A Revised Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans

 

In 2010 a small group of self-selected scientists and activists gathered in Helsinki, Finland to discuss the rights of cetaceans under international law. Their stated purpose was to formulate a declaration of rights and to garner international support for such a declaration. The conference, entitled "Cetacean Rights: Fostering Moral and Legal Change", produced a declaration signed by the 11 members of the 'Helsinki Group'.

While this declaration is well intended, certain elements in it do not represent the well-being of some cetaceans, especially those 'who have nowhere else to go'. 

Because the Dolphin Embassy project and the Cetacean Studies Institute have done extensive research on this expanding population around the world, and have come to recognise the very real importance of protecting their needs against short-sighted, albeit well-meaning, efforts by activist organisations, a revision of the Helsinki Declaration has been undertaken.

The revised declaration is presented here. Comments are welcome, and the revised declaration is open for further revision.

To see the original Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans, as produced by the Helsinki Group, you can see their site here.

Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans: Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

Based on the principle of the equal treatment of all persons;
Recognizing that scientific research gives us deeper insights into the complexities of cetacean minds, societies and cultures;

Recognizing that increased human interaction with cetaceans has produced deeper insights into their biological, social, and psychological requirements;
Recognizing that cetaceans have participated in mutually beneficial relationships with humans and have demonstrated adaptive capacity such that they manifest fully complex lives in built environments;
Noting that the progressive development of international law manifests an entitlement to life and well-being for cetaceans;
We affirm that all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and well-being.

We conclude that:
1. Every individual cetacean has the right to life, safety, clean water, and a sonic environment that does no harm.

2. No cetacean shall be taken into captivity or be removed from their natural environment unless not doing so would endanger their survival. Any cetacean taken into human care shall be returned to their natural environment when feasible, determined on both biological and compassionate grounds. If not feasible it shall be provided an enriching environment that includes socialization with other cetaceans and with humans. Cetaceans  in human care shall have the right to bear offspring, recognising this as an important part of their social and biological nature. Any cetacean born in a human-managed environment has special status with a life-long responsibility for their care by humans.

3. No cetacean shall be subject to cruel treatment.

4. All cetaceans not in human care have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.

5. No cetacean is the property of any State, corporation, human group or individual, but may become a ward of such entities if necessary to protect and safeguard their life and well-being. Cetaceans who have come into human care, by natural circumstances or circumstances that are irreversible, shall be provided all due care for the duration of their natural lives.

6. Cetaceans have the right to the protection of their natural environment.

7. Cetaceans have the right, equal to protections provided for human cultures, to not be subject to the disruption of their cultures.

8. The rights, freedoms, and norms set forth in this Declaration shall be protected under international and domestic law as well as an international framework under the administration of the United Nations in which these rights, freedoms, and norms can be fully realized.

9. No State, corporation, human group or individual shall engage in any activity that undermines these rights, freedoms and norms.

10. Nothing in this Declaration shall prevent a State from enacting stricter provisions for the protection of cetacean rights as long as the well-being of cetaceans is foremost in such provisions.

Originally agreed and signed, 22nd May 2010, Helsinki, Finland

Revised by the Cetacean Studies Institute, Dec. 2013-Oct. 2014, Queensland, Australia

On Saving Whales, on ending their lives

On Sept. 2nd a stranded dying whale was killed by Australian government officials by placing explosive charges on its head and triggering a powerful implosive blow to its brain.  This occurred at Albany, on Australia's southwest coast. The whale was described as being a Humpback, about 9.5 metres long. It had been stranded for approximately two weeks, and was visibly deteriorating. 

At first the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) had determined that no euthanasia was possible for the whale for several reasons. It was "too big to be shot" and because of its position, floating in about a metre of water, "was still strong enough to be a safety risk to humans". The whale moved, stranding itself farther up on the sandbar upon which it rested, effectively immobilising it. At that point, the Albany DEC district manager, Mike Shepherd, decided to euthanise the whale.

"Our main priority has always been to treat this animal as humanely as possible while nature took its course," Mr Shepherd said.

"In the last 24 hours the whale moved a couple of metres from its original stranding position, which was enough to stabilise the whale so that we could carry out the preparations for a controlled implosion to the whale’s cranium."

"We know from experience that predominantly only sick, injured or malnourished humpbacks come inshore, so when they strand they are usually winding down,'' Mr Shepherd said.

The implosion method has been approved by the International Whaling Commission as a humane method to be used on whales larger than 7 metres and death is instantaneous.

As a contrast, a juvenile Humpback whale, approximately 7 metres long, was rescued off the coast of southern Queensland, on Sept. 4th, after having become entangled in a "shark net". According to Queensland shark control manager Tony Ham from Fisheries Queensland, it took officers less than half an hour to free the whale, which became entangled off Surfers Paradise early on Saturday morning.

"The Marine Animal Release Team, made up of officers from the Queensland Boating and Fisheries Patrol and Seaworld, did an amazing job to free the animal," Mr Ham said."Approximately 13,000 whales are expected to be migrating along the Queensland coastline this migration season," he said.

"Juvenile whales such as this are more likely to become entangled than adults as they have less experienced and often travel on their own."

It is the first entanglement this whale migration season.

In 2009 six whales that were entangled in Gold Coast nets were successfully freed.

(To see the specialised tool used to safely cut nets that have entangled whales, and read how these were developed, see: http://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=279)

These incidents, two days apart, highlight the troubled relationship we have with whales (and dolphins). It is with great sympathy that we consider the terrible task faced by the DEC officials in Albany, as they faced the role they took on, bringing such human-centred values to the killing of the stranded whale. It is certain that their concerns were as stated, to "treat the whale humanely", yet we know, the moment when we take an innocent life, especially one not raised to be eaten, or hunted for food out of necessity, is difficult. Many of us reading these words will have had to do something similar when a beloved companion has come to a final, painful part of their life. We call the vet and ask for our friend's life to be ended. It is always hard.

Is the action of the DEC warranted? Would the gradual death of the whale, who was eventually so stranded it could not have been expected to refloat, and whose condition appeared to be deteriorating daily, be acceptable to witness? Was it only the suffering of the whale, assuming it was suffering and not in some state of whale consciousness that was outside our knowing, waiting in some kind of peaceful acceptance, that asked for this decision? Or was it not also the human side, the visions of suffering, the agonising sense that something must be done, something must be done to alleviate our feelings of despair, helplessness, and sadness?

On the other side of the continent a young whale wandered into the shark nets, getting caught. A team of humans, would could have risked their lives to disentangle it, were able to accomplish the task in less than 30 minutes. (See footage of the rescue here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcsJLQ5Y2A&feature=player_embedded)

Who asks if this is right to do, putting human life at risk for the sake of a whale? We imagine no one does, no one pauses, raises questions, attempts to put forward the case that the whale should be left to die. Is that because the nets are human in origin, that humans have created the danger for the whale?

Some people have expressed outrage, in comments left on news sites on the internet, protesting the 'barbaric' treatment of the western whale. While the image evoked by the description of the method used to euthanise the whale is gruesome, after contemplating the issues involved, we find it hard to fault the choice made… in this case, and with the (limited) information we have at hand.

We do not uniformly accept this type of decision. However, the evidence presented by the media, unless we learn otherwise, does make a compelling case for euthanasia. In the case of the younger whale caught off Surfer's Paradise, we consider the responsibility of humans, for placing the shark nets in the ocean (which we do not agree with, as they do little to protect anyone during the winter months with few swimmers and many very young whales heading south for the first time, and do kill cetaceans, turtles, and other sea life needlessly) makes it imperative that every effort possible must be made to save any creatures caught…including sharks.

(for some background, see http://tinyurl.com/3yoch8l, and an opposing view: http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2009/10/09/146125_gold-coast-news.html)

Something to ponder, these two nearly simultaneous cases.

Be well,

Scott Taylor, BSSoc (1st Class Honours), PhD
Ambassador

A New Direction

Over the years my work has taken many forms. Chapters in my efforts to bring humans and dolphins closer together have spanned areas such as:

• Dolphin-Assisted Therapy research and program development and running a program for three years (Dolphin EDventures Wellness Programs)
  
• writing a major book (“Souls in the Sea: Dolphins, Whales, and Human Destiny”, published by Frog Ltd., Berkeley, CA, 2003)
• writing and producing a TV series (“The Dolphin People”)
• writing screenplays and TV series treatments
• producing and presenting thousands of lectures around the world
• leading journeys to dolphin sites (Mexico, Bahamas, Hawaii, Florida, Australia)
• tirelessly advocating the recognition of the Cetacean Nation
• researching, developing, and sharing the Legend of the Golden Dolphin with many thousands of people
• exploring the philosophical, psychological, and metaphysical dimensions of the human-dolphin connection
• exploring the mythological and traditional indigenous people’s wisdom regarding this ancient connection

and many more areas. My work has spanned 26 years now and continues, as my dedication remains unabated.

My latest efforts to find a location for a re-established Dolphin EDventures Wellness Program have, so far, not yielded a suitable location. I remain hopeful a facility with an enlightened management will be found, where we can demonstrate the four-way success that is possible – for the facility, for the guests, for us, and most especially for the dolphins.

At present my plans have taken yet another direction, one that I have always known was coming: a return to the Academic world, in pursuit of a Doctorate.

I have seen many inroads over the last ten years, advances (if this word can be used here -- smile) against work done by many dedicated people, making the human-dolphin connection stronger and more available, work that we feel has been so important. Science has been accumulating evidence of the dangers of some interactions, for both humans and dolphins. Science has attempted to show how the lives of dolphins can be, and have been, negatively impacted by human contact.

While some of what has been published along this line has been well-founded, and proposals to do more to protect dolphins from foolish actions by humans, or dangerous environmental activities, are certainly welcome and necessary, I have seen another kind of reporting that is questionable. Since science is the basis for most governmental decisions regarding the management of the human-dolphin connection, it is science that must be addressed first if we want to be sure that rules, laws and the legislation that creates these are wise and helpful.

In my many years of work in the field, we have seen some good come from proper management. The heavy penalties for “cowboy roundups’ of dolphins so that people can see them more easily, or swim with them in the wild, have effectively put a stop to most of this dangerous behaviour. In places where contact occurs that have instituted good education programs for the public, improved safety for both humans and dolphins has been the result.

I have also seen some poor management practices. While well-intentioned, they have been unnecessarily intrusive, restricting safe, knowledgeable, and mutually beneficial interactions in some cases. Wild encounters, compassionate interactions during strandings, and even Dolphin-Assisted Therapy have been strongly – negatively -- affected by poorly informed laws based on science that has not been adequate.

To this end, I have decided to focus on an area of science that holds promise for bringing more comprehensive and more compassionate understanding into the field. Recent advances in both philosophical and sociological studies have opened up a new field that I feel has exciting promise for our purposes: Animal Geography.

Animal Geography studies how humans and animals share space. In my case, I intend to advance our understanding of how the dolphin encounter affects the human family, the role of the choices that dolphins make, and how these can be seen from new viewpoints.

I believe that I have found strong theoretical and biological frameworks for establishment of the person-hood of dolphins, and even further, that there is a very strong argument to be made that dolphins do exercise intelligent and informed choices, and that we must recognise the rights of dolphins to make their own decisions, especially regarding interaction with humans.
 

Exploring possibilities, I have found that the University of the Sunshine Coast is willing to allow me to undertake a year of Honours study, producing a 25,000 word dissertation by early November of 2009 (working title of the dissertation: “The Dolphin-Human encounter: Embassy or Zoo-without-walls?”). Despite not having a Bachelor’s degree, alternative entry has enabled him to enter the University at a level commensurate with his abilities.

Following the Honours year, assuming the dissertation is well-received, I will then enter the PhD program, aiming at a Doctorate of Philosophy.

With a PhD (which I currently intend to be based  upon an examination of how Dolphin-Assisted Therapy is understood by the public, by science, by the therapeutic community, and by the patients and their families) I feel I can effectively address the scientific and academic community’s concerns, hopefully redirecting thereby some of the misguided rules, laws, and opinions that have begun to impinge on the human-dolphin connection.

Wish me luck, I have a lot of work ahead. University classes start in just over a week…

Regards,

Scott
Ambassador

The Dolphin Embassy -- Momentum is gathering

The Dolphin Embassy has just returned to Australia from my annual overseas journey.

Each year since 2005 I have “taken my show on the road”, traveling around the world to do presentations, informing and inspiring audiences to regard all cetaceans as deserving of recognition, recognition of their inherent status as advanced beings with unalienable rights. Each year I experience growth in the acceptance of the ideas offered.

This year the tour was shorter, but it feels that it may have had a strong impact. I spent time in Colorado, Florida, California, and Oregon, and in each place the level of interest delighted me.

I did six formal presentations in the US this year –Denver (at the beautiful headquarters of the Metaphysical Research Society), Sebastopol, Petaluma, San Francisco (at Globe Studios and Sound Therapy Center), and Mt Shasta (at the Flying Lotus) in California, and Portland, Oregon. Supported along the way by dear friends Barry and Coral of Sebastopol, Fort Schlesinger of Petaluma, and the wonderful energy of Brent Willet, we were able to reach audiences that were primed and ready to hear about the ideas I share.
 

Background

In the late 1950s, Dr. John C. Lilly began his famous research on dolphins. His quest led him to the momentous discovery that they are fully sentient, cognizant, reasoning, cultured, and sophisticated beings. It was immediately apparent to Dr. Lilly that something was amiss in our relationship with cetaceans – he had made the same mistakes as everyone else, assuming them to be just another species of animal.

Once he made his important breakthrough, it was an easy step to realize that dolphins, whales, and porpoises deserved to have their rights recognized and protected. It is not, as some have misunderstood, the human role to offer them their rights. Instead, it is our duty to acknowledge the rights that they have. As a matter of scientific fact, their history as a highly evolved family of beings is much older than the human (even the Bible, in Genesis, specifically recognizes that they were created on an earlier “Day” then humans, the fifth Day. They were the earliest creatures named in the Old Testament).

Dr. Lilly saw, in a sudden insight, that there already exists a vast nation, comprised of all the seas and oceans of our planet. The citizens of this nation, the largest on the planet, are the Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises – the Cetacean Nation.

In 1961, Dr. Lilly published his first reference to this idea. Over the subsequent years he worked with many friends to develop the concept. With Michael Bailey, of Greenpeace Hawaii (the only Greenpeace autonomous “cell” that did not become part of the subsequent amalgamated organization we know as Greenpeace International), he worked out a strategic plan for implementing recognition of the Cetacean Nation.

Later on, his close friend Rebecca Goodman joined John in publicly announcing, again, the intention to bring the Cetacean Nation to reality.

When I asked John, in 1997, what he hoped his public legacy would be --after a lifetime of inventions, discoveries, and important research – he answered without hesitation “the Cetacean Nation”.

Years of discussion and public presentations later (we shared the stage at the 6th International ICERC Whale and Dolphin Conference in Hervey Bay, Australia, 1997, presenting our ideas about the Cetacean Nation), John surprised me by publicly suggesting that his preferred Ambassador to the United Nations from the Cetacean Nation would be me. (see “Gilding the Lilly: The Cetacean Nation”, video by SoundPhotosynthesis).

Dr. John C. Lilly and Scott Taylor, Hervey Bay, Australia, 1997

John had this to say:
“Mr. Taylor is a key person in what I call the Cetacean Nation, a global network of like-minded individuals attempting to bridge the communication gap between humans and cetaceans. His work contributes a wider understanding of humanity, cetacea, and the environment on the edge of the twenty-first century. Scott’s continued efforts as educator and catalyst bridge not only the interspecies communication barrier, but the barriers between people.”

Sadly, we were not able to accomplish the global recognition of the Cetacean Nation before Dr. Lilly died (Sept. 30, 2001). My dedication to this goal is unabated, however.
The Dolphin Embassy -- Australia

I established The Dolphin Embassy as a registered non-profit organization in Australia in October of 2004. Its mission is to educate and inspire humans toward a proper regard for the rights of all cetaceans. To this end I have taken multi-media presentations on the road, traveling around the world, visiting India, Belgium, the Bahamas, Mexico, Fiji, and many states in America (Florida, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, New Mexico. Arizona, California).

I recognize the quixotic nature of this endeavor. It is easily seen as a harmless joke, a prank that we might pull to engage people, pulling them via humor into thinking, if only for a moment, about the rights of Cetaceans. We also see this as we see many aspects of the dolphin story – the closer you look, and become involved, the deeper it gets.

An Aside – and a bit of history
Doug Michels was a visionary artist, architect, and man of many talents. In 1974, he and some friends established “The Dolphin Embassy” as an art project under the aegis of the famous Ant Farm, in Houston Texas. A 501 (c) 3 non-profit was organized to support the idea. In 1978, after a disastrous fire destroyed the studios of the Ant Farm, the project was abandoned. In 1977, Michels went as far as traveling to Australia to meet some dolphins, to explain his intentions, to offer to speak on their behalf.

Doug Michels, Gold Coast, Australia, 1977

Some years later, Michels drew plans for an orbiting space station (Project Blue Star) that included a central glass globe full of water, in which dolphins could live. His idea was that dolphins could be the best weightless teachers we could find, alien intelligence that could help us understand the mysteries of outer space. (it was not explained how the dolphins would access air, or how the water would be taken up to the station).

Project Blue Star

In an sad bit of synchronicity, Doug Michels was in Australia, working on a film about the friendly Orca of Eden Bay in 2004 when he slipped and fell off a cliff and died. He died on the same day that we formally established The Dolphin Embassy in Australia. We did not know that he was in Australia at the time…

The Current Status of the Dolphin Embassy

Over the years I have met many people with parts to offer. Some have led us to important aspects of the process of becoming able to work at the United Nations (thanks, Marsha, for that!) Some have engaged in lengthy discussions via email, aiming to sharpen our approach. And some have been very supportive in helping gather audiences to hear our ideas (thanks especially for this, Brent!). We are always on the lookout for well-prepared people in the fields of international law, diplomacy, intercultural communications, and NGO experience to discuss this idea.

Studying the application form from the UN for recognition of a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), I discovered that one does not have to be human to be represented! How delightful…

Addressing the inevitable challenges we can assume we will face when we arrive at the United Nations, from those who do not accept that we can truthfully represent the dolphins – we can hear them now: “When have you, or anyone, ever had a meaningful conversation with a dolphin? What right do you have to represent them?” – we have carefully developed a four-point agenda. We feel that no one can realistically assert that dolphins, whales, and porpoises would NOT want these four rights to be recognized:

Four-part agenda of the Cetacean Nation at the UN
Safe  Universal protection from intentional harm. This will require diplomacy, as some cultures still believe cetaceans are food
Clean  Clean water in which to live. All water, everywhere, flows to the Oceans. We must stop pollution and clean the waters of the world.
Quiet  No sonic pollution of the oceans. Commercial and Military uses of sound in the oceans must be reduced to harmless levels.
Peace  An end to war. Humans must stop killing each other-- as a prerequisite to peace for all.

If you feel that you have skills or resources to offer to this effort, please contact us. I have many details developed in our strategic plan, requiring support from a large team of dedicated people.

Would you like to join us in taking the voice of the dolphins to the United Nations?

Join us for discussion of these ideas at: http://groups.google.com/group/dolphinembassy

C. Scott Taylor, PhD
Ambassador

"In Defense of Dolphins": a book review

I have recently finished reading an important book titled "In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier", by Thomas I. White.

White is a Professor of Business Ethics who has been interested in dolphins for the last 15 years. He focuses on ethics in his teaching and writing, and applies his background in the philosophy of ethics to this book.

His main theme is the assertion that dolphins deserve "person-hood", to be recognised as non-human persons. To this end he gathers much of the important current research into their cognitive abilities, their emotional intelligence, their social nature, and what he repeatedly calls their "alien intelligence".

I feel indebted to Prof. White for this book. He has done us all a great service.

However, I think my indebtedness to him might be of a nature he does not expect.

This book has many merits. It stands tall as a resource for the building movement toward recognition of the rights of dolphins. Professor White has done his research well, with many of the most current research projects into dolphin cognition reviewed.

Here is where my views on this book might be surprising to Dr. White: I believe that this work will engage me for some time to come, as it will no doubt be used by many to continue the fight for the end of the dolphin-human connection. It reveals the strategy of those who would end or seriously impede our growing, and vitally important, relationship with the People of the Sea.

At present I can only skim the issues that are found in this important book.

I find it to be deeply flawed. Not only incomplete, but flawed by its incompleteness. He avoids, overlooks, and ignores important aspects of the story. Granted, the histories and sciences and traditions and philosophies and religions and vast storehouse of human experiences is a lot to take on, but they must if we are to have a full understanding of dolphins and our relationship to them.

There is misdirection in this book, and it appears to be intentional. Very troubling is his abuse of the trust he has created in his readers once he attempts to reach his previously hidden, ultimate goal -- the abolition of all human-managed facilities where dolphins live.

The misuse of the goodwill and trust he has created in the first part of the book, where he builds his careful case for person-hood, is apparent when he dives into his weird conclusions at the end, moving from one paragraph in which he says something is speculative, to the next paragraph where the same thing is now fact. He does this several times.

White uses heavily loaded words in his concluding chapters, in a distinct contrast to his earlier, more balanced word choices. It is a subtle trick as he pursues his goal, as he shades carefully from reasoned argument into biased, emotion-laden rhetoric.

He skips a lot of important information at the end, dismissing Dolphin-Assisted Therapy (DAT) in the same two pages with military uses of dolphins. He has clearly never seen a DAT session and knows next to nothing about it. By putting it in the same subchapter with military uses of dolphins, he vilifies it by association.

His incompleteness includes an apparent lack of interest in, reporting on, or simple knowledge of anything but philosophy and science. His ethics does not include any metaphysics, which I find very odd indeed. Nowhere does he mention one word of any of the spiritual dimensions of the beingness of dolphins. He exhibits the "standard disregard" for the hidden side of life, the feelings and spiritual aspects, which is all the more odd when one reads his many pages about the emotive, affective, feeling-aware dolphins.

White is woefully ignorant of history, it seems. He states that our relationship with dolphins has existed for two thousand years. How very odd that he overlooks both indigenous wisdom and traditions, the very available record of over 15,000 years of contact and relationship with dolphins. If a researcher is willing to add mythology and pre-history, we can extend that time to over 50,000 years. This is telling, as he clearly has only looked at a few of the many dimensions of our important relationship with dolphins.

Matsya Avatar, First Incarnation of Vishnu as a dolphin, 25,000 years ago

He also does not address other important aspects of his argument: what about the "moral standing" of elephants, who are proven to be self-aware by the same tests he extols when applied to dolphins? Do elephants have the same degree of moral standing, thus person-hood, as dolphins? He decries the description of dolphins as objects, as items of ownership, as anything less than beings deserving high status alongside humans, and uses examples of how we should treat them by making it out that we can deny careful consideration for all other "animals". He seems to accept abuse of all animals-- captivity, raising them for food, doing research upon them, hunting them -- but not dolphins.

He insists that all dolphins in captivity are less intelligent, less mentally adept, and definitely discontented, with nothing to interest them. He has apparently not met the same dolphins I know...

After chapters and chapters making a case that we must not anthropomorphise them, he sets about doing that very thing, over and over, during his concluding remarks. He assumes to know their thoughts, levels of contentedness, and mental agility, by using human-value-based projections upon observed behaviours.

Oddly, he says it is hard to make a case against captivity, then attempts to do so, and fails.

He says that nearly all research into dolphins-- their intelligence, health, physical systems, self-awareness, and more -- were done - necessarily - in captive environments, and that this now has no place and must end. He implies that there is nothing left to learn about dolphins that we cannot learn at sea. I am reminded of the man who resigned from the US Patent Office in the early 1900s because he was convinced there was nothing left to invent.

He suggests that dolphins in facilities be "allowed to die out over the next 40-50 years". He does not address the need for decent social interaction, which demands that dolphins be in mixed-gender groups for healthy lives, which produces more dolphins. Does he condone, as Ric O'Barry insists upon, the force-feeding of contraceptive drugs to dolphins? It would seem so.

A happy family of dolphins, Coffs Harbour, Australia

White recognises the failures of attempted release of formerly managed dolphins, so he does not advocate their summary dumping into the sea, which is to his credit, but he does advocate killing them all off by a sort of benign neglect -- and in doing so, going diametrically against his entire main argument for a decent regard for their "persons". He is hypocritical on this issue.

It is clear that White wants to end captivity. He sets out to arrive at that destination, and his first chapters do an admirable job of building a case for much better appreciation of dolphins-- their lives, intelligence, self-awareness, cognitive abilities, and more. But when he gets close to his objective, his arguments suddenly become fact-free, emotive, subjective, and ultimately corrupted by twisted logic, making many of the same errors of fact and logic that he attacked earlier in others.

All in all, his book is very important and will add fuel to many fires. He will be championed by the "Lori Marino camp" (he makes her out to be a major heroine on the dolphin scene, citing her repeatedly). He has also done the Dolphin Embassy a great favour, not only by building a very good case for person-hood, for the Cetacean Nation objective, but he has also clearly demonstrated and outlined the deep flaws in the arguments against DAT and our ever-improving, and critically important, relationship with dolphins.

Scott Taylor
Ambassador

Showing that you care

Most internet-based petitions achieve nothing. Emails with thousands of names in them do not impress anyone, as these can be easily faked. For this reason, we ignore most requests to become involved in petitions.

However, when we were invited by some friends (Dave Rastovich, Howie Cooke, Hannah Fraser) to join them in a visual protest, a vast collection of photographs of people holding images of dolphins or whales, to be sent to the delegates at the next International Whaling Commission meeting in Peru, we felt that this could be important.

We are alerting all of you who read this to visit the website www.mindsinthewater.com and to link to the Visual Petition. Follow the instructions, download a dolphin or whale picture and take a photo of yourself holding the picture. Then upload the photo back onto the Visual Petition site and join thousands of others who believe as we do, that all whaling and killing of dolphins must stop.

Take the time, do what is asked, and you will have done something that can make a difference for the Cetacean Nation. Besides, it is fun!

~~~~~~
Hannah "Mermaid" Fraser and her husband Dave Rastovich have visited us several times here in Coffs Harbour to swim with the dolphins. They are interviewed in our TV program "The Dolphin People", and if you watch the slides on the Minds in the Water site, or the Visual Petition site, you will see the photo above of Dave with Calamity, hugging her.

If you get a chance to see Dave and his surfer friends performing their music, with their band "Low Pressure Sound System", make sure to go. You won't be sorry, they are fantastic!

The Ambassador

The Dolphin People TV series

We have been working for several years on a TV series, entitled "The Dolphin People". We began principle filming in 2005, and have, to date, completed the first hour of a projected four-part series.

Our Director/Producer/Cinematographer/Editor friend, Richard Mordaunt, has recently returned from a journey to New York, where he attended an international congress on documentary films, meeting with commissioning editors from many companies around the world. We await their responses, confident that we will secure a production deal to complete the series.

Here is a promotional clip:



Enjoy!

To obtain copies of "The Dolphin People" one-hour TV program on DVD, write to dolphin@dolphintale.com.
Copies sell for $30 + $6 postage and handling.

The Ambassador

The Encounter with the "Other"

Underwater among the dolphins, we find ourselves to be the clumsy ones, the ones who do not belong here, but have come for visit. We stare, wide-eyed, at the grace and weightless power of the dolphins as they spin, turn, flip over, and proceed in a new direction before we could tell they were going elsewhere.
They glide and turn, the smallest flicker of their pectoral fins guiding them into a new pattern, a weaving of balance and freedom and desire, their goals fleeting, their aims simple.
We are among Elders, beings who live as one with their world, adjusting their very flexible selves to whatever comes their way.
They communicate their ideas quickly, so quickly. Above our hearing, far above mostly, they whistle and click to each other, offering suggestions and comments to each other -- or do they? What do we know of the content of their communication?

When we study closely the communication of the dolphins, we find that they can respond well to whatever we ask them to, whether it be counting, memory games, sorting words into correct order to accomplish complex tasks, or giving each other instructions on how to do something the other has not ever done before. They can do whatever we ask of them. Yet we do not know what they talk about among themselves. Since we know they are capable of whatever we imagine for them to try, is it not reasonable to imagine that they can communicate in ways we have not asked of them?

Do they speak with a noun-based language? Or are they mostly useing verbs, the moving actions of life to base their language? Or is it of another order altogether? Perhaps the mysterious languages spoken by initiates of arcane studies, who must constuct whole vocabularies to express their occult knowledge is akin to the dolphin's speech. Do they carry on metaphysical exchanges, telling each other of dimensions unknown to us?

What is the cause of the ease, the sense of gentle peace they radiate so much of the time? Do they know something so well that it leaves them knowing not the unease we seem to live within, but somehow know some of the reasons "why" life is as it is? Do their millions of years of living free in the oceans, mostly without fear, give them a transcendental reality, one of deep and abiding trust?

I wonder many times when among them, how they see us. Their gentle knowing seems so wise, so free of entanglement in our "stories".

They can serve as our teachers if we choose. They can represent The Other, the outside being who sees us and reflects an image of the self back to us, if we approach them with respect.

The Ambassadors

Not a silent world

Sonic Pollution, the hidden killer

Underwater, sound travels fast. Almost five times as fast as sound in air (4.7, to be exact). The speed of sound underwater is not the only factor that makes sound so important in the watery world. It is also a much more directly physical energy, one that has high impact.

Decades ago a film made history, one of the first films to be shot underwater with high quality cameras. Shot and presented by Jacques Cousteau, it was called “The Silent World”. It captivated audiences around the world. I was among them, as a young lad, taken by my parents to a theatre that showed the unusual widescreen format that The Silent World was shown in. For all his expertise and “groundbreaking” inventions – the underwater breathing system called SCUBA, or Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, and other innovations – Cousteau could not have gotten it more wrong. The Oceans are full of sound, and many of its lifeforms depend upon their sonic abilities for their survival.

If we are to understand the challenges of the Cetacean Nations, the difficulties they face in their struggles for life, especially those that are “anthropogenic” (human caused) in nature, we must take into account the sonic pollution of the waters.

The millions of years of evolution that the dolphins and whales have been through have adapted them well to the sounds of the natural seas. The snapping shrimp, the crackling of fish, the waves pounding against the shore, the hiss of wind across the surface – all these are normal sounds, ones that can be heard, or consciously ignored. Just as we have selective hearing, enabling us to carry on conversations in noisy clubs, and to hear our names amid the hubbub of a party, dolphins and whales can filter out unwanted sounds, to a degree.

And yet, with the advent of modern technology, humans have been pouring high intensity sounds into the oceans in a deafening cascade.

Consider the facts of global shipping:
• 95% of the world’s trade spends some of its time onboard a ship
• There are over 5,000,000,000 (five billion) tons of cargo shipped each year
• There are over 82,000 ships of significant size plying the oceans
• There are over 4,500 petroleum tankers afloat, nearly all of them underway 24 hours of each and every day

The modern supertanker is something few people have a real perspective on. Imagine a vessel capable of carrying as much petroleum as the United Kingdom and Spain use in one day, which is about 3.2 million barrels. This is a ship that is considered to be a medium sized supertanker. This class of ship can take as many as 50 miles to stop. The momentum of so much mass is almost unimaginable. And oddly enough, these ships often use only one propeller.

The propeller for this type of ship creates a deafening, hissing, endlessly droning flood of sound. Creating “cavitation”, which is tiny bubbles that collapse in billions, over and over, the physics of these propellers is deadly. And they don’t have to be. This is the sad part…

Navies around the world have studied and designed propellers to the nth degree. To avoid detection at sea, a ship must be silent. Propellers have been designed that could eliminate this single source of deadly sound…but they have not been adopted. There is no international oversight for sonic pollution in the oceans, so the deafening goes on, day and night.

First, we must become aware of the problems. Then we can begin to address them. Now we know. Now we can begin to act.

The Ambassadors

Report on Secret Soviet Whaling now out

Soviet Factory ship, Slava, circa 1965 (photographer unknown)

A remarkable report has just been published detailing the illegal whaling activities of the Soviet Union in the years between 1955-1978. The information it is based on is impeccable: the actual reports of the whaling ships themselves, from a Russian government archive in Vladivostok, Russia.

"The authors (of the original reports. - ed.) were all scientists who worked at different times with the whaling fleets concerned...

The reports document dramatic declines in abundance, disappearances of whales from previously populous feeding and breeding areas, and a continual decline in the average size and age of animals in the catch as the over-exploitation reached critical levels. Also recorded are the repeated warnings of the reports’ authors that the catch levels could not be sustained without severe damage to (or extirpation of) the populations concerned. However, it is apparent that all such warnings were routinely ignored by the Soviet authorities in their quest to meet high production targets."

A pdf of the full publication is available for free download at:
http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Publications/AFSC-TM/NOAA-TM-AFSC-175.pdf

The era of Russian illegal whaling was one of terrible consequences. Despite the International Whaling Commissions attempts to curtail whaling, to make it sustainable, various nations and many illegal pirate whalers (notable among them was Aristotle Onassis, whose pirate whaling activities were among the worst) kept up the relentless slaughter. When the moratorium (def: a temporary cessation of activities) was finally put in place in the 1980s, it was too late. The affected whale populations were doomed, and still have made, in most species, little headway toward species survival.

Now, with sonic pollution from many sources, military, industrial, and oil and mineral exploration, plus the ongoing drone of global petroleum shipping, the large whales have little chance of recovery. As mostly solitary whales, they depend on sonic messages to locate each other for mating, and can no longer find each other easily. It is too noisy in the whale's bedroom...

What have we done to Mother Ocean? It is time to take a good long look at what we have done, and begin to rethink our priorities. It is time to shape ourselves to meet the needs of the world, rather than endlessly expect the world to shape itself to our needs.

The Ambassadors

Windows on the wet world

Our aim is to increase understanding of the world of the cetaceans. To achieve this, we will be posting a variety of items here. We will give you personal tales of our work and lives among the dolphins (and whales) in our area, and in our travels, as well as items from our ongoing research, collection of important facts from many sources not normally available to the general public, and more.

The Ambassadors