Translator: Elena Montrasio Reviewer: John Ockey
Think about an animal
that you've loved at some time in your life,
perhaps when you were young.
Think about how you cared for them,
the relationship you shared,
the things you did together.
We often think about what we do for the animals that we care for
and that we love in this world,
but it sometimes might be worth it for us to think about
what it is that they do for us.
They come to our aid, they care for us,
they give us unconditional love,
they trust us.
In some cases, they even lay down their lives for us.
Perhaps the animals that we love and care for in this world
are not just our best friends, but the greatest teachers we'll ever have.
For me, that first spirit animal
was a 400-pound bottlenose dolphin named Spock.
Admittedly, not the most typical spirit-animal guru,
but in California, in the '70s, it wasn't even weird.
(Laughter)
I first met Spock when I was a scuba diver at a marine park,
in California, on San Francisco Bay.
And even though the job was really pretty basic -
I basically scrubbed tanks, and cleaned windows -
it was a job of a lifetime for me.
I couldn't get enough of it and I couldn't get out of the water.
So, each day, near the end of the day,
I would find my way back up to the dolphin show tank,
Spock's home,
where I would swim with Spock and his pod for hours,
sometimes after all the humans had gone home,
the park was long closed, the sun was going down.
And I felt that Spock and I shared a kind of a special bond,
I felt -
I felt welcome.
I think for my part, I brought to those dolphins new stimuli,
something different, something to relieve the boredom of their life
in a featureless, concrete tank.
For Spock's part, he helped me feel a sense of connection,
like I was part of their pod.
And for a nerdy 18-year-old,
who had no idea what his future was going to hold,
it was a rare gift.
For the next four years,
my career advanced, I went back to college,
and I even ended up in management at that marine park.
But from time to time, I'd go get my wet suit, put it on,
and get back in that tank with Spock and his family, his pod.
And each time, it was a mix of emotions,
of elation over how lucky I was
to be able to swim with these remarkable beings,
and also a sense of sadness at the limits that we humans had placed on their lives.
What I couldn't have known then
was that those swims would inspire me, 30 years and a lifetime later,
and they would even lead me to the National Aquarium,
where we're forging a powerful, new movement,
to change the way we humans interact with the animals
with whom we share this planet,
and it starts with dolphins.
To better understand how we advance that mission,
we first have to talk about empathy.
Countless studies have been done on the ability of animals,
both non-human and human,
to feel empathy for each other.
In fact, most scientists agree that empathy concurs or brings
an evolutionary advantage to those higher-order mammals,
such as great apes, dolphins and whales, and humans.
But we humans have a unique ability to not only feel the empathy,
but also to be able to act on it.
So, if empathy is how we feel,
compassion is what we do about those feelings,
how we act on them.
And this is a rare and unique gift.
And, as with the dolphins,
compassion and empathy, come with them
some very important and challenging commitments.
Compassion is not something that we're born with,
it's a skill that we have to learn, and practice regularly.
Similarly, dolphins whales and humans share the need for this kind of empathy
to be able to interact with each other.
Interestingly,
some of our best lessons in empathy come from the animals that we love.
Think about the sensations we get from animals, pets that we've loved.
Joy, compassion, trust,
even grief at the loss of a beloved pet, or animal.
And these notions of empathy and compassion have huge implications
for how we treat other animals on this planet.
Like this guy, Foster.
Foster is the consummate youngster.
He's energetic, lively, he's constantly on the move.
He loves to spar with his buddy Beau.
He gives us, humans, quite a running for their money, too.
Foster was born 11 years ago at the National Aquarium,
and he's lived his entire life in this carefully controlled environment.
He shares that home with six other remarkable personalities,
like these three, Chesapeake, Bailey, and Jade.
And although we give them the best care and attention of any aquarium, anywhere,
we've come to realize we can give them a better life.
In fact, we owe it to them,
a new life in a home designed specifically and thoughtfully to meet their needs,
and not only ours.
And so, in 2016,
we made a huge and crucial decision at the National Aquarium,
that by the 2020s, we would move our dolphins to an ocean sanctuary.
This would be a place in the tropical Atlantic,
in natural seawater,
and with lots of stimuli for the dolphins.
In this new home, the dolphins will feel, for the first time,
the sensation of raindrops on their dorsal fins; think about that.
They've never actually felt rain.
They've never seen lightning outside the building.
They'll be able to explore, in a spacious environment,
and interact with their family groups.
There will be challenges that they have to face,
dangers,
both the dolphins, and their human counterparts.
For example, hurricane Michael, red tides;
and other dangers that we humans create: pollution, oil spills.
And who knows what other challenges that we can only imagine at this time.
But dolphins are an incredibly resilient species.
They've lived on this planet, largely as they are today,
for five million years.
To give our naïve dolphins a head start,
we're working with them all, individually,
to acclimate them to this new life they're going to lead.
One of the ways is we're changing the temperature in their exhibit,
in their tank,
to simulate the changes of the seasons,
so the water temperature goes up and down through the seasons now.
We're also introducing new stimuli:
mangrove roots, seagrass, and even beach umbrellas.
For Foster and his pod,
even the idea of getting used to their humans wearing sunglasses and flip-flops,
instead of wet suits and booties,
is kind of a big thing.
In their new sanctuary, when the dolphins get there,
there will be unseen risks and dangers that we can't even forecast.
But one thing we know, they'll be able to learn new skills,
without the legacy expectations that we humans have placed upon dolphins,
to jump, balance balls, smile, do shows.
Instead, they'll be free to chase a mangrove snapper across the surface,
or toy with a spiny lobster on a coral reef,
or just wonder at the bioluminescent beauty of plankton, on a dark night.
In short, Foster and the others will be able to be dolphins.
People often ask me,
"Why spend so much time, energy, and money on just seven dolphins?"
I tell them,
"I have a fairly uncomplicated answer for that:
compassion."
Our empathy inspired us, but our compassion called us to act.
And if we can do just one thing to improve their life, even just a little,
we know it's the right thing to do.
Being able to see the world through the eyes of our dolphins
has been a real rare opportunity for me.
It's also an awesome responsibility.
As with the 20,000 animals that we care for at the National Aquarium,
it's also very important to us to tell that story,
to share those experiences to the world.
We've come to realize
that we have a commitment to those dolphins and all living things,
that if we've learned more about their lives
and ways to take care of them in ways that have not yet been tried,
we owe it to them.
It's been a long journey with the dolphins,
and we have a long way to go.
But when our empathy called us to act, it was our compassion that made us do it.
In the end,
it's not really what you do, or who you come to know,
but how you feel and how you act on the empathy that you feel,
your compassion,
and that, that is what animals teach us.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)