Transcriber: Elena Montrasio Reviewer: Michele Gianella
Activist.
You know, when I was a bit younger, I would hear the word "activist,"
and immediately my mind would wander
to images of these highly opinionated people,
taking their beliefs to the streets, with signs and megaphones.
And I couldn't help, but just sit there and think,
"What are these people doing?"
Then, in my own life, one thing sort of led to the other,
and, before you know it, there I was on the streets of Vancouver,
sign in my hand, heart on my sleeve.
Good afternoon, everyone, my name is Ella Van Cleve,
I'm 14 years old, and I am a teenage activist.
But, let's back it up a bit.
For me it started about two summers ago.
Ask any of my friends or family,
I am a bit of an ocean fanatic, and I always have been.
So, when a friend introduced me to a documentary about the slaughter
of some 2,000 dolphins off the coast of Taiji, Japan,
my world was ultimately turned upside down.
Still, just 12 years old,
the oceans had never been anything other than my playground,
but that was all about to change.
I wasn't just simply introduced to a documentary that day.
I was introduced to a world
where sharks were bludgeoned and murdered for their fins,
where seals were beaten and skinned alive for their pelts,
where whales, the gentle giants of our oceans,
remained lifeless at the surface, blood surging from their bodies.
This world I was introduced to was one I became unable to escape,
and yet, through all the disasters our oceans have faced,
from oil spills to acidification,
all I could seem to think about were those 2,000-some-odd dolphins,
whose lives were heartlessly stolen each year.
Now, at first glance,
Taiji is a community that appears to love dolphins and whales.
But a deeper look into the culture of their village shows otherwise.
Each year, from September through to March,
in and around 2,000 dolphins and small whales are slaughtered
at Hatajiri Bay, or The Cove.
Now, seeing as Japan is a nation
with a kill quota of up to 23,000 dolphins and small whales,
oftentimes people wonder,
"Well, what's so special about Taiji?"
But what you will find is that, in terms of the whaling spectrum,
Taiji is unique in a number of ways.
Now, one of Taiji's attributes that really sets it apart,
as a dolphin hunting community,
is how they actually kill their dolphins.
Now, in Taiji they use a method of hunting known as drive fishing,
which allows them to take in a select number of animals, each season,
to send off to captive entertainment facilities.
The name "drive fishing" legitimately refers
to driving a pod of dolphins into the shore
where they are then trapped.
Fishermen insert long metal poles into the water,
and proceed to bang on the tops of these poles with hammers,
in the process emitting a very loud and stressful sound for these animals.
You see, cetaceans, which are dolphins, porpoises and whales,
are all highly sensitive to sound.
Their sonar is what they use to hunt, to communicate, to navigate.
It really is a highly sophisticated and vital survival tool
that these animals use,
and what the dolphin hunters have discovered
is that they can take advantage of this.
The use of the poles in this practice is the fisherman's way of exploiting
the one sense cetaceans cannot live without.
And in terms of exploitation, this is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Now, the governments that take part in the slaughter of cetaceans
tend to be very secretive about this practice.
They seem to think that their people don't need to know
what goes on in their own country,
even if what's going on could be hazardous to their own health.
Government sure seem to just protect the big money-making corporations,
not the people, and not the animals.
The majority of dolphins targeted in this hunt
are marketed and sold as food to the public,
but the problem with this
is that, due to their elevated place on the food chain,
dolphins contain extremely high levels of mercury,
making their meat toxic.
The recommended total amount
of mercury consumption in seafood, in Japan,
is 0.4 parts per million.
Dolphin meat contains 2,000 parts per million ...
2,000 parts per million!
So this isn't just a question of conservation,
it's a question of humanity.
There's an incredibly small market for this meat in Japan.
Seeing as less than 1% of the nation actually consumes it,
as a result, we're oftentimes seeing
that it's given away free to school systems,
where children are infected daily
by the world's most toxic non-radioactive element.
But hold on.
So, less than 1% of Japan consumes dolphin meat,
yet 23,000 are killed each year.
Where's the logic in that?
How are you supposed to profit
from a several million-dollar hunting operation,
when nobody eats the meat?
Well, that right there is your answer,
and it has nothing to do with meat.
The existence of the Taiji hunting operation
relies on this: "Captivity."
Without all of those glorified SeaWorld shows
and swim-with-the-dolphins programs around the world,
this hunt would be nothing.
Each morning, several dolphin trainers make their way to the bay
to select the most attractive dolphins for a life in captivity,
oftentimes staying behind to help out with the hunt itself.
So the people that we are supposed to believe
love dolphins more than anyone else in this world, the trainers,
are in the water, in the boats,
with the fishermen that terrorize them for the last 30 hours of their life.
It looks like things aren't always what they seem.
These trainers are generally paying between $ 150,000 to $ 300,000
on a single dolphin.
To put this in perspective,
a dolphin that sells for its meat sells for around $ 600.
So you see, the money is coming from the aquariums.
Collectively, the fishermen in Taiji
make in and around a million dollars off of their slaughtered catch,
but are now, reportedly, paying police forces
$ 1.5 million to secure the bay.
I think it goes without saying
that they're protecting the approximate $ 3 million
they make off of selling dolphins into a life of slavery.
Now, the work that I've been trying to do in cetacean conservation
initially started in Taiji, but has progressively moved
toward this captive entertainment industry.
It took me a while to adjust to the idea of places like SeaWorld
being anything even remotely close to evil,
but today I couldn't see myself supporting them.
Their tie with the slaughter was enough to make me cringe,
but a deeper look has shown
that this is simply another lucrative money-making scheme
governments want to protect.
Like I said,
governments seem to only protect these big name corporations,
not the people and not the animals.
But it's what you don't see about captivity
that makes it so unacceptable.
Cetaceans undergo extreme amounts of stress in captivity.
To begin with,
capturing the animals themselves is a very violent procedure,
and the travel process isn't much better.
In what's the aquarium itself, everything simply goes downhill.
I've already mentioned how sensitive cetaceans,
so dolphins, porpoises and whales, all are to sound.
So, with that in mind, imagine what life would be like
performing for a clapping and cheering audience several times a day
while spending your breaks swimming around in a tank
whose walls are constantly being beaten on by small children.
This stress can oftentimes lead to death,
and this is what the aquariums won't tell you.
Canada's very own Marineland
has 29 animals marked as missing, presumed dead,
on an inventory taken of their park,
because they won't admit to what has really happened.
Marineland and SeaWorld alike started for the purpose of profit,
not conservation, and nothing's changed.
Take Junior, for example.
Junior was a male killer whale who, in 1990, lived in Marineland Ontario.
This same year, undercover video shows him isolated in a minuscule tank
along with two other bottlenose dolphins.
Now, after his tank mates were sent to SeaWorld,
there Junior stayed, inside the same tank,
inside the same damp warehouse located next to the park.
Years later, more undercover video shows, in 1994,
Junior is still alone and isolated, in that same warehouse,
virtually ignored, alone and lethargic, only 12 years old.
Now, something about the use of a warehouse, in that situation,
just screams secretive, and that's what it is: secretive.
Marine parks are full of secrets, there's always something to hide.
Nonetheless, people insist that captivity is vital
in teaching our population not just about these animals,
but how to develop a love for them.
This is miseducation.
SeaWorld is pushing the image
that it's OK to have a dolphin propel you through the water,
that it's okay to use a killer whale as a surfboard.
It's actually a federal offense to harass or even approach a dolphin
- or a killer whale, for that matter - in the wild.
How ironic!
So here's the thing.
When I was about seven, I participated in a swim-with-the-dolphins program.
Going into it, I was excited, because they had dolphins,
and like I said, I've always been a little bit ocean-crazy.
I went, I fed the dolphin a squid, it kissed me on the cheek,
and I left.
It all felt a bit unreal, I didn't love dolphins any less that day,
but I sure didn't like them any more than I had
before going into the experience.
When I truly fell head over heels in love with these animals
was when I experienced an accidental encounter with an orca in the wild.
Just about two years ago I was kayaking off of Willows Beach,
right here in Victoria, with my mom,
and we noticed that, about 10 feet away, this orca had emerged.
To have this massive and powerful creature take some time out of his own life
to come see what we were all about
was a truly humbling experience, and one I'll never forget.
That day, I saw the single most important reason captivity doesn't work.
I saw them in the wild.
In the words of Jacques Cousteau,
"No aquarium, no tank in a marineland, however spacious it may be,
can ever begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea,
and no dolphin who inhabits one of these tanks
or one of these marine lands
can ever be considered normal."
But it's not just about saving the dolphins.
We have a much bigger problem on our hands today,
and that's the issue of conserving our oceans.
So get involved!
Our world is coming to a point where we need drastic action.
Conservation is not what it used to be,
it's not all hugging trees or saving the tigers.
Times have changed.
We can't solve all of our problems by going out and recycling,
or turning out the lights every time you leave a room.
It's happening: our oceans are dying,
and at a much faster rate than anyone had initially predicted.
I have been told that within my lifetime all the world's coral reefs could be gone,
unless we take that drastic action.
Today, pigs are our ocean's biggest predator.
They're consuming more fish than all of the world's sharks combined.
In and around a third of the fish that we take from our oceans
is made into fish meal.
And through this we're seeing domestic cats
eating more tuna than all of the world's seals.
We're seeing seabirds starving
because the fish that they rely on is being fed to chickens.
We are destroying our home!
The issues our oceans are facing are being sidelined,
in a world where the ocean is our lifeline.
There's a fine balance on Earth, where species depend on one another,
and humans, more than any other species, rely heavily on the life of this planet.
Even when we look at creatures as small as bees,
we can see that they can live without us, but we can't live without them.
Jacques Cousteau also said that people protect what we love,
and I think it's just about time we started protecting our home.
Thank you.
(Applause)