"I spent 10 hours helping to build the aquarium industry. And for 45 years, I've done everything in my power to destroy it. —Ritsa Oberry
Richard O'Barry
Ever since Richard O'Barry appeared in the public eye as the protagonist of the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary "Dolphin Bay"—the old man whom his peers used as "paranoid" to stop the Dolphin Bay massacre from engaging in a clever or blunt confrontation with the Japanese—we have kept hearing him repeat this phrase on different occasions, but the number behind it has been changing and accumulating. On this year's Earth Day, April 22, 2015, he initiated and remained in the dolphin conservation cause for 45 years.
To promote the Chinese edition of Dolphin Bay's book of the same name, on Earth Day, Oberry (nicknamed Rick) came to China and temporarily changed the interview location I had agreed with him to the Beijing Aquarium. He decided to go there to tell me why he was so adamantly opposed to people going there.
The car stopped at the entrance of the aquarium, and O'Berry immediately walked quickly to a poster featuring cartoon dolphins, depicting dolphins wearing sea soul shirts, holding guitars and grinning, looking very happy. He told me that his biggest fear is that people will see such a painting and think that the dolphins here are as happy as they are on the painting. Perhaps, his worries are necessary, because it's not just cartoon dolphins that keep smiling, but the dolphins we see in the show are also "smiling" – the natural upward curve of the corners of their mouths gives them a smiling expression all the time. But does looking like smiling is happy? Rick said that even if the dolphin's head was cut off, its expression was still smiling.
He couldn't remember how many aquariums he'd been to around the world, because in his eyes, they were all the same. Before you even enter the door, you will play as a happy paradise for cherishing dolphins, and the cartoon image of dolphin joy is almost an indispensable outfit. As for the four words "love and rebirth" written on the poster, his opinion is that breeding is not love at all for dolphins, and newborn dolphins in this environment are just deformities in dolphins made by humans, in a sense, they are not real dolphins.
1
Nurturing: It's like being alone in a mirror room
It's not hard to imagine how miserable innocent captivity can be, and what O'Belle wants to tell me is that of all the animals in the whole zoo that are kept and imprisoned, dolphins have the worst. His reasoning is as follows: First, from the primary purpose of most people going to the dolphinarium , the dolphin show , "here only dolphins need to rely on performance to get fed, and a well-fed dolphin has no motivation to perform acrobatics.". Rick said that hungry dolphins are forced to perform some special talents in order to eat dead fish in the hands of keepers, and without witty performances, there is no food, which is what his personal experience as a dolphin trainer in the past tells him. And most of the world's aquariums give dolphins rewards, and those that are thrown into their mouths are just some dead fish, but in the real natural environment, bottlenose dolphins do not eat dead fish.
Another obvious problem is that dolphins are often kept in small, closed, empty pools. When we look in through the transparent windows left on the walls of the museum, we can clearly see everything inside, except for the iron cage-like partition, there is nothing in the dolphin's "home". To make a difference, O'Berry offered to go to the amphibian pavilion together to see the snakes. "They're also miserable, but at least there's rocks to hide, trees to climb, grass, pools of water." Facing the snake's living space, he said indignantly, "Although it is not good, it is at least much stronger than a dolphin." Of course, he didn't say this to give dolphins some limited artificial underwater scenery in their pools. In fact, for dolphins, the emptiness of boredom is only a small part of the pain of the enclosed pool.
"If dolphins use sonar touch in a pool, they may feel like they are in an infinity mirror room." Nicolas Entrup, a whale and dolphin expert at the German chapter of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, once described it. The sonar haptic sense he refers to is that cetaceans, including dolphins, emit high-frequency ticks at frequencies in the ultrasonic band through vibrations in the respiratory tract. Just like bats, the sound waves emitted will be reflected back by the object and clearly received by their sensitive hearing, and the received echo will form an "image" in their brains, so that their actions are completely unaffected by factors such as light and shade of the environment, clear or not, and can clearly locate the prey, whether it is a school of fish or a fish in the school. However, the study found that dolphins that have been raised for a long time no longer emit sonar sound waves. Not only because they don't have to hunt after switching to dead fish, but more importantly, as Entrup describes, the pool's smooth concrete walls reflect the dolphins' high-frequency sound waves back and forth, which disorients the dolphins and they unconsciously fall into uneasiness and panic.
Therefore, even if you add rich animals and plants to the pool where dolphins live, so that it looks like the real seabed, it is not boring, and the endlessness of the sea cannot be copied. As the Swiss professor and whale expert Giorgio Pilleri put it many years ago in his investigations on Cetacea, "Whatever efforts people make, the closure of marine mammals will always be problematic, because keeping the creatures accustomed to vast expanses in small environments is a contradiction in itself." In fact, such an investigation report is only expounding common sense, but common sense is often the most easily ignored.
In addition to the lack of nature and freedom, every catch carried out in a natural hunting area in order to obtain a dolphin that can be kept breaks up the social structure of the dolphin family group, which is no different from the harm that people suffer when their families are forcibly torn apart.
Under this multiple injuries, the captive dolphins will have many problems. "Dolphins exhibit fundamental neurotic disorders and neurosis behaviors that can be compared to those exhibited in solitary confinement in humans." Pellery had come to this conclusion. What he calls negative behaviors include loss of communication, despair, suicide, and aggression that is enhanced by being in an unnatural, narrow environment. These sounds like performances that only occur in human behavior, each of which has clearly appeared in sensitive dolphins. At the same time, their brains shrink by 40% due to feeding.
In addition to this, the pressure of being raised can lead to diseases on the dolphin's body. Artificial vitamins, antibiotics, fungicidal agents and hormones are all essential human elements for dolphins to maintain their healthy appearance under nurturing conditions. Even so, their mortality rate is still high, and the average lifespan of captive dolphins is less than one-fifth of that of wild dolphins. According to the Statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, dolphins growing in natural hunting areas can live to be more than 30 years old, and the average lifespan of dolphins raised in captivity is 5.3 years.
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The beginning of dolphin rearing
In 1860, Phineas Taylor Barnum was the first to want to show live whales. In William Johnson's book Zauberder Manege, the Barnum American Museum was the most attractive place in the city. "Baby animal shows, dog shows, poultry and flower shows, rare animals, 'tamed Indians' are all part of the museum's daily program." When Barnum first sailed up the St. Lawrence River to buy two beluga whales and bring them back to New York, the beluga whales that were put in a freshwater tank died immediately within a few days, after which he switched to seawater and larger containers, and the beluga whales he bought again still died quickly, and he continued to experiment until two of the beluga whales lived long enough to be available for display, and he added sharks and dolphins to the program list.
In 1913, Charles Haskins Townsend, the curator of the New York Aquarium, had five bottlenose dolphins transported from North Carolina to New York. He wrote in the summer of 1914 that in the 20-year history of the aquarium, no exhibition has been more successful than this one. The last dolphin died of pneumonia in 1915, and it managed to survive its 21-month imprisonment anyway. In fact, bottlenose dolphins have always been the dolphins that can sustain life the longest in captivity, so even in today's aquariums, most of the "smiling" faces we see come from this species of dolphin.
Dolphin show in the Riviera Cultural and Recreational Park in Sochi, Russia
In 1938, dolphins began to be trained to perform. Florida SeaWorld stumbled upon the habit of jumping high to catch the thrown fish during dolphin feeding, which became a great program that attracted viewers, keepers and curators. In 1939, Cersi Wolke, who was in charge of equipment maintenance, spotted a dolphin pushing a feather along the surface of the water toward him, picked up the feather and threw it back into the water, and the dolphin pushed it back. In his surprise, he began experimenting with dolphins with bicycle tubes, balls, and other objects, and by the time other dolphins joined the game, he had almost sketched out the program of modern aquarium performances. In addition to the audiences who traveled thousands of miles, dolphin performances also attracted the attention of the academic community, and when the famous Swiss zoologist Heini Hediger visited Miami in 1954, he talked enthusiastically that they had "qualified" to no longer be called "aquariums" but could be called "oceanariums" instead.
Fast forward to the 1960s, when the American film "Feibao" and its TV series of the same name achieved great attention and success, and the aquarium industry finally achieved international success. As the dolphin trainer behind the film and television drama, Oberry is exactly what he calls himself "10 years to help build the dolphinarium industry."
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The entrance ticket to the dolphinarium is equal to the ivory accessories on humans
Since 1970, O'Belle has begun to oppose the aquarium industry. As he mentioned in the "Dolphin Bay" film, when the first, second and third seasons of the American drama "Feibao" were broadcast, he had lived with the dolphins in training for 7 years. Since then, the popularity of the TV series has gradually dissipated, and the dolphins have returned to live in the Miami Aquarium, where Rick continues to work and is entrusted with the care of the killer whale "Hugo". It wasn't until April 22 of that year that Cassie, a dolphin who had been playing "Feibao" and spending time with Rick, appeared in front of his eyes covered in black pustules and swam into the crook of his arm to end his life. "I was very ignorant, and I was ignorant for a long time." After seeing Cassie's suicide, O'Berry begins to feel remorse for his past work.
Ricky with Cassie the Dolphin
Ritscha is involved in a secret dolphin release operation, usually at night
Since then, he has decided to do everything in his power to help release every dolphin that can be released, as we see in the film. "Dolphin Bay" makes everyone who has seen it remember the bay that was stained red by blood due to the killing of dolphins, compared with the harm caused by human breeding to dolphins, because it does not show direct sensory stimulation on the screen image, it is easy to be ignored. Slaughter and breeding are not really more important than dolphins, they are not juxtaposed, Oberrie pointed out that the aquarium's feeding needs directly led to the slaughter. It was the laughter that people made when watching the dolphin show that directly contributed to their fate of being brutally fished - to obtain the dolphins in the aquarium, they first had to carry out a large number of round-ups, choose from them, and the capture process was brutal and rough, causing dolphin casualties.
"I'm sure a lot of people have watched the movie and seen the brutal slaughter of dolphins when they were caught. The reason why such a terrible thing happens is because people buy tickets to watch dolphin performances. If you don't go to the aquarium, there will be no such industrial chain. "A newly caught dolphin that has not yet been trained may be able to change hands for $20,000 or $30,000, but a fully trained dolphin can sell for up to $150,000." The market he knew was that a dead dolphin for food would sell for at most $600. Therefore, it can be said that today, in the offshore area of Taiji Town, where the dolphin massacre recorded in the film, the real motivation for fishermen to hunt dolphins is the sale of live dolphins.
Stills from the movie Dolphin Bay
In addition, because "Dolphin Bay" has a large amount of space to inform people that dolphin meat and whale meat contain extremely high pollutants, some values have far exceeded the limit set by the Japanese government, and the chronic poisoning caused by these organic mercury compounds is very likely to make the "Minamata Incident" repeat in modern times. After the release of the film, the demand for dolphin meat and whale meat, which was traded as food, was greatly reduced, which made the demand for live dolphins a leading trigger in the hunting and slaughter of dolphins to a greater extent. Most of the dolphins that end up being caught are sold to China, while others are sold to Turkey, Russia and Egypt.
"It's true that China hasn't slaughtered dolphins, dolphins are imported." Because of this, O'Berry did not focus too much on recommending the book "Dolphin Bay", although the book detailed the work he did over the years, the current status of dolphin conservation, and the before and after of the "Dolphin Bay" film. And he always goes out of his way to say the same thing to everyone who can communicate: don't go to the aquarium again, don't watch dolphins perform. "Just as wearing ivory products can lead to elephants being hunted and killed, the same is true for buying tickets to see dolphins." Rick wants to make the point that each of us can blurt out, "No sale, no killing," and his concern is that visitors to the aquarium don't know they've been involved in a brutal deal —"If that's the case, the dolphin trade will continue." Only by calling on everyone to stop buying tickets for the aquarium can we solve this problem from the terminal. ”
Dolphin Bay
Oberry, who is in the Beijing Aquarium, crouches on the parapet in front of the transparent window and looks at the dolphins inside. He pointed to two alligatory dolphins with a pattern of white edges on their bodies and said affirmatively, "They are from Taiji Town." The dolphins we see in all the aquariums are from Taiji Town. If there were oceanariums in the world, the slaughter of Dolphin Bay in Taiji Town would not stop. He looked up at the sign on the wall: "Cherish marine animals, please do not throw objects!" ”（Love marine animals，do not feed or litter！ Turning to me, he asked, "What do you think is love in their eyes?" ”
Then we left in silence. He didn't use any of the intense ways we've seen in movies—like to promote and appeal to the audience inside the aquarium like standing in the middle of a road in Tokyo with a screen showing a film—just standing and observing for a long time. He said he now prefers to work in a more peaceful manner, although sometimes he does so depending on the location.
O'Belle's influence is constantly expanding, and his birthday has been called "World Dolphin Day" by caring people around the world, and he is the world's most popular dolphin expert, so he is invited to speak everywhere, and he still goes to Taiji Town, which is dolphin bay in the film, on September 1 every year to protest. The slaughter of dolphins still exists, but O'Belle has undoubtedly become an important enemy of the aquarium industry, and with his direct input and intervention, some aquariums and dolphinariums and similar institutions scattered around the world have been closed forever. Some EU countries that used to have dolphinariums no longer exist, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland. Non-EU countries Norway does not allow dolphinariums, Germany used to have 9 dolphinariums, now only 3 remain.
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