes the personality of an individual,
and she expresses that in the way that she lives with her family,
in this really complex, and really amazing environment
that we have as our home.
So, I'd like to introduce you to another orca,
and this one is called Morgan.
She lives on the other side of the world,
and her life is completely different from Pickle's.
She was from the Norwegian population of orcas,
this much we know from her genetics,
but we also know that Morgan traveled to the coast off the Netherlands
and she turned up there alone, emaciated, and she needed help.
So, she was rescued by a dolphinarium in the Netherlands,
and they sent Morgan to a facility in Spain.
That facility is owned by a German, and somewhere along the way,
Morgan's ownership also got transferred again to an American facility.
Now, that American entertainment theme-park company,
at the time, owned nearly half of the captive orcas in the world,
including the others that were held at the Spanish facility.
Now, that company, based on public outcry,
put in place a breeding ban for orcas,
in hopes of phasing out keeping orcas in captivity.
But the Spanish facility had other ideas:
they got Morgan pregnant.
So, the Americans tried to distance themselves from that travesty,
and they transferred Morgan's ownership
from them to the German who owns the Spanish facility.
So, Morgan is now owned by a German, living in Spain,
and she is due to have her in calf in December.
That calf will be the property of the German, to do with as he wishes.
Now, although Morgan is living in captivity
and has no idea about this transfer of her ownership,
she certainly understands
about the concept of what's going on to her in captivity.
She is brutalized, bullied, attacked, and bitten by the other orcas,
and these lines, that you see here,
are all from the bite marks from those orcas.
The different colors represent the three different times
that I visited Morgan.
Now, she became so stressed about the conditions of this facility
and the attacks that she was getting,
that she started self-harming,
banging herself against the concrete walls,
until she had open raw wounds.
But she also began chewing on the concrete,
and she wore her teeth down to nubs in just months.
And here you can see the blue paint, from the tank walls.
She chipped her teeth, she cracked her teeth,
and in some cases, she completely fractured her teeth in half.
Now these will not grow back.
This is the same as if we did similar damage to our teeth.
Together with my colleagues at the Free Morgan Foundation,
we've been working for Morgan for nearly seven years now,
trying to free her, and trying to get a better life for her.
Although Morgan shows these graphic signs of self harming, such as this,
sadly, she's not the only one.
Every place that I have been
and seen orcas in captivity around the world,
and every single orca that I have seen in captivity
shows some sign of this self-mutilation.
And it's not just the teeth, it's also the collapsed dorsal fins
that you see on 100% of the adult male orcas, in captivity,
wherever you go in the world.
And also, other injuries,
injuries that are attributed to other orcas,
and to the tank structures themselves.
They're so prevalent,
that the captivity industry now calls these sorts of injuries normal.
And this all stems
from the fundamental issue of keeping these animals
in such tiny, tiny barren concrete tanks.
So, can you imagine being an individual
from a species which is known to dive to 700 meters deep,
and being locked in a tank, like Morgan is here?
She was kept in this facility for 18 months,
and couldn't even hang vertically in the water.
And people buy tickets that support this.
And what's driving it? Well, basically, money.
The industry experts estimate
that a single orca is worth about 10 million US dollars.
They generate so much money at the gate,
that the Chinese have now set up their own breeding facility,
using orcas that have been captured from the wild, in Russia.
Now, I believe that along with the welfare issues,
we need to look at some of the other factors about orcas,
so that we, as a society, can speak out against this abuse.
So, for example orcas are now known now, scientifically,
to have self-awareness, just like we do.
They're long-lived animals, they can live to over 100 years old.
The orcas that I've studied around, in the New Zealand coastline,
some of them are, well and truly, over 50 years old,
and if you compare that
to an average life-span in captivity of less than 20 years,
you can understand
that there are some serious implications going on here.
Orcas are incredibly strongly socially bonded,
and wherever you go around the world, they have distinct dialects.
What they hunt, and how they hunt it, is also part of the fabric of their lives.
This is a young orca off the coast here at Tutukaka,
who was hunting eagle rays, and she brought this over to the boat.
And to put it into terms that we can understand and relate to,
orcas have distinct cultures, just like we do.
So, knowing this, and learning about these individuals,
that each of them has their own personality,
it's really been inspiring for me
to want to speak out for these animals that are in captivity,
because they have no voice.
So I feel, with my knowledge that I've learned about them in the wild,
being able to apply that
and show what's wrong with what's going on in captivity,
it's such an important aspect for me, as an individual,
and what I'm doing with my life.
But what can we offer those that are in captivity,
those that are in these concrete tanks,
that suffer these horrendous, captivity-related injuries?
Well, actually, there is some hope.
Cetacean sanctuaries, or whale and dolphin sanctuaries,
are being proposed around the world.
There are currently 60 orcas in captivity around the world,
so it's entirely feasible that we could put them into a facility like this.
This is a real Island, but the sanctuary is a mock-up,
to give you an idea of what a sanctuary might look like.
Now, the industry tells us that we'll never do this,
but my idea is that we put a man on the moon;
surely we can put a whale in a sanctuary.
So, one project that's currently underway
is proposed to be built off the coast of North America.
It has over 50 international experts working with it,
and it will target the species of orcas and belugas,
so it will be centered in a cold water area.
That sanctuary is going to have
a surface area of at least 260,000 square meters.
Now, that is 200 times the size of the complete facility
that Morgan is being held in, in Spain.
We propose that we will be able to give these animals
not only room to be able to swim in straight lines
that are more than just a couple of body lengths,
but for some of them it will be the first time
that they will ever feel the ocean.
It'll be the first time that they'll feel tides,
and that they'll have something other than a concrete wall
for their boundaries.
If there are storms, they may have the opportunity to surf the waves,
like the orcas do here, at Sandy Bay.
We'll be encouraging them to forage on food that is kept below the surface,
and I think it's also important to consider
that sanctuaries will provide us the opportunity
to educate people in a natural environment, as well,
rather than in a stadium, at a circus.
And there's one fundamental difference that's worth keeping in mind
to compare sanctuaries to commercial entertainment facilities:
sanctuaries do not believe in breeding.
They actually are striving to go out of business.
And if you compare that to facilities
where they use these animals for commercial entertainment,
there, they view breeding as a way to generate money.
Baby animals hopefully will bring in more guests, who will pay more money,
and also, the offspring can be used
for trading to other facilities, and be sold.
So, I hope you understand, and agree with me,
that a concrete tank is no place for any animal.
And if you were given minimal entertainment, minimal enrichment,
you had to do tricks to get your food,
and somebody charged a ticket to show this to other people,
there would be public outrage.
So, I ask you:
Why is it that the public don't understand that this is wrong?
Why aren't more people speaking out against this?
So, I had a dream as a child,
and that was to study whales and dolphins in the wild,
and I really came to be fortunate enough to discover more than I ever imagined.
I had the privilege to meet orcas such as Pickle and Funky Monkey.
And now, I dream of a place in this world where we can respect these animals,
be they captive, or be they in the wild,
and that we can restore dignity to those that are in captivity,
that we can provide them a place to live,
where they can have enrichment and feel safe,
not fear and stress.
And I hope that you'll join me in that, and help make this a reality.