Dear Friends,
If you watched the Oscars, you saw me and Director Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens accept the Best Documentary awarded by the Academy. Wow, what an incredible moment!

Without your support, this would never have happened. So, even though I wasn’t able to thank you all at the podium, I thank you all now.

But this has never been about winning awards. Our job is to end the slaughter and stop the poisoning. And now our work in Japan begins anew. We must focus like a laser on getting The Cove and our message to the Japanese people.

But there are threats on the horizon. Officials in Japan are threatening repercussions against university and community groups that dare to show The Cove. Dolphin-killing fishermen’s unions are threatening lawsuits against theaters that show the film. There are even some signs that I could face arrest in Japan, even though I’ve broken no laws whatsoever.

We won’t give in to this pressure. Instead, I am making plans to spend months in Japan with our Save Japan Dolphins Team. I want to be wherever we can find an audience. Our message will particularly resonate with young people, to whom we need to reach out with the dangers of mercury-contaminated dolphin meat and the slaughter of dolphins they love as much as we do.

If you can help me, it will make a world of difference.
https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=59a67b

The Oscar telecast is the most-watched TV show in Japan! And they, and more than a billion other viewers, saw The Cove movie win!

But now I also need your help in getting the million signatures we need on the petition. We’re almost there. Can you help at:
www.causes.com/covepetition

We need help in promoting the Japanese version of The Cove in the next weeks before The Cove opens at Japanese theaters. We need help for travel, video promotion, website outreach, legal defense, and screening The Cove outside of theaters in libraries, universities, and town halls in Japan.

Japan has 126 million people; only 600 have seen The Cove so far. Those who saw it were shocked and dismayed that this slaughter was happening in their country. We need to enlist their help and the help of millions of their fellow citizens to stop the Japanese government from issuing 23,000 permits annually to slaughter dolphins. We need to seize on the momentum now to pursue an end to the slaughter, once and for all!

Will you help us get the truth out?
https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=59a67b

Look what you have helped happen tonite!
Thanks so much for your help and generous support. It is making a huge difference.

Ric O’Barry
Campaign Director
Save Japan Dolphins Campaign

PS The Save Japan Dolphins Campaign and Earth Island Institute don’t get funds from The Cove movie sales. (Those funds go to the OPS, which made the film, and their investors to reimburse them for their considerable costs in making The Cove.)

PPS If you think there is any possibility that you might be able to come over to Taiji on September 1st to celebrate the beauty of Taiji and let them know that the killing of dolphins must not start again, please note that on the comment field on the donation form here:
https://secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=59a67b

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1. Watching The Cove
2. Operation Musashi Begins
3. An action request for my Australian readers

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ActiveCaptain “X” is now live…
==========================================
One year in development, over 200,000 lines of software, immeasurable input from our Captains, and the newest version of ActiveCaptain’s interactive cruising guidebook interface is complete. As those of you who have tried the Beta X tab over the past couple of months already know, this is a major overhaul to the website – new user interface, new features, new markers. You told us what you wanted improved – easier updating and better satellite imagery. You told us what new functions where needed – NOAA charts and more search options. We listened.

Now when you select the Interactive Cruising Guidebook tab you will see the new interface with new features. What won’t be different is the free access to over fifty thousand marinas, anchorages, local knowledge markers, hazards, and reviews. And the data continues to grow every day. We’re averaging over 1,000 updates each day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Some of the new features include:

- New interface. We have redesigned the interface to make it easier and faster for you to find information and make updates. The interface is based on a deck of cards to allow for expansion of ActiveCaptain features.

- NOAA charts. The ActiveCaptain website can now display markers on NOAA US charts making it easier to evaluate that anchorage or judge an approach.

- Microsoft cartography. ActiveCaptain now uses Microsoft Virtual Earth for the map and satellite images. We find that these images load faster and are higher quality.

- Expanded location search. A dedicated card now lets you find rivers, harbors, canals, islands – anything with a location name.

- ICW interpolation. You’re no longer limited to selecting ICW locations by NOAA’s 5-mile increments. Selecting ICW interpolation will approximate the location of any mile marker (435.6, 1072, etc).

- In-place detail updates. When you update a detail item, the data is edited right in the detail window. Submitting updates shows them right in the edited section so you know they are pending. This makes it much easier and quicker to update the data.

- Marker filtering. There’s now more control over which markers are displayed. Choose to limit your marina display to ones carrying gas, diesel, or pump out services. Turn on only certain types of local knowledge markers.

- Optional sorting. You can also choose to have fuel or slip pricing displayed with the marina list items and sort the markers based on pricing.

- Marker move/delete. Changing the location of a marker or deleting obsolete markers is now simpler. Select the More link in the marker balloon and a popup menu appears to guide you.

- Adding a new marker. It’s faster and simpler. Press and hold the mouse at the position for the new marker, select the marker type, and fill in the form.

- Permanent link. Quickly create a direct link to a location or marker in ActiveCaptain. Select More in the marker balloon, or press and hold your mouse at a location, and select Permanent link from the popup menu. It’s easy to include the link in blogs, emails, forums, or websites.

- Hazard markers. One of the most significant additions is the new hazard marker. You can easily find problems areas, find out what cruisers are experiencing, and let others know what you’ve found. This is especially nice for ICW migration in the Spring and Fall to alert you to the changing ICW conditions.

The best part is that our new architecture allows us to continue to expand and improve ActiveCaptain’s capabilities for years to come. Some exciting new features are on the horizon! If you have trouble displaying the new interface, make sure to refresh the page or empty your browser cache. Contact us if it isn’t working properly.

We want to thank all of our users who have provided feedback and compliments during our beta testing phase. It is your input that makes this site better. This new and improved interface makes ActiveCaptain the perfect companion to your navigation system for dreaming, planning, and living your next cruise.

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1. A Few Thoughts on Tilikum
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As a commenter on the Stoke Report said, “I guess I’d be a little more shocked if that had happened with, say, a “snuggler whale”.

I’m going to quote a lot of other documents, below. The emphasis is mine in all cases.

This was not the first time. His entry in Wikipedia’s page of captive orca is a little horrifying:

Just a few months prior to the birth of Kyuquot, Tilikum was involved in an incident which resulted in the death of a trainer. Twenty-year-old Keltie Byrne, who worked at the park, slipped and fell into the tank with the whales. Tillikum, a pregnant Haida II, and Nootka IV grabbed her in their mouths and tossed her to each other, presumably playing. Keltie drowned.
…
Tilikum was at the scene of another death on July 6, 1999, though evidence suggests the Orca may not have been at fault. A 27-year-old man was found floating naked in Tilikum’s pool, apparently killed by a combination of hypothermia and drowning. He had visited SeaWorld the previous day, stayed after the park closed, and evaded security to enter the Orca tank.[34] Investigators determined that the man, either before or after death, had been bitten by Tillikum.

Tilikum never takes part in water work with trainers, not necessarily due to aggression, but because he doesn’t necessarily realize his own strength. [citation needed]

On February 24th, 2010 Tilikum was involved in a third incident, when a 40-year-old experienced trainer was killed. The trainer drowned following a popular Dine with Shamu show as at least two dozen tourists looked on from above a whale tank and from an underwater viewing area. SeaWorld executive Chuck Tompkins confirmed what witnesses saw, that the trainer was pulled into the water by Tilikum.

OK, so clearly, he’s got a history. But let’s look at it from his side:

Tilikum, sometimes misspelled Tillikum, is a bull Orca who lives at SeaWorld Orlando. He was captured near Iceland in November 1983 at about two years of age. Tillikum measures 22 feet 6 inches long and weighs in at 12,300 pounds (as of 2007). His pectoral fins are six and one half feet long, his massive flukes curl under, and his 6-foot-tall dorsal fin is flopped completely to his left side, and weighs close to 200 pounds. He is the largest Orca in captivity.

And in our towering arrogance, we have this mighty creature in a tiny, little, void of biota, pool. He’s been in prison his entire life.

The article on Discovery had some good stuff to say:

Brancheau’s death is the second in just a couple of months. Alexis Mertinez, a trainer at Loro Parque in Tenerife died in late December after having his chest severely compressed by a different whale “not considered completely predictable” who was known to “play rough.”

The list goes on, tallying up near two dozen attacks — most non-fatal — since the 1970’s. Together with today’s sad, unpredictable incident, such tragedies raise a few important questions about training and keeping killer whales in captivity.

But perhaps because of their status in our culture, we forget that they are multi-ton apex predators. In the wild they ruthlessly hunt down and eat seals, sea lions, and just about anything else they want.

More broadly, what provokes an attack like this, and why do they keep happening?

“Whether you call it boredom, aggression, stir-crazy, or it just being a wild animal, these accidents occur, and shouldn’t be taken for granted,” Courtney Vail of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) told Discovery News (a call made to SeaWorld was not immediately returned). She went on to suggest that it’s the venue in which we view these animals — a brightly lit SeaWorld tank, with music, applause, and sensational tricks — that makes us think these animals are happy go-lucky animals content with life in captivity.

We can’t see into the mind of an animal, of course. But according to Vail, 136 Orcas have been taken into captivity from the wild since 1961. Of those, 123 have died, with an average lifespan of four years once captured. For a species that averages 35 years in the wild, that’s a pretty poor public health record.

The bottom line is that these animals are very lucrative, as are the relationships trainers establish with them for shows. A 2004 investigative report by Sally Kestin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel revealed that SeaWorld paid $875,000 for an Orca in the mid-1990s. Though WDCS hasn’t been able to find any current numbers, Vail speculated that the whales likely now sell for “millions of dollars.”

Got that? Lucrative. That’s what matters. The amount of money a dolphin for a show is worth is a large part of what drives the dolphin slaughter at Taiji, subject of the groundbreaking film “The Cove“. Dolphins are needed for shows, for an adoring public. And although I know nothing about the Orca capture business, I’m guessing it’s pretty similar, although without the feeding-children-mercury-contaminated-meat part of the show.

On a visceral level, animals in captivity for public entertainment make me want to throw up. I have personal baggage here, and I own it. I still can’t even talk about it without feeling like I completely failed Buck, the otter that I helped train to rehabilitate into the wild, who due to politics and money will now live out his days in a sterile freaking box. The guilt over this still haunts me, and I understand in my guts how Ric O’Barry feels.

Think about it. Tilikum, as a free whale, would travel freely from hemisphere to hemisphere, something that only Orcas do. His home is the entire world ocean. And for the vast majority of life, he’s been confined to a bathtub. For perspective, try walking into just one room of your home, one where it takes you just five steps to get from one side to the other, slam the door hard, and realize that you will never be anywhere larger in your life, nor will you ever have anything resembling privacy, or a choice over how to spend your days. You will eat on schedule, and you will breed, on cue, with whomever your captors shove through the door. And also realize, as you scan floor, walls, ceiling, that Tilikum in the wild would never have seen a wall, ever, and has lived his entire life with them.

Captiveanimals.org says:

Animal welfare groups agree that whales suffer physically and psychologically in captivity. Their small artificial pools with chemically altered water could never replicate the sea. Captive whales are often deprived of the family unit that they would live within in the wild.

These factors have an effect and as a result the life span of orca in captivity is much shorter than that of wild orca. Captive orcas are taught to perform on cue and are forced to endure a life of public scrutiny. Studying whales in this environment teaches nothing about wild orca as their lifestyles are so dramatically controlled and altered by man.

Prisoners in solitary
Jacques Cousteau said:

“There is about as much educational benefit to be gained in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary confinement”.

In the wild, male orca can live to be 50 years old. Females may reach 80 years of age. Beluga whales and dolphins can live 25-30 years. In captivity the lifespan of whales may be severely reduced. Many animals die shortly after capture. Most die from bacterial infections. According to records, over 24 cetaceans have died at Vancouver Aquarium. Bjossa has lost 2 mates and 3 calves.

In the wild, whales and dolphins live in small family groups called pods. Orca offspring stay with their mothers for life. Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent and extremely social animals. In captivity groupings of cetaceans may be unnatural. Unrelated whales and dolphins are forced to live together. The animals have no choice over their companions. At Vancouver Aquarium a baby beluga whale was separated from her mother for 6 months.

In the wild, orca whales may travel up to 100 miles a day, reaching speeds of up to 30 miles an hour. They are able to dive hundreds of feet below the water’s surface. For captive orca this is impossible. They would have to swim in circles for hours, even days to cover the range they would do if in the wild.

A world of sound
Wild orcas live in a world of sound. Each family or pod has their own dialect. They use echolocation to capture their prey. Captive orca only have the sounds of water cooling pumps and filtration systems and these are heard by the whales 24 hours a day. The other sound that they hear is that of the public, who clap and cheer when the orcas perform demeaning tricks. Glass and concrete enclosures have an effect on the sounds made by captive whales and dolphins.

Orcas are designed for a life in the sea. They have evolved to be part of a complex ecosystem of marine life. Captivity is foreign, environments are sterile, water is chemically treated, social grouping is unnatural, and life is artificial. It is no wonder that orca in captivity suffer from injury, illness and premature death.

Cruel statistics
Since 1965, 56 orcas have been captured from the waters around BC and Washington State, including one whole family. 54 are now dead, living on average 5.2 years once captured. The impact on the wild populations is only now being recognised. The entertainment industry has ignored the devastation it has left behind. Since 1961 there have been more than 130 orca captured from the wild for the entertainment industry. Over 75% are now dead. They survived on average less than 6 years.

So in light of that, please explain to me why what Tilikum has done is any kind of surprise at all? And in light of that, please explain to me why we continue to visit these horrors of captivity and pretend that they’re edutainment? What we do to these animals is nothing short of appalling, and needs to be stopped. If you are a parent, please boycott these venues immediately, and let people know why you’re doing it. There’s a link in the left nav of this blog to donate to saving the dolphins at Taiji, and I would ask you all, if you have learned even one thing reading this, to donate a small amount (even a dollar) to that cause. Because if we can stop it with the dolphins, we can work on stopping it with the rest of the marine species, and if we can’t stop it there, there truly is no hope, for us or them.

UPDATE: Sea Shepherd is Safer than Sea World

UPDATE 2: Whales and Dolphins Don’t Like to Be Confined (the Cove’s Louis Psihoyos)

UPDATE 3: Debbie Leahy: Just maybe, worry about the whales?

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2. Operation Musashi Begins
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Be sure to read the whole article, it’s really nicely done. And um… I guess it’s time to put Venice on the top of our “to visit before it’s submerged” list.

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How High Will Seas Rise? Get Ready for Seven Feet

The reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are balanced and comprehensive documents summarizing the impact of global warming on the planet. But they are not without imperfections, and one of the most notable was the analysis of future sea level rise contained in the latest report, issued in 2007.

Given the complexities of forecasting how much the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to increases in global sea level, the IPCC chose not to include these giant ice masses in their calculations, thus ignoring what is likely to be the most important source of sea level rise in the 21st century. Arguing that too little was understood about ice sheet collapse to construct a mathematical model upon which even a rough estimate could be based, the IPCC came up with sea level predictions using thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of mountain glaciers outside the poles.

They couldn’t do the math on melt so they simply ignored it?!?! Holy cow. Continuing onwards…

The IPCC’s 2007 sea level calculations — widely recognized by the academic community as a critical flaw in the report — have caused confusion among many in the general public and the media and have created fodder for global warming skeptics. But there should be no confusion about the serious threat posed by rising sea levels, especially as evidence has mounted in the past two years of the accelerated pace of melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

The message for the world’s leaders and decision makers is that sea level rise is real and is only going to get worse. Indeed, we make the case in our recent book, The Rising Sea, that governments and coastal managers should assume the inevitability of a seven-foot rise in sea level. This number is not a prediction. But we believe that seven feet is the most prudent, conservative long-term planning guideline for coastal cities and communities, especially for the siting of major infrastructure; a number of academic studies examining recent ice sheet dynamics have suggested that an increase of seven feet or more is not only possible, but likely. Certainly, no one should be expecting less than a three-foot rise in sea level this century.

Seven feet as a planning guideline. Sounds prudent. Also sounds like a moving target, since the figure for eustasy is not only changing by the month, but changing by location as well.

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Today I mailed your package. While the postal lady was weighing it, I pointed to your address and said, “This woman lives on a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay.  Can you imagine? They sold their stuff and bought a boat.”    Rose is her name. She’s worked at our post office for the whole 22 years we’ve lived here.  She glanced at the high snow banks outside the window and said, “Now that’s living.” LOL. I’m sure none of us imagine the dampness that gets in your house or when the boat breaks down or all the hassles that present.   In our minds it’s just the sun on the water and perfect mornings, days, evenings, nights.    Anyway, you inspiration, you. love, Val

Grin. Thanks Val. On days when it just seems like this was all some bizarre crazy idea that we’ll end up regretting, it’s nice to hear another perspective.

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