Our guest today is Dr. Naomi Rose, who is an expert in orcas for the past 20+ years. Naomi and I discuss the impact of the movie Blackfish and particularly the events that unfolded after the death of Dawn Brancheau, lead trainor of Tilicum the orca. Tilicum was resposible for her death. We discuss the science behind why orcas are not suitable for captivity to disprove and false reports that say otherwise. You DO NOT want to miss this episode! Show Notes: http://www.speakupforblue.com/session12
How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 012: The Science Behind Blackfish and Captive Orcas
Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue podcast session 12 the first nation word for orcas is blackfish And that's what we're going to talk about today on the Speak Up for Blue podcast Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now here's your host He's a marine ecologist living in Ontario Andrew Lewin Hey, everybody welcome back to another wonderful episode here on the Speak Up for Blue podcast your voice for the ocean I am your host Andrew Lewin founder Speak Up for Blue dot com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed Ocean printer and this is a very special episode because I have really two announcements to really say maybe three the first is our guest today is Dr. Naomi Rose who is a an expert in Orca killer or as people know killer whale biology and ecology She knows all things orca and that is the subject of today's interview we look at comparing wild populations of orcas to captive population we talk about the movie the documentary the famous or infamous documentary Blackfish and how it's affecting Sea World and how Sea World is affecting these wonderful and majestic mammals Dr. Naomi Rose She just she just blows it out of the water. It is a long I'm gonna warn you it is a longer interview than normal I think it was about an hour and 42 minutes But it has so much information and it's just it was one of my favorite interviews to do so far Just because it's a subject that I know I learned a lot from from from from Naomi and and she just sort of went on and on and she was just spewing out and great Information and I I just laughed it up So I just kind of usually I kept the interviews about an hour But this one I went a little longer so be you know feel free to listen to it in two or three parts, but make sure you listen to all of it because I Think she's addressing a very big issue and the reason why I really wanted to have Naomi on was because After I watched Blackfish a couple of years ago when it when it was on CNN I watched it on TV I you know I was it hit a couple of strings, you know emotional strings and you you watch it You feel bad for these animals. You feel bad for the trainers, and then you go on and you You go online you see what people are saying and people are divided saying see world is great. It's provides educational tool It's not harming the whales and then you got the other side that says no it is harming the whales It's not as good of an educational tool And this is why and that's what we're really going to get into today What I wanted to do is have Naomi on to talk about the science behind orcas in general and why they're not a good fit for captive of her captivity and she basically hits the nail on the head on this one Because you know she just dives into it and tells you right off the bat and she has supporting science that backs her up and that's what it's really all about and You got to remember in these situations That science is here to let us know what's happening with the ocean what's happening with animals It's supposed to be an unbiased way of Answering a question now what we do with that answer afterwards with how we interpret it or how we view it Can go either way however this science Basically concludes a lot of science basic concludes that orcas are not good for captivity and Blackfish essentially puts a case and I guess I should go over if you haven't seen the movie Blackfish Essentially Blackfish is a documentary Following a few whales, but one in particular a male large male 12,000 pound male called Tillicom Following him from the day he was taken from the wild captured from the wild brought into These captive theme parks one was in Victoria He was moved in Victoria after the place shut down, but it not But but but it was shut down right after Tillicom Killed someone was responsible for killing a trainer And then it was moved to SeaWorld where he is responsible for killing two more people One was a person it seemed perhaps a drunken night or maybe he he was not mentally stable and he went in at night and he went in for a swim quote-unquote with this whale and He showed up dead the next morning And he was on Tillicom's back floating on Tillicom's back The next the the third one I believe was Don Brancho who was a senior trainer at SeaWorld she was his head his lead trainer for six years And and Naomi goes on about this and this was really the case when she passed away And you'll find out in the interview. This is kind of sort of after that SeaWorld kind of You know had their veil taken off and we saw what SeaWorld was all about and Blackfish was kind of just bringing it to the public Scientists and other conservationists knew what was happening SeaWorld after the court case of Don Brancho When the occupational safety and health I guess it's the National Occupational Health Safety and Health Administration They were sued SeaWorld because they said they were responsible for the death of Don they Had to they in discovery they had to open up all their emails all their paperwork all their incidences and they the OSHA is what they call the safety and health people they went through it like a fine comb And they asked them a lot of questions and all about put it out into the public and now SeaWorld is in trouble Financially they just came out with a report where they lost 84 million dollars last year attendance was down They're not saying it's because of Blackfish and Naomi addresses why But it's a problem. It's a problem for SeaWorld and a lot of people are saying it's bad for SeaWorld And we're hoping and they're hoping that it'll rebound some people hope that it doesn't as long as they have captive whales And we kind of and Naomi I kind of talk about what the future of SeaWorld we think should be We hope it will be because we don't really want to see SeaWorld go down We'd like to see it as an actual proper educational tool But it seems as long as these orcas are in the captivity SeaWorld will not be telling the truth anyway I know that's a bit of a personal opinion, but it is a fact Naomi Naomi goes over it and ask what we're going to talk about today in Her interview, but before we get to that I have a free gift to offer you guys you guys have been really great to me You guys have been offering reviews. You've been emailing me saying it's great It's wonderful that you're doing this and I really want to appreciate that and a lot of you have been asking me You know, you know, I highlight some problems With the ocean and there's so many that you get overwhelmed and you don't know where to start You don't know what to do and you ask me for help. So I'm providing that help for you right now I have a free gift. It's essentially a PDF report. It's top 10 things or top 10 tips To get started in ocean conservation It's for just regular person a lot of its stuff that you can do at home And it's easy stuff to do. All you have to do is text to the number 3 3 4 4 4 and you just type in conserve my ocean all one word and You will get a sign up form. You can sign up put your email in and then you'll get This PDF sent to your to your inbox. So it's really easy. I had to do is dial a text To the number 3 3 4 4 4 and just type in the subject line conserve my ocean all one word and you will get this free PDF So that's sort of my gift to you because I appreciate you. I want to thank you for it And I want you guys not to feel overwhelmed when you get into conserving the ocean From an individual perspective. I want you guys to feel happy. I want you guys to feel like it's manageable Okay, so these are tangible things that you can do that are very simple Stop, you know, and it's all in the PDF. So Just just text the number 3 3 4 4 4 and text conserve my ocean and you will be even you will get that PDF So if you have any questions, of course, you can always email me It'll be on the form and we will continue from there and start that conversation The next announcement before we start my our interview is I told you I've been kind of teasing you with an announcement all summer And it's I'm taking speaker for blue as a business I want to go full-time on this business eventually so as a business, but I I'm into the social enterprise route I'm a social entrepreneur. I'm an ocean printer where I want my business to benefit the ocean So what we've done is we've actually I've actually partnered up with An organization a nonprofit organization in the US called sea turtles forever It's sea turtle org, but there'll be information on a page. I'll show them the show notes. There's going to be information on On a page basically what sea turtles forever is what they do essentially they help Manage sea turtles in various places including Costa Rica They help protect their nests from poachers. They educate Sort of people in local areas where nesting occurs so that they can do alternative things then poaching they can use They can do ecotourism, which actually Not only saves the sea turtles, but actually brings in more money for the local population Helps the sea turtles because they are endangered all sea turtles are endangered all seven species And they also have developed this really amazing Technology to take out micro plastics off beaches. It's almost like a filtration I'm almost like a big comb really and they're selling these things all over the place and people are just buying them up States are buying them up to using their parks and on their beach cleanups, but it really what this does is it's this takes out micro plastics Which is a huge problem not only for turtles, but for other animals including marine mammals like orcas And seals and sea lions and walruses and sharks and fish and all sorts of ocean animals that are having trouble with plastics Plastics can kill over a hundred thousand Species a year and I'm sure it's more than that because plastics are found everywhere So sea turtles forever mark Ward whose head sea turtles forever is out there trying to clean up these plastics and creating Technology that will also help create these plastics now the reason why I partnered with sea turtles forever is because they're a small to medium-sized organization and one of the big problems is they don't have a lot of funds coming in because they're a small organization and What I want to do is help them And because I know the work they do is great, but they don't always have the manpower or the person power I should say the person power to actually complete all these projects So speak up for blue and sea turtles forever are partnering. We're going to help them complete these projects through various programs One of these programs, which I'm going to roll out very shortly Is kind of like an ocean swag program. I'm going to be selling t-shirts hats water bottles Using spread shirt calm. It's going to have a special link just for speak up for blue We're going to have sayings on it quotes and all different types that you can buy various sizes You can buy for your all your family yourselves your kids everybody and What you're doing is you're not only raising awareness by wearing these t-shirts and swag, but you're also supporting Sea turtles forever. So what I'm going to be doing is essentially for you know There's a cost for the shirt or cost for the swag the piece of the I guess the swag piece whatever you want to call it Say it's a shirt the cost of the shirt. You'll be paying for then it's five bucks to support speak up for blue and Also, you'll be spending ten bucks to support Sea turtles forever. So that's in the cost. It's all going to be transparent So it'll be the cost of the t-shirt say or the hat or whatever you decide to buy five dollars goes to the operation of the website for me for speak up for blue and Ten dollars goes to a nonprofit organization called sea turtles forever So they can continue protecting sea turtles and protecting other wildlife from microplastics. So I'm really excited To do this because it's it's a win-win situation for everybody I can support myself and I can I can help support and you can help support an Organization like sea turtles forever and I think it's fantastic and what we're going to do as partners Speak up for blue is going to help complete these projects and we're going to document all these projects for you I'll so you can follow them along and see what we're doing It's going to be great. So there'll be a link on the show notes for this Once it's up and ready and I am so excited to bring you this I've been working on it all summer and I'm very happy to finally solidify everything and get it to you. So That's really the the big announcements for that I've been teasing about all summer and I'm really happy Let me know what you think about that you can email me At I'll leave at my email on the show notes as well the show notes for this for this episode is www dot speak up for blue dot com slash Epis or slash session 12. So it's www dot speak up for blue dot com slash session 12 And you'll see all the show notes there the links and you can email me or just put some Some comments down and let me know what you think of the podcast itself the episode and what I'm going to be doing What I'm going to be doing with the social enterprise as speak up for blue I think it's going to be a lot of fun. So without further ado I know you want to get to this this interview because I want to give it to you. So here is Dr Naomi Rose talking about wild orca's captive orca's and how and why we should get him out of captivity And enjoy the interview and I'll see you afterwards. Hi Naomi. How are you today? I'm good. Thank you for having me on. Oh, you bet. Thank you for coming on. This is something you know last week we interviewed Chris your husband and I was talking to him about marine mammals in general and especially with looking at policy and we ran over time And I was like, you know what Chris I forgot to ask you about orca's in the whole blackfish scenario and he said well I am the perfect person you need to talk to you you need to talk to my wife and I was like this is awesome I didn't know you two were married. So I was like this is fantastic. So thank you for coming on So now if I get a right you are a marine mammal science scientist for the animal welfare Institute That's correct and we're in Washington D.C. We're not of been around since 1951 this organization Okay, and just let us let us know what this organization does and what you do specifically Well, it's an advocacy organization. It's a nonprofit charity that advocates for animal protection We advocate for the protection of farm animals of laboratory animals of companion animals pets and also wildlife and so I'm in the water life section basically and I handle These days it's sort of taken over my life. I handle the welfare of captive marine mammals, but Occasionally I get involved in other issues Historically, I've been involved in a lot of other issues like the impact of marine noise on marine mammals Right the impact of whale watching on marine mammals Whaling hunting from marine mammals all sorts of hunting seal hunting whale hunting Dolphin hunting in Japan things like that. So those are all issues that I've been involved within the past the conservation of manatees I mean anything That has to do with the marine mammal including polar bears I've been very involved in the sport hunting of polar bears and trying to manage that and so This is unfortunately in some ways the the topic that Has absorbed me for the last few years is the welfare of captive marine mammals I say unfortunately simply because there's a lot of things going on out there Of course these animals and I my world has become very narrow But I do think it affects a lot of people even if it doesn't affect a lot of the animals There's only so many animals in captivity in the world, but There's tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people who go to these facilities Absolutely every year and and what they hear and what they learn and what they know based on those visits is really Important to the animals in the wild. Yes, this is one of the major conduits that people learn anything about conservation Or you know needs conservation needs. So if in fact they're being misinformed That's that's something everybody should be concerned about absolutely So, so you know, I do justify it that way in some ways You know it does have a very broad impact on people even if the number of animals being Affected as rather small. Oh absolutely and I assume that your work is is International it is I'm working in China. I'm working in Russia. I'm working in Japan. It's The Wild West out there outside of the U.S. I mean regulation and so on so I'm in China in particular Which is a huge market mm-hmm or captive marine mammals so particularly captive whales and dolphins these days, okay? We are becoming quite active in those areas now when you guys work do you work as an advocacy organization? Do you guys work with the policymakers with the government or do you tend to sort of balance between policy makers government and education of the public? We do outreach. We do a lot of policy work I work a lot with governments. Okay. I work with legislatures. I work with Executive branches. I work on regulations. I work on legislation We do investigations and it depends on on on the region on the government on the topic in particular, but I mostly work in policy these days. Okay, okay great And I would imagine working out. I mean working inside the US with the US government is probably difficult as it is I can imagine working outside the US in other countries such as China and Russia where maybe the Relationship is not as as great or even just the fact that it's a brand-new country They'd like to do it their own ways and having somebody from another place potentially the US It could be a bit of a more of difficulty. I would imagine I always work with local groups And never just go and work on my own because I don't know the country. I don't know the government I don't know what works in that culture. I always work with local NGOs So there are there are local NGOs in like Russia and China who are doing the advocating the same thing You bet it's not always as effective as it is and some more open right of course of course But they exist and they are legal and they can be effective. Okay, good to know good to know Because we don't usually deal we don't usually hear about those local groups obviously because they're local But we don't usually because Americans no offense to all of the Americans out there. I'm an American are pretty insular right but also because You know we don't hear a lot about China in general. Do you know? No, you're right. Absolutely Society it's so far. Just don't even know how to deal with it. We just turn off. Yeah, the Washington Post puts out publication every once in a while called China Watch and I suspect almost nobody what reads it, you know, it's probably not You know it I've been there Once now and I work a lot with organizations there I'm going again this fall and it is it is very different place. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely definitely I can imagine that so you know you mentioned earlier that you study or you know, you've got your PhD in You know killer whale or orca biology Why did you choose orca's to study? Well, I decided when I was a kid when I was 13 years old and I wanted to study marine mammals I specifically loved dolphins, but you know like 13 year old doesn't of course and so I told my parents that and I thought that was really cute Yeah, but I was very serious. I grew up in the Midwest. So it was even stranger. Yeah But I was very serious and I did a lot of extracurricular things whenever I could that were related to that I did it back go to SeaWorld when I was 15 Because I wanted to see them marine mammals there and I don't recall not thinking it was great. I'm sure I thought it was great. Oh, yeah But I also did like summer school and whatever I could do that was like coral reef biology or intertidal biology or anything I had to do with marine environment even though I was up until I was 15 I was living in the Midwest and then when I was 15 we moved to California and And then I went to school in an inland school as a college student because I didn't want to over specialize as an undergraduate I had this clear idea that I needed a strong background in biology even then and so I actually went to an inland school on purpose, but I did do again extracurricular things that had to do with marine Biology and again not marine mammals in particular coral reef biology and things like that then when I went to graduate school I Deliberately chose a school that I knew had a very strong marine mammal program and I still didn't know I wanted to study killer whales That was not necessarily the species. I was focused on I was just hoping that something would come up I didn't really have a clear idea of what I even wanted to study in terms of the topic of my thesis or anything like that of course when I got to the University of California at Santa Cruz and there were a lot of options there were a lot of things going on and You know and I spent the first year. I was there just sort of trying to determine What my options were and then this project studying killer whales up in British Columbia just sort of fell into my lap I inherited it from a student who was finishing his Ph.D. And so it was just self-dippity was Just an amazing stroke of serendipity. Actually, and and that sort of did that kind of help you I mean you probably knew about or because at the time did that sort of help that connection with or because I would imagine studying marine Mammals as a graduate student and you're going out in the field and you're seeing these mammals you do Like I find anytime I see a marine mammal you get this emotional connection like right off the bat You see their behavior. You see the size. You see how they how they react Did you get that right away? You know considering you grew up thinking you were gonna go the first time I went into the field. I was absolutely Just gobsmacked. I mean I I couldn't believe how Big they were and how close they were and I wasn't even that close. I just yeah, of course you generally get and And just how beautiful of where I was I was up in Johnson Strait off the coast of Vancouver Island and it's just the most amazing place and so the first year I was up there the first summer the first field season I was up there was somebody's assistant but the Researcher the the graduate student whose project I inherited right and I basically learned all the ropes I learned how to run the boat I learned how to set up camp and all of these things and I just couldn't believe it. It was just so It's truly an amazing place. It's yeah legal. It's got theirs. It's got cougars It's got orcas It's got yeah, white-sided dolphins. It has all sorts of things are and just the intertidal zone is the born most magnificent in the world Oh, it has a 17-foot tide, you know And so you just sorts of things exposed at low tide and so I was just Thrilled to be there, but I still believe it or not that season did not know what I was going to study It wasn't until the period in between my first field season and my second When I really started getting an idea that I wanted to follow male killer whales because the social structure Of the animals is so unusual right the males live with their mothers for their whole life and that's just pretty much Not common and so my second field season where I was Co-investigator with another graduate student who was fishing finishing up her work Gave me a chance to do some pilot testing of my you know data collection methods and things like that and it turned out to be viable And so the third season I went up there. I was all my own and I was actually taking all my own data with Research systems of my own and that went on for the next three seasons That must have been some I am assuming that happened in the spring and summer. That must have been amazing Yeah, you go up a lot back then things have changed of course Sort of things shifting not just because of climate change, but because of salmon farming right sort of weird stuff is going on with the Seapens up there with the salmon pens Loose and disease and all sorts of weird stuff But the season used to be from late May until say mid Temple early October now. It doesn't even get starved until August hot prior to All of that happening, you know, yeah, we would go up early June and stay there for nine to ten weeks. Yeah, and Yeah, first of all, just you know the fact that it's almost Midnight Sun up there and not quite you know, it's yeah, of course three or four hours of darkness. That was weird Yeah, yeah I did a summer in the Arctic doing rain mammal observing a couple a couple summers in a row and going from 23 hours of Sun To eight hours of Sun that transition is is is quite phenomenal. Yeah, so now you you you spend a lot of time in In the water with them or or on a boat with them You got to see how they behave see their structure You got to see what's affecting them and you kind of mentioned it just just now What are the major issues affecting or wild orcas? It depends on the population, of course, okay There are a lot of them in the Southern Ocean and I think those whales are doing the best out of all of the populations because They're just because they're they're away from people. The environment there is still comparatively speaking pristine obviously It's not right but it's being affected less by certain things like boat traffic and pollution Climate change is is hitting the Arctic harder than the Antarctic, although it is of course also affecting the Antarctic and so The Southern Ocean orcas seem to be doing relatively well And then the far north orcas like the ones that are in Alaska seem to be doing relatively well They are probably being impacted in some ways by climate change, but it's not necessarily negative Okay, remember there are going to be some species that actually benefit from climate Right. Not saying orcas are among them, but they don't though I just have to tell you a piece of paper on the longevity and the survival statistics of Alaska orcas They're immortal. I mean, they just don't die the same rate that other orcas do populations Bizarrely enough from the ages of 10 to 15 Alaskan orcas pretty much don't die. They have like a point four percent mortality rate And I mean like less than one percent right is that again because they're so far north that you know I don't really know I'm assuming they're so far north and because remember even for us like the wild salmon runs In Alaska are doing better than the wild salmon. I was about to say that food sources probably And so their food source is apparently doing better. And so they're doing better But in a lot of places what you're seeing is for example prey problems In the Pacific Northwest, so we're talking the Puget Sound Southern residents and the Johnson Strait Northern residents They are seeing crashes in the salmon runs and there was a really bad crash in Chinook salmon a few years back. And Chinook is their preferred prey I mean, they only eat salmon for the most part I mean they do occasionally take other species, but it's rare and not only do they prefer salmon, but they prefer Chinook salmon So they're really very specific. It's it's it's cultural right and this is something that I think people have a hard time believing about killer whales, but it's a lot of tooth sedations to whales and dolphins. They have culture and in the case of killer whales, they actually part of their cultural differences is what they prefer to eat. So you've got orcas that are marine mammal eaters, the transients and the southern animals and then you've got fish eaters and then you have salmon eaters and you have herring eaters and you have mackerel eaters And and and and then you have apparently shark eaters, you know and yeah, whatever they're taught to eat Yeah by their mothers is what they prefer to eat and so it's gotten to the point almost ridiculous point in the Pacific Northwest where they prefer for each Chinook. So when the Chinook crash It's very difficult for them. Just like it would be really really hard for us to eat Cockroaches or something like that. Yeah, for sure delicacy in Africa It's really hard for them to eat something that they weren't raised eating And so some of them actually ended up dying because of that, you know They could have switched to something else, but they just culturally weren't capable of doing it And so there was this drop in survivorship in that population both of those populations They just went through a period of real difficulty And then the salmon came back and they've been the runs have been pretty decent for a few years and they the orcas did too Yeah, so pray problems pray availability is I think problem and several different populations They are top predators and so they tend to bioaccumulate toxins and contaminants in the case of the southern residents Again, the ones off Puget Sound They qualify as toxic waste when they die. They're so contaminated that blubber Of course a lot of these chemicals are lipophilic. They like blubber. They bond to blubber and If they're males for example, then they never offload That that burden that toxic burden whereas females when they lactate they mobilize the fat You know, and they and they make milk and then they dump it on the kids and so the first born calf in almost all of these populations die the first born cow wilds because that Then the second calf and the third calf do a bit better because the mother only Accumulates so many toxins in between the first and second or horse She's got a lifetime's load to dump on the first calf, but then after that, you know It's a shorter accumulation period and so the subsequent calves tend to be better This is true for bottomless dolphins. It's true for a lot of species Top predators. I assume that urban environments, you know, right? Solutions problem interestingly enough Entanglement in fishing gear, which is a real problem for a lot of other species. It's not so much a problem for organs It does happen. It's not like they're immune to it but whether it's because they're slightly smarter or just so big or just their habits and their behavior allow them to avoid nets more They don't seem to become entangled in fishing gear as much as a Spinner and spotted dolphins do out in the open ocean They have been known to depredate on hook and line type fisheries. Oh, really? Sable fish. Oh, yeah, the sable fish fishery up in Alaska. Just they'll be pulling in the fish and the orcas and sperm Well, they're just taking them off the line Which doesn't throw the fishermen no I can imagine they do get in fact shot Periodically by fishermen who are trying to react to that for the most part the fishermen don't do that They actually like orcas. Everybody likes orcas found. They're just such a charismatic animal So they don't shoot them as often as you might think they might want to right of course But they you still get the occasional animal being shot by a fisherman who's just frustrated by the fact that right now I've taken their fish off the line now. These animals. They don't get caught on the Learn behavior. Yeah, they don't get caught on the hooks though. They just apparently, you know only periodically like probably once in a while They small thing, but generally speaking they are smart. I was about to say I can see them figuring it out. Yeah, it's They're freaky weird smart. Yeah, it's another thing that I find and we'll get to this I know, but it's another thing that I find really dismaying about the way sea world handles them They don't give them anywhere near the credit. They should give them for the brains that they have and So yeah, they actually figure out how to take the fish off They you know the fishermen will be pulling in the lines and all they'll find is ahead with the hook still in the mouth And the body of the fish is gone, you know, so and that actually can be really annoying to a human being for sure outter as you know, John Lilly put her mind in the water, you know, that is as smart as we are in some ways, you know, that was you know, That actually causes, you know, human beings to just like react and sometimes very negatively. Yeah We sort of are defending our species or something, you know, or uniqueness Our mind is one of our brain is one of our unique features and and we feel like we have to defend it or something it is pretty funny to me how Aggravated some people get at smart mammals. Mm-hmm. This is true for sea lions and yeah other species as well Yeah, they know what it's smart mammals. It's one of the reasons I think that we're so virulently Reactive against a wolves, right? They're smart. They're smart. Well, look even even look at even the raccoons. Yeah. Oh, yeah Insane. Yeah, so so, you know, orcas, you know, get some of that but they are protected to a certain extent at least in recent times because they are so charismatic of course and People do get upset another whole segment of society gets upset when they find out that they've been shot or anything. Yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, it I would say the biggest problem they have is food shortage, right? Second problem is pollution By accumulation of toxins contaminants third would be Fisheries interaction so not just entanglement and gear but these these depredation experiences, right? And then more recently this is the very recent like within the last three years Russia has started capturing them for public display again and That is very specific to the sea of a cults and we hope it doesn't spread again, right anywhere else It used to be in the US. It used to be in Iceland and now it's in Russia and it's a very recent development and so far they've taken about 13 or 14 Wow So we're hoping we can nip this in the bud, but they've done a lot of damage in a very short Well, okay, so you say 13 and 14 how many I Know it might be hard to estimate just off the top of your head, but how many in a say in a pod? how many would be Present like how many individuals would be in a well one of the reasons why this trade is so disturbing the fact that it's got started up Again in Russia is almost nothing is known about the population they're targeting right? So I can't answer your question right it does seem to be that there they are transients that is they eat marine mammals Which is really stupid Express to you as stupid it is to be capturing transients for public display. Yeah, you can only hope that nobody ever falls in the water Yeah, that's true but aside from that They they know it's nothing about them. They don't know how many there are they don't know how big the group sizes are So in answer to your question that could have been one whole pod that could have been One animal from 14 pence. I have no idea right and there's still populations that we find is that true that? We don't really know a lot about and I believe there's one That that stays deep near is it is it Mexico? I don't know about that. I'm not sure what you're talking about But for example in where I was doing my work, right? I was up there for a total of seven years, you know five years doing my data collection But so a couple years just for fun, and I want to see it friends and things like that and in all that time up through 1992 All we knew about were the southern residents and the northern residents and that was the study started in 1973 so 20 years all we knew about were the northern residents and southern residents and people were up there every year every summer blanketing Both the north and southern northern and southern ends of their range and then suddenly and I think it was 1993 the year after I stopped These other whales show up called the offshores There were a lot of them right probably as many as they were in the northern and southern resident populations they seem to eat feed on sharks although that's not been determined for a fact, but it's a Seems to be the case and and they just come in periodically and then they leave again And not seen again for a while So that's why the offshores because they seem to live off shore sure and periodically come in shore But how did they hide for 20 years? So, you know, basically there's still so much we don't know right these animals The best studied populations are the northern and southern residents in the Pacific Northwest The Alaskans have been well studied but only again the last 20 years since the 80s, right? There's been some good work done on the north on the southern hemisphere in Patagonia Okay, those are the whales that pull the seals and the sea lines off the beach, which has been filmed. I mean it's pretty dramatic Yeah, and then we're starting to learn a lot about the southern ocean Whales and that's mostly new stuff. For example, we just learned that the at least one Eco type you call them, you know, the transcend the north residents are so they're 10 eco types And there probably are many more, but they're gonna know about and so one of the eco types in the southern ocean is known to migrate from From where it normally lives in in off of the coast of Antarctica all the way up to the southern tip of South America and back again in 40 days It travels night that the animals travel 9,000 kilometers in 40 days and you ask, well, why why are they? That and it turns out they leave and they're covered with Diatoms and they look kind of yellow or brown if you've ever seen a picture of one of them, okay? They actually look dirty, right? All the white parts of the body are like yellowy Mustard colored they look terrible. They look sick, right? It's just you know, it's just a diatomaceous sort of growth on their skin They leave for this bizarre 9,000 mile epic journey and they come back 40 days later and they're shining weight So the hypothesis is that they go to warmer waters to molt Because in the cold waters which are near freezing of their normal range It's too cold for them to molt the physiological process doesn't happen when it's that cold Yeah, because it's near freezing and of course the skin which is in contact with the water They keep their body core warm, but you know, their skin is quite cold Just it won't it won't shut the skin, right? They have to go North to the warmer water just to have a bath right and they come back and and you know Whether they're feeding, you know, obviously their prey preferences are in the in the south and so whether they feed it all while they're doing this epic journey Nobody knows it was from a tagging exercise and and now they've seemed like free animals do it so clearly it's yeah It's obviously a trend and it's interesting to do that I mean if you think about it to travel 9,000 miles for food I'm sorry. I'm sorry 9,000 kilometers for food South and then back again north just just to molt and then come back again. I mean it must be Going 4,500 kilometers north. Yeah, to mold right then 4,500 kilometers back south to eat because That's where they normally live and again just to You know think about that evolution of that. Yeah, you know, they live in the south at all I mean if they have to go forth just to mold and and take all that effort just mold why why don't they just move nor you know Right, right, you know, we don't know, you know history is but so there's still so many things So we don't understand about these animals what we know about social structure Like history traits and so on are from the Pacific Northwest populations, right some from Norway right a little bit from the North Atlantic now, okay, and again the North Atlantic is completely different than what's going on in the Pacific Northwest in the south the North Atlantic's feet on herring and mackerel they are very much cooperative feeders they In circle a herring ball. They make a herring ball They actually force the fish into a ball Wow and then they go through it thumping them with their tails and then the rest of the group feeds on this stunned fish and then the Thumper takes a break and somebody else becomes a thumper and then the original thumper gets to eat so very cooperative Hunting and this is all been filmed underwater with a visibility and always pretty good sometimes and So yeah, just the huge variety of cultures there is but it now Are there any commonalities among these populations that we found like in terms of you mentioned earlier the social structures where the the females dominate is that a Commonality throughout each population. Do you know? No, really? I think the Essential dependency period is commonality. Okay by ten years. Okay, so Young killer whale will stay with his or her mother for a minimum of ten years in some populations they then Dispers right they know enough to be a competent adult and they disperse Males usually courses as is often the case right, but even females for example in the transit population Which is symmetric in the same geographic location as the residents in the sift Northwest The transients are often seen as singletons. You'll see one male or one female And then that very same male will be seen two years later with his mother So the fact is is that he disperses from her in time But not in space because they share the same home range and periodically they get back together. Wow And so they do recognize family for life. They don't travel with family for life whereas in the residents They are with family like side-by-side with family for life. I'm in the North Atlantic. They seem to do the same. They have these long-term family bonds But not necessarily in the South Southern Ocean. They don't seem to Have such long-term family bonds. They tend to and again, it may be a transient resident thing because the Southern Ocean whale seemed to be transients if you don't really know say wash seals off of ice and things like that, right, right? So and that may be a function of group size. There was a study done on the on the Group size differences and some transients and residents and it seemed to be that Smaller group size and transients made for more efficient mammal hunting Whereas larger group size and residents was not so much a problem because they've been on salmon and salmon are dumb and don't know the difference. So for example This is something I observed myself Marine mammals in the Pacific Northwest respond completely differently to residents than they do to transients They will swim among residents. They will harass residents. They will Surface right amongst a bunch of residents. And this is these are species that are prey to the transients. Yeah, they totally know the difference They know the difference whereas One time I saw a minky whale just running. I mean you can imagine a whale running right right it's going as fast as I've ever Seen a rock will go and work was can go pretty fast, right? I mean it was going so fast. It was leaving awake and I'm just like in my little boat watching this Mickey whale go by and then about 10 minutes later a bunch of transients came through at normal speed So clearly this Mickey was aware that the transients were in the air and was just running for us getting out of it And so these are species that are prey to the transients and Recognize the difference between transients and residents. That's unreal. Yeah completely differently to them. That's unreal So, you know, whatever is and that's probably acoustic. Yeah, also a girl. Yeah, um, they also look different to us So they most certainly will look different to other mammals whose lives depend on noticing course, of course So, um, and the differences are not easily discerned by then the layperson by the naive eye But to the trained eye, you know, I can tell a transient from a resin just in the photograph, right? So, um, these are things that obviously prey are gonna be really really tuned into so yeah, it's it's uh I would say there's well, there's 10 eco types. So there's at least 10 cultures right there But I think there's probably 20 30 different. Yeah, you assume that there'd be more because since we don't they're so mysterious. That's unreal Now let's change the subject to something um, I mean this is it's so interesting I wanted to get a good background of these part of the different populations and and the orcas in general Because I think it has to do with a lot of what we're about to talk about and that is orcas and captivity And this is I mean, obviously the movie blackfish has really kind of blown this out of the water You know, no pun intended, but really Like they took back the veil Of of all the mysteries behind captive whales and in general captain marine mammal captive marine mammals And really just kind of blew it open for everybody and of course as you know well people really respond emotionally to anything that Happens that's a good thing that happens to marine mammals or even bad things that happen to marine mammals um and people as well Give us your take on on blackfish And just and and maybe give like a summary of of what it was just so that the all my audience can kind of Understand what it was and what the purpose of it in your interpretation was and then we'll talk about that Let me go back um two years um from that because I think it's important that well three years from that because I think it's an A quick important for people to understand that this didn't start with blackfish this started with the death of a trainer Right, um in February of 2010 a woman named dawn brancho who was 40 years old and she was a long time trainer and sea world was killed by um the largest Orca in captivity anywhere. I mean he's 12 000 pounds. His name is tillicom and uh at the time he killed her he was roughly 30 years old And um she'd been his trainer his head trainer his lead trainer for six years So she'd been a trainer for more than 16 years and she'd been tillicom's trainer his lead trainer for six years Um and and he killed her and that means they have a bond right when it's like when six years late trying to do I'm not going to get into that too much because I don't really understand how much you can bond with a wild animal Gotcha. Um, but certainly um they are smart and they are social and I know that people form bonds with dogs at right of course You know domesticated animals. Yeah, and even wolves and you know elephants and species that we keep in captivity and train and things like that and so um Trainers tell me they form a bond. Yeah, okay, but You know you need to take that with a grain of salt because the trainer um knows what he or she wants from the animal, but they don't really know the animal right and the animal can't communicate What it wants right? Okay, and so, um, it is an imperfect bond At best. We are far better at understanding dogs for example because we bred them to be in humans We understand what it means when they wag their tail and when they flatten their ears and when they bear their teeth and when they growl And when they go down on all fours and when they you know jump up on you and yeah, we understand all of those very simple Um behavioral signals because we bred them into the animals. Yeah, yeah, we selected for good We selected for them. It's artificial selection is what domestication is all about right we selectively uh breed them to develop certain traits that we desire and that's a very interesting take on sort of artificial selection natural selection. We are shaping just as nature adapts species to the current environment We are shaping and adapting these animals to live with us Um, it's one of the reasons cats are so different than dogs because we haven't done much artificial selection of cats Gotcha on purpose I mean we just we got them to where we needed them so that they got months and whatever and then we stopped and and so they're actually much closer to their wild Sells then dogs are dogs. We bred the hell out of them. Yeah, turn them into poodles and Yeah, um, and so These animals are not domesticated and I've heard that term used in their in reference to them and that is it is wrong It is incorrect. They are tamed There's no selective breeding going on. They're they're glad when they just get pregnant They're happy when there's any breeding at all. So they they have not selected for any traits whatsoever for the facility for size for anything Okay, so other than their nurture They are exactly the same as their wild brethren. Okay. Okay, except they're kind of mixed up now. They've bred transients with residents. They've bred Um, northern hemisphere with southern hemisphere. They've bred atlantic with pacific They've messed up the genes all over the place. So this is not conservation breeding. This is just this hoping that they have any Yeah, and that's and that's probably a function of not really knowing much about the species and how they breed and how they how they how this The species itself selects even back when they first started successfully breeding them, which was in 1985 Which wasn't too long ago. I think we knew enough about conservation breeding to know that gotcha Mixing populations. Yeah, not a good idea. Yeah, right. Yeah for sure Conservation breeding. No, um, and so yeah, no, but again, you're right They didn't know as much in 1985 as we do now, but it was you know, it wasn't 1970 Right neural for sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So anyway, um, so yeah, there's been no selective breeding going on they just in fact tilicum is the father of 12 to 13 and the current Um, captive bred animals at sea well to his genes are as as not I put it But one of the docents at sea well put it his genes are overrepresented in the pool And so without a doubt and this is this is a dangerous animal. He's killed free people. Yeah, not ston branch Are you killed two people before that? Again, not exactly kosher breeding You know, you don't take a dangerous pit bull and breed him, you know as a stud, you know in a puppy mill So, um something weird is going on here and if you want to know what it is It's just they're trying to make babies at all. They just want any successful breeding whatsoever And so they don't really care what the rules are they they hide the rules. Yeah, the stud book for killer whales um is not available to Association of zoo and aquarium members The stud book for every other species is available to association of zoo and aquarium members You can get the beluga stud book. You can get the bottom most often stud book You can get the wolf stud book the elephant stud book You can't get to see the killer well stud book because sea well holds it Wow, and you you know, it's on behalf of the asa day that they hold it, but they do not make it available Why is that why do you think that is? because there's Tillicums jeans are overrepresented in the pool and they've had incest and there's a lot of inbreeding going on and they're trying to hide it Gotcha. So, you know, these are things that, you know Sea wolves is hiding from you. I mean, um People still don't understand this sort of information is not transparent and that it's unusual That if not be transparent. Yeah, um, these are the sorts of things that I when I look at I'm like, you know No matter what sea well tells me in public. I don't believe them. Mm-hmm because I happen to know about things that are not so public that Don't Conform with what they're saying. Yeah, um a lot of this came out And the reason I happen to know this unit like well, how do you know this if they're keeping it secret? Well, they're not actually keeping it secret. They're just not publicly disseminating it Yeah, um the way you find out about the stuff is when things like Don Brancho was killed when things like that happened They um were cited by the occupational safety and health administration for her death And they challenged it in court And that was the first time they ever went to court over anything every other time there was a lawsuit involving sea well They settled out of court and the reason was because they were afraid of discovery Discovery is the process where pretty much everything every email every memo that you ever wrote has to be turned over to the court As part of the administrative record room. Yeah, and that process was crazy Yeah, and they regret it to this day and things like allowing a mother to mate with her son Really? Which is a level of incest that never occurs in the long right um Came out because they had to release animal records where this I was revealed and it was a mistake. They didn't mean for it to happen. But my point is well That's not the kind of mistake. No, he yeah, that's a big mistake And it turned out that the reason it happened was because they kept a son Um in the same tank as his mother until he was 12 Which is he was sexually mature by that point and he made it with her because he didn't know any better and she didn't know any better Um when asked and this did get asked at a public meeting Um one of the seawalled representatives simply said well, we didn't think it would happen And i'm like Why would you not think it would happen? They are normal socially they have none of the traditional cultural Behavioral mechanisms to put breaks on incest. It does not happen anymore. Can I ask a question on that? Do you think it's because and i'm not making an excuse for them, but do you think it's because and I got this from from from blackfish The people that worked at seaworld were not familiar with What like the sort of the intricacies of wild orcas? It seemed like the trainers anyway Did not have and I don't want to bring down the trainers, but they didn't have a marine biology degree They didn't have they didn't know of and to their own admission. They didn't know about orcas Um for years. I was and again. This is something that um came out because of Don branches death and the ocean hearing the discovery process For years. I had been saying that trainers at seaworld knew almost nothing about orcas as a species Because almost none of them had ever even seen a wild orca and I was saying that based on my own personal gut feeling about conversations i've had with some trainers Uh, they seem to have and then just walk listening to them talk about killer whales On the news when some happy slappy story about tourism came on and they would talk about orcas in a way that just didn't sound right to me And it just occurred to me over the years and I would say I would eat it I don't think any of these trainers have ever seen a wild whale and I would just say it like that I don't think well turns out it's true. Yeah, um the vast majority of trainers have never seen a wild whale and um in fact on one of seaworld's pr Commercials that they've done right as part of their post blackfish defense They've done a huge pr campaign and there's a psa out there on on youtube and whatnot And one of the trainers just opened the says that well I've never seen a killer whale in the wild, but I can tell you what the killer whales are like here at seaworld And she's a senior trainer and she's talking to the public and she says it in a way that she doesn't sound she doesn't hear That what she's admitting to is actually mind boggling. Yeah Okay, if you don't know what the animals like in the wild then you cannot anticipate what that animal might do in captivity And that is precisely what happened Yeah, yeah, they never thought telecomm would do that. Yeah Why in the world would they think that he killed two people before? Yeah Why in the world would they allow their trainers to get as close as our rancher was that day Now they don't they say 10 feet back in telecomm, but that's because they've been ordered to buy. No. No, it's because they're terrified of them right they Two feet back from all the other whales because they've been ordered to oh, I see Because OSHA the OSHA citation was upheld in court Gotcha So they now have to keep a safe distance two feet is not safe incidentally, but that's right What they do And they don't do water work anymore and that also was because of the OSHA citation They never did water work with telecomm and you saw how close she was the day she died. She was hugging him She was kissing him. She was yeah They now do not approach him within 10 feet Wow, he has not been touched by a human hand except when he's beached in the medical pool since she died They when they when they pet him. Yeah, they use the fire hose They use the fire hose to get him tactile stimulation They are terrified. Yeah, right. So thankfully finally because nobody else is going to finally learn to stay away I can't tell you based on what I've seen and I've been to see well several times um since Don branch had died To keep an eye on telecomm to see what's going on there Um, I don't think he's ever going to kill anybody else. They're never going to get close enough to give him a chance Right, and I I think that's sad for telecomm. It's heart rate or telecomm But at least nobody else is going to die. Yeah, but how many people did it take before they figured that out three? Yeah Okay And then there's a fourth person who died and he often has forgotten Alexis Martinez was killed only nine weeks before it on branch denied Wow, and single did nothing That was their whale Their trainer was supervising the training session It was not their trainer Right. He was a trainer for Loro pocket, which is the facility where seabold had sent their whales Yeah, but he was being supervised by seabold trainer Right, and he was killed and their response to that was oh god. That would never happen here And then nine weeks later it happened in nine weeks later one of their trainers was killed And again that would never happen here. Well, it was their whales that had been born and raised in their facilities And it was Their supervisor who was supervising the training session So everything that was happening at Loro pocket that day was just like seabold Was seabold whales So why in the world would they think that would never happen here? Yeah Well, it's just it's just it's play on the ignorance and hope it'll ever happen Basically and again what came out during the ocean hearing which I attended um, it was nine days Nine nine thrilling days And um, I spent eight of those days in court with with seabold testifying to try to defend itself and basically They honestly believe that they know these animals well enough to predict what they're going to do 99.9 percent of the time Unreal and the reason that's such a strange thing for them to believe is that the whales actually don't do what they're told a lot of the time I would say 70 Not well, 70 to 80 percent of the time they do what they're told and 20 to 30 percent of the time They don't do what they're told and it's not because they don't they have a nearly 100 Accuracy like in terms of understanding what they're being asked Sometimes don't want to when they don't do it. It's because they don't want to do it Right Seabold will tell you that these animals don't do anything they don't want to do and that's actually true Yeah, who a certain extent? Yeah And so it actually happens far more often than the public is even aware You know, you'll go to a seabold show I don't know if you've ever been to I actually have yeah But I don't know whether this happened during your seabold show. It's happened in a couple times when I find school They'll be this weird moment in the show where nothing happens like like the trainers are running around and the music is playing and the whales are sort of Desperately swimming around and you're like What happened? Yeah, it's the next trick and back when they were in the water You know, nobody's in the water and you're like wondering what what's going on in the show spring to your neighbor and and Now when they don't do any water work, you just it's really weird because it's nothing. Yeah, there's nothing going on. Yeah, and now Suddenly the show starts again. That's because somebody didn't do what they were told It happens a lot people don't even know because they're very good at sort of yeah glossing over the glitch And sometimes they'll leave them go. Oh, well shabby is just not in the mood to play today They'll actually say that yeah part of the script. They actually have that As I was like an alternative. Yeah, it's a contingency script line that they tell that they speak when when chambers I'm doing what she's told And so that actually does happen a lot more than people know and so they actually can't predict What the animals going to do? 99.9 percent of the time they can only predict what the animals going to do 70 to 80 percent of the time and the only difference is that most of those Times they go what's called off behavior. They don't do anything dangerous They just go off and play with the goal or they just turn their head away and don't pay any attention or they squirrel You know, they just aren't distracted. It's not dangerous But far more often again than people know and it came again. It came out in the ocean here and far more often people know It does result in something dangerous Either potentially dangerous where the trainer had to jump back right quick to avoid being pulled in for example Or in fact resulting in injury. Yeah And so People have been injured trainers have been injured by these whales Far more often than the public is aware And one of the things see what like to say especially during the ocean hearing Was that we've had millions of interactions with our whales and only Yeah, x number of injuries. Let's bring it down to a percentage that you know is compared like not That way the millions of interactions they've had with their whales with no injury When you look at it that way it comes down to like point zero zero zero three percent or something However SeaWorld is only had 65 whales Ever in its collection while caught in cap to bore 65 whales. That's all it ever had and Most of them have injured somebody So that's nearly a 100% failure rate when you look at it that way. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, now because we start recalling cars After there have been two accidents that have killed people. Yeah We we call 3 million cars that have been driven 300 million miles or whatever it is right We don't Calculate the risk based on how many miles the cars have been driven we calculate the risk that based on how many cars have killed how many people And we consider it unacceptable as a society when point zero zero three percent of the cars have been involved in fatal accidents We're talking a double digit failure rate. Yeah these whales Talking about 65 whales that have injured. I think it's something like 25 people. Yeah at seaWorld. That's a double digit failure rate Okay As a society we'd never accept that in cars. I don't understand why we accept it in the models Well, and especially when you're dealing with a wild animal that's that's essentially The top predator in the ocean like arguably the top predator The reasons they failed in court and why the uh, ocean Citation was upheld because what it came down to for the judge and for the judge the the panel the appeals panel And this is sort of a very simplistic way of looking at it, but it's also I think pretty accurate Big way a little person Not smart. No, why would you go into the water when you're not? Competent in the yeah, we're very awkward in the yeah for sure and they are of course supreme. Yes. It's water Why would you go into the water when you are 150 pounds and the whale is 12,000 pounds? Why would you do? No for sure it doesn't and um the trainers, especially the elite trainers like Don Brancia They believe they were invincible. Mm-hmm. They're bottomed with these animals was was so strong They believed in all of them. Mm-hmm. And it's Because they didn't know anything about wild whales They were basically being told this by their employers and who did have some experience with wild whales They caught them from the wild back in the day And they believed what they were told this is where it came down to you know, you know, yeah, you could argue they're stupid Yeah, but I think that's fair. They were I mean, there's a lot of stupid people out there Yeah, yeah for sure because they still love seawall. They still love the whales at seawall So basically it's I think it's more fair to just say they were being misled and that's what the court decided it was um They they they downgraded it from a wilful Which is you did on purpose to a serious Because you should have known better. Yeah. Yeah, I still think it should have been wilful But I was pretty happy with serious because yeah, they absolutely shouldn't know better. Yeah Well now we now we discussed a lot about sort of the the safety for the trainers and the health of the trainers, which is a big issue obviously Because anytime any human gets hurt in these interactions. It's it's it shouldn't happen again You should learn from the mistakes and and correct them Let's talk about the health and welfare of the actual orcas Um and marine mammals in general, but specifically orcas in these in these tanks for this amount of time You're a scientist you specialize in orcas With all the science studies that you know that you've read Is is captive and people have made this assumption that captive orcas are healthy and safe Is that true from a scientific standpoint? No And why is that probably several species of wildlife that By nature by their nature are um incompatible with confinement They are not suited to captivity constitutionally genetically behaviorally socially Um at the top of that list in my opinion are killer whales, but bliss includes elephants um primates and these Concerns have become more and more mainstream with other species Like the fact that elephants do not thrive in captivity is very much a mainstream concern now Right and a lot of zoos like the detroit zoo are facing them out. They just Look at whether brothers just did they're toronto abzu did it where I live toronto. They just did it as well. Yeah, they did it as well and so orcas are even worse Because unlike elephants which are wide-ranging that are vivorous Killer whales are wide-ranging and carnivorous. Mm-hmm. So they they have to hunt. Yeah, it's what they are adapted to do. They are Crazy smart. Yeah, and if they don't get to sort of exercise they're crazy smart They'll come up with some way. Yeah, keep cells amused and this is how the trainers put it in blackfish They'll come up with some way to keep themselves amused and it's not going to be pretty no and Many times like I said there have been over 100 dangerous incidents at sea world prior to dawn branches death Since her death had been far fewer because they don't get in the water anymore, right? But Fact is is that when these whales get bored They've got lots of brain power to come up with something to keep themselves amused. Yeah, and um and so it is ludicrous to assume that you can predict what they're going to do with any kind of certainty Unlike a machine. Okay, so OSHA is used to dealing with machines, right? You know, they're basically you know making sure that employees are safe in the workplace when it comes to big Machines in factories or you know right robot arms or you know chemical, you know discharge and stuff like that And they go in there and they expect to see how often this machine, you know eat somebody's arm, right, right, right? These are not machines. No, these are thinking beings and crazy smart thinking beings smarter than dogs and believe me sea world likens them to dogs all the time and it drives me and A there are many reasons why they are smarter than dogs, but one of them is Dogs are domesticated animals that need bread to be our companions. These are not our pets. Yeah So crazy smart not machines they think You just don't want to get in the water with that. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, you know, and the fact is in the wild They've never been recorded killing a human being Ever they're called killer whales because they kill other whales. Yeah, not because they killed people there is no record anywhere in History of a killer whale killing a human being not in all of the legends of the native americans not in Any mariners logbook shirts. Yes. All sorts of other things. Yes, even um A bomb nose dolphin has killed a human being. Yeah, okay Orca's none. Yes, they attacked people But they broke off the attack as soon as they realized it wasn't just a seal or it wasn't a sea lion They actually seem to be very conservative in nature. It's why for example I've pointed out earlier these whales were actually dying from starvation because they wouldn't switch their diet. Yeah It's almost like they're stubborn in which there was what they keep doing Yeah, and so when they're presented with a novel stimulus like a person falling overboard in the boat They're like, I don't know what that is and they avoid it. Right. I had a very crazy research assistant jump in the water ones Ahead of the residents coming down the street He knew they were coming. We had it on the radio and he actually jumped in the water It's freezing cold by the way. Of course and he was treading water waiting for the whales to come They could actually see them. I'm up on 150 foot foot. I can see them coming They they were they were very active all the way down the straight They were sort of at the surface chasing salmon all the way down the street All the way down the straight they get close to where I can see them and they dive and they disappear And I'm seeing my research assistant treading water down there. All of a sudden they come up Way past him So they avoid them on the water they could hear him treading water and they were like, I don't know Salmon and they didn't want to know what it was Yeah, and they avoided it, which was my research assistant. They avoided the stimulus So they appear to be very very conservative. They don't actually explore the unknown They're not adventurers and explorers the way human beings like to think of themselves as they're extremely conservative and obviously every once in a while you get a maverick who goes out and decides to try lingon cod or sharks, you know, but basically sticks to the sticks to the recipe for the most part. And so, you know What is happening in captivity is messing with it. Yeah, it's badly And so you've got four dead people and dozens of injuries Whereas in the wild you've got no dead people and a couple of minor injuries. Yeah Well, and in blackfish they really focus on the injuries that the whales do to each other too from being so confined Yeah, I mean, okay. So getting back to your question like what happens to the whales? Yeah, I think the biggest problem is confinement It's self space right the space. Yeah Um, these are wide-ranging ocean predators and seriously you've got to look at sea worlds Complex the salmon stadium complex from the air to really recognize how small it is Right because you can see the animals in the tanks Drones have been making these flyovers and you can really see it. Oh, yeah The animals are in enclosures that are pretty much at most 10 to 12 feet as long as they are Eight to 10 times as wide as they are and Four to five times as deep as they are And that's the biggest wow And how many whales would be in that that oh at sea world? San Diego there are 11 whales In the shamu complex. It's actually the smallest of the three shamu complexes The most the shamu stadium in san Antonio is bigger and it only has six whales only and then the um shamu stadium at uh, uh, Orlando has seven and In in at sea world, they're not even that deep. They're about 30 feet deep and these whales are 20 feet long. Yeah So the only one and a half times is deep as they animals are wrong So you're asking this wide-ranging predator. Yeah cooperative foraging hunting predator to function in a box Yeah And The way I like to ask people to try to empathize, you know, isn't the bathtub analogy because clearly it's bigger than a bathtub Um, it's you are in a white-colored prison And you don't actually get to go out to the yard You have to live in your cell Yeah, you get no yard time you get chess and Tetris and you know you can get even a playstation, you know, yeah, but you can't leave Bringing you three good meals a day. You've got a couple of books. Maybe even yeah And that's it. No, not I'm talking two books. Yeah, and in fact, I don't think Orca's have any books right? Yeah, anything that's culturally relevant. Yeah, and so um You are asking them to live in this room for the rest of their life. Yeah, and I just think about that school Well, I just I just think about it is when you know say you even if you just To take it back to like the humans if you just sit on the couch and watch tv for Become couch potatoes. Yeah, 20 hours But you get that restless feeling that that annoying restless fan So you multiply that by a thousand times for a whale Yeah, and you know, you're just like I can understand why they get fun So again, again for some species being confined in space like that might not be an issue. They have small home ranges They I mean the way I put it is a sloth probably doesn't really know it in a captive environment Right. You give it a a bunch of trees which you try to do in these new exhibits that they've got rainforest exhibits Yeah, and you stick it in one of those trees and it's probably not really going to get the idea that it's not in a proper tree These animals know something's wrong They don't know what it is. They're born there or whatever, you know, but like you said restless, maybe certainly out of condition certainly Not getting enough exercise. Certainly not getting enough mental stimulation, right? And so even worse than Boredom If you're born and raised in a socially aberrant situation, you might actually go up Psychologically wrong And the good example is they discovered in africa when they were calling elephants that if they in fact the out of the kindness of their hearts they would kill all the adults and leave the Young ones that couldn't kill the young ones They just didn't like that But they would relocate them because they were calling them in the first place because they were danger to local human settlements So they would relocate them somewhere and they would grow up completely messed up And the males in particular because they had no adult male to keep them in line They would go into must and they would rampage they would kill things they would They would literally like run over people or rampage and overturn jeeps and stuff like that So they were 10 times more dangerous than the parents ever were and they were then the parents were the ones that were called Because they were growing up socially barrens. They were growing up Without a social structure. So you've got for example the four whales that went to lower parking And this isn't in blackfish They were all younger than 10 remember. I told you 10 seems to be the age Human species even in the populations where they disperse they stay with their mother for at least 10 They were all younger than 10 one of them was only two years old. Wow She was taken from her mother for husbandry purposes only there was it they had a perfectly normal bond and sent to spain Four kids were sent to spain with no adults of provision You think they grew up normal? No, absolutely not. They injured somebody almost immediately. Yeah, she's permanently disabled She was a trainer her back was broken then within Let's see that three years three years of being sent there The eldest who was at that point about 12. I think he was Killed his trainer That was that was Alexis. That was Alexis Martinez. Just crushed him Okay, they are not normal I'm not sure you could even socially reintegrate them back into the captive populations that came from They were taken from their mothers when they were too young and they grew up socially abnormal All right See what thinks that's okay Yeah The public thinks that's okay So once when when when c world is is approached with this kind of problem. What is their answer? What is their statement? They know everything No, I'm not kidding. You should have heard them talking to the judge. Just one of the reasons I think they lost in the first Trial first hearing They actually were basically saying we are the world's experts. We know Don't listen to OSHA expert who was a world renowned kilowatt biologist because he doesn't know anything about captive whales He's never handled a whale in his life He was the one that he was the one in blackfish Yes, they've daped up us. They ignore me They dismiss me because I've never actually trained a kilowatt because that's the only way you can know kilowatts I didn't actually train them If you haven't had any hands-on experience with these whales, you don't know them And in fact, it's exactly the opposite of you've never spent a minute of your time with these animals in the wild You don't know them. Absolutely. I Completely agree and so Most of the trainers have never spent one second of their time in the wild with animals and then they get in the water with it Yeah Yeah, I got when I watched that I was frustrated when I watched blackfish for the first time Because you know I it's it's almost common sense for me Watching the movie saying, you know what? That it's not good for their health. It's understand. They're big animals. Like you said, they're very transient You know some of the populations not the ones that they grab from but you know go 45 kilometers one way 45 kilometers the next and in very little time You know that little a little tanks not gonna work but for a human being to get in the water with With an animal that size with the capabilities that it like a top predator Have enough hubris to think that they're actually going to come out of it alive. It's just really kind of silly Just because you can hug and kiss it like you they do they feel that the hubris is Justified because they've had millions of interactions and right and only four people have died And I'm like, yeah, I'm again looking at it the wrong way 65 whales. Yeah, people have died. Yeah Yeah, lots of thing right and and and probably more so if they weren't ordered to stay back You know from them. You never know what would might have happened in the last five years Yeah, interestingly they had no trainers be injured Right, they've had incidents where the trainer had to jump back, but nobody's active in injured And they've had no whale star Hmm and there's the reason for that too. It's not it's not like getting in the water with the whales killed them No, no, of course not the reason they up until 2010 they had one whale die on average every year Wow and again, not most people know that Wow, but they had that was an average mortality rate for the 20 years prior um, was one year And they went a couple years with no deaths and then they'd have a couple of deaths, but in fact, it's mostly one year so in 2010 three whales died All right, just all at once. I mean within a very short period of time the original baby shanu who was 25 at the time um the female who was pregnant when Tila come killed Don ranshow she gave birth and died in in childbirth as we would call it And the calf died as well, but it was still work and I lived And then a young male like 12 years old named sumar died as well since then they've had no deaths and The reason in my opinion, this is just a guess because you have the data to to verify it, but given the pattern prior Um, and what they changed since Don ranshers death. They have not transported any of their whales between the parks Since 2010 They brought one whale back from Canada in 2011 He'd been just like those four whales have got to lower parquet one whale had been sent to Canada and they brought him back Because they didn't want him to be at that facility anymore for various reasons. So they brought a kaika back to san diego That's the only transport they've done in the past five years That's why they have 11 whales in san diego and only six in san Antonio They very much would like to move a couple that was I would imagine they would do the facility in san Antonio But they're afraid and they'll deny this, you know, you ask them to sell it's just husbandry with it There's no reason to move them, but they always move them Yeah, it's animals around like chest pieces and the reason they haven't moved any of the whales from san diego to san Antonio Is because transporting these animals is dangerous for them. Well, I can imagine being fairly stressful for the animal Yeah, that it is very stressful for them as far as they're concerned. They're being stranded You know the body goes into stranding reaction. They are very large. It's not as easy to move them as it is And in fact, it increases their likelihood of mortality apparently because see what wasn't doing it See what are moving these animals while they're under the microscope like the post blackfish effect and basically It's working for them because they haven't had any animals die Yeah, but it sort of tells me that transporting these animals in captivity is a huge mistake. Absolutely. It really does contribute to the risk of immortality. Yeah, and The one of the recent papers that's been published on survivorship in captive workers because there's been a smooth and by the way And one of them actually found that mortality increases At weaning and at section maturity, which were the two age periods When seawall would move whales. Hmm. And they thought it was because of the separation from the mother That it increased stress and increased susceptibility infection which may be part of it. I think it's also the stress of being moved itself Yeah, so they haven't done they haven't separated any cash from the mothers in the past five years And they haven't moved any whales in the past five years. They've also had no deaths. Yeah And again, that's you know, it's a small sample size. No for sure, but but in my opinion It means that again, it's one more nail in the coffin of why this species isn't suitable for confinement You can't just leave them all in San Diego until it's 15 What are you gonna do? Yeah, to be able to move them around just for husbandry reasons to keep the numbers proper But moving them is dangerous moving them actually increases the mortality risk. So you shouldn't have them in captivity for sure And speaking of mortality what is there's there's there's been a bit of controversy on the internet. Let's say About age and the ages Compared to captivity and the average age at death in the wild Scientifically speaking, are there differences or are they the same? So there've been two papers recently, okay on this question and by the way, my colleagues and I are working on a third Um, and what these two papers Had in common in terms of their results. They used completely different methodologies, which was good I mean, you know, so they yeah, there's a two different methodologies to try to look at the same kind of issue um, and what they found was that um at best survivorship and captivity is the same as The whales in the pacific northwest, which as I told you have just come out of a very bad period of salmon Shortage right the southern residents aren't endangered The northern residents are threatened under camp Canadian law And both of them have just come out of a 10 year period mid 90s to mid aughts where the salmon were crashing and he had done it so Seaworld at best seaworld whales are doing as well as this beleaguered um Pacific Northwest population And at worse, which was the second paper was actually was the purple published right at worst They do not survive to age milestones weaning and um menopause and females um With anywhere near the frequency wasn't they didn't actually look at it quantitatively. They looked at it qualitatively But they were orders of magnitude in terms of the percentage Wow less likely to achieve those age milestones than wild whales, um particularly menopause which interestingly in the um the um Paper that found the captive whales do as well as endangered and threatened whales um Which is not you know something you should aspire no absolutely not but uh That paper actually concluded that menopause was a myth that it didn't actually happen in in killer whales because um all mammals go through what they called reproductive senescence, okay, and um It's a very common phenomenon. So it's not actually you need to kill the whales at all But they in this by the way, one of the authors was a reproductive biologist Okay They confused reproductive senescence which all mammals do go through when you get older you start Obulating less and i'm less likely to get pregnant and half fewer kids over a certain time frame and eventually You know, you might have one more and then you wean that one and then you pretty much die Right, um But there's a whole period say in elephants that might last five or six years after your last successful count Before you die because that's how long it takes you to get that calf to independence Right, um and then you know female elephants die at 67 or 68 or whatever they are they're incredibly old But they gave birth for the last time at 62 Yeah, yeah, see what i'm trying to say. Yeah, that's productive senescence Okay, right you just slow down because your physiological capacity to reproduce slows down Menopause is the complete cessation Of reproductive capacity you stop ovulating you don't slow down. Yeah, just stop. Yeah, and you still live Years in the case of orcas 30 40 50 years past menopause your ability to reproduce That's actual menopause now We call it menopause because it's a cessation of men season of course or who's don't mensory But nevertheless, it's the same concept. It's reproductive ending right and They confused reproductive senescence which all mammals experienced with menopause. They said It's just reproductive senescence and all mammals experience it because To accept menopause and killer whales you have to accept that they live Much farther so right All right, or even for that matter 60 or 70. Yeah Not 25 to 35 Exactly, which is what they claim and so the Menopause period in orcas is generally 35 to 40. That's when they stop reproducing stop ovulating all the other um, so it's anywhere between your 35 to 40 and To accept that there's true menopause you have to accept that they live past 40 with regularity Okay, not yeah once rare while but with regularity and in fact only one whale At sea roll out of the 65 that they've had has made it to 50 Hmm. It's still alive. Yeah, she is 50 right this year probably and um You know who knows how long she'll live right? But the fact is is that in the wild she'd be normal Yeah, that'd be a regular occurrence. It's bizarre. Right. Nobody else is anywhere near as old as she is All of the other old whales that they have aren't yet 40 Okay, the next oldest whale who was a wild caught whale from Iceland is 39 or 40 this year Okay, she's just about 40. Right. All right, and then there's another one that's about her age 38 39 Maybe 40 and then there's a couple of males who are till conveying one of them. Yeah, from his now 36 Maybe okay 35 something like that. He's still a young in comparison Oh, well in the wild he'd be over middle age right he passed middle ages 30 is the mean life expectancy for a male orca Gotcha. Um 50 is the mean life expectancy for female orca. So he would be Doing pretty well. Yeah, you know, he pushed the envelope He just went past 30, you know quite a while in fact and Ulysses is another male who's 30 70s old women's locum Gotcha. Um, so those five animals Okay, katina kasadka Ulysses and Tilcombe and corky are middle-aged And they had the oldest orca's see what was ever seen. Yeah To them it makes sense to argue that that is old age. Mm-hmm Because that's all they know because they don't know the wild populations Because they never compare them to the wild populations Well, they don't believe in the wild population they actually argue that the ages that are not controversial in the scientific community are wrong They are urging these researchers to recalculate because they think that they're wrong What's the response from the sign? These these means and maximums should be rounded down And and what's the response of the scientific community today? That's the third paper. It was just published gotcha. Gotcha. It's sponsoring put together. Wow Unreal signs That's under now. Let's talk so we know it's okay. So scientifically speaking. We know that the the health is compromised just just from captivity There's been talk a lot of advocates and a lot of people want these whales released back into the wild From a scientific standpoint And I guess just from a realistic standpoint is that possible? I have come to the conclusion that there's pretty much no orca in captivity right now That's a suitable candidate for a lease except for those that were caught in Russia in the last three years Because they still have the memory one whale who was rescued in 2010 who's names Morgan? She lives at water hockey See old claims are although technically Under EU law they can't own her, but they claim they do And she was rescued as a very young animal When she in 2010, so she's only been in captivity for five years And of course, all of the Russian authors have only been in captivity at long the longest for three years Some of them just caught this year so um those 15 whales are candidates for rehabilitation and lease in my opinion All the rest including the wild caught ones that I just mentioned the five at sea will um And there's a couple more wild caught whales who are that age range in Japan and In Japan though, um, I don't think they're candidates for the lease It's just too hard to be an orca right with all that stuff I just told you about cultural differences and prey preferences and it's it's complicated Yeah, hopefully even let alone behaviorally to be an orca. So who are we to think that we can Train them to be wild. We tried it with cake. Oh, you probably heard about a case for the whale who was in free willy Um, I was part of that project. Um, we tried it with him and it didn't work. He was unwilling to break his bonds with people We ended up having to care for him for five years. Um in a weird sort of semi-wild state. He was Kind of like flipper and the tv show flipper, you know, he came and he went um, but he was utterly dependent on people until the day he died and uh, we fed him and we cared for him until the day he died and uh, he was 27 When he died, which is young but not that young. It's older than most of the world whales make it Um, in fact, um, he was older than Only like three other male killer whales have ever achieved. Yeah, and um So living in His natural habitat for the last five years of his life. I'm utterly convinced it prolonged his life If he'd stayed in captivity, certainly in mexico, he would have died a lot younger And um, I don't know about Oregon Yeah, the closure there was pretty pretty big for a killer whale enclosure and it was fresh Natural seawater and who knows who might have looked just as long. Yeah, but I don't think he would have looked longer He was used quite a bit as a young animal and was put through a lot living in mexico city Which is not problematic or so And I don't think he would have looked longer in Oregon But he might have lived as long Um, but he lived five years instead in his natural habitat in Iceland in Norway And and yet never broke his front with people. It's always completely dependent on people wanted people's attention wanted people's company Personality. Yeah, he was not the right Personality. Yeah, so you take that leap. Remember I told you they're pretty conservative. Yeah. Yeah, it just was really really hard for him and again, maybe none of them can do that. They're so conservative by Nature that once they know something that's all they know And all I'm asking is instead of releasing them to retire them to sanctuaries We have sanctuaries for almost every other species held in zoos. We have elephant sanctuaries We have tiger sanctuaries. We have big cat sanctuaries. We have primate sanctuaries. We have wolf sanctuaries We have donkey sanctuaries for God's sake. We don't have sanctuary. What would a cetacean sanctuary look like? Obviously with elephants and and big sort of terrestrial animals You know in Africa you have these Huge masses of of land and stuff. What would a sanctuary look like for cetaceans? I think it would look a lot like see kill it. Sorry Um, it would look a lot like Caicos seepen and his bay in Iceland Um You don't have a photograph of that. I'm sorry you don't because it was really pretty cool. Yeah They netted off a huge bay that was five times the size of of his seepen Little and his seepen was twice the size of any Right Kill a little enclosure Um, it was his seepen was the size of football pitch Gotcha You know a grid iron Yeah and um He He lived in that for two years and then he was allowed out into the bigger bay Which was netted off and that was like I said five times the size of football field. Yeah and That to me is what A cetacean sanctuary looks like cold water for cold water species warm water for warm water species Um It's harder to control the animals remember they're crazy smart. It's harder to control them given the more space you give them But if they're not on you know, you know, you're not training them. You're not in a show You're not getting in the water. They don't need to you don't Then they don't need to be controlled as much. They can make up more of their own choices They can move around a bit more. They can socialize with whom they want to socialize with It has to be big enough that you can separate and compatible animals There's a lot more incompatibility than see what we'll ever tell you again These injuries that the whales and flipped on each other can be very severe And again, the only example we ever have in all thousands and thousands of hours of observation in the wild Of a killer. Well killing another killer. Well is in captivity We don't ever spend captivity Um, and so, you know They aren't actually if they're not family compatible necessarily and so incompatible animals can be separated um The day would be more of like, you know, sort of just keeping them occupied uh live fish um Games whatever it takes so they would be absolutely hands-on care for them There'd be lots of employment for for her trainers at sea wolves right frankly Maybe even scientists as well and and there would be more science more science because in fact And this is something else you will never tells you The show interferes with research Okay, because the animals have a show schedule to keep to they have to be trained for the show and they have to put on the show And especially during the summer, it's you know by shows a day. Yeah Research is very difficult to fit in for that. Mm, and this has actually been pointed out by researchers who promote captive research and Are what I call pro captivity? I mean they're actually in support of keeping these mammals in captivity for research for research Yeah, they pointed out that these facilities that sort of shows don't make those animals as available for researchers issue and it's because Any research schedule interferes with the show schedule. Yeah, and and so basically public display misinformed people about the animal's biology Doesn't do as much research as you think it does And is in a lot of ways anti conservation Because a lot of people think that everything must be okay out there if they've got them in captivity doing flips Yeah, if they weren't Okay out there, then wouldn't there be some sort of law against them being in captivity? And so you find that people who really support seawall that actually don't think There's a lot of concern about conservation not because they think that everything's okay There in fact they totally buy the propaganda that the wild is a terrible place. Yeah. Yeah, and that they're being protected But they're protected at seawall and seawalls on the job protecting the wild whales But in fact seawall does very little of that and so does the industry in general does very little of that And so it's just this really weird Uh Damned if they do damned if they don't kind of thing where um, they have to claim that the wild is really really scary. Yeah, and yet um, it's It's not a place that they would um, you know, they don't actually want you to think it's too scary because then they're not doing enough to protect it Yeah, yeah, it's losing it. So it's really I find it kind of funny that they sort of back painted themselves into a corner this way, but Um, in fact, they still tell people that the wild is a really really scary pain one of my favorite quotes from a seagull representative was um, when a reporter was asking him about Iceland as a habitat for orcas and of course there's a whole population off coast bison and Most of the living wild caught whales are aslantic whales. They all came right and um So seawall was pretty busy up there for a while Uh, they they they were the only ones with a lot of other capture operators up there But a lot of whales were taken from the aslantic population And so the supporter asked him about that, you know, said, you know, what what it, you know, what was it like up in Iceland? And he said It is cold, miserable and dark. Nobody would want to live up there. First of all, he was talking about the orcas about how terrible it was not because of pollution or climate change or fisheries entanglement, but because of the environment. Yeah, yeah Orgas wouldn't want to live there. It must be horrible for the orcas that lived there because it's such a horrible place and i'm like, what? Okay, first of all, oh my god, and then secondly You just just every icelander. Yeah, you know, we're proud, you know, people of their country And you just told them they're all budget idiots for living there. So, you know That is a point of view. That is a mindset that right there puts your finger on what's wrong with looking to these places to educate people They thought they do corporate agenda. I've done agenda too. Don't get me all of agendas But you know, i'm trying to protect these animals and captivity in the wild. Yeah, I've got a conservation welfare agenda You know, these guys have a corporate agenda. They're trying to make money Yeah, even more than before because now they're probably own company. Yeah, they have to share your responsibility to their shareholders And so you put that kind of burden on the backs of animals that aren't suited to captivity in the first place And you're not going to get a happy recipe. No, you're not Now now let's talk about the future of seaworld in the last year. I think it was recently they just they just Brought out their financials. I think it was for the first two quarters and they lost a billion dollars $84 million, which is a huge loss for them. I don't think they've ever had a lot like that They've had record low attendance because and they're basically attributing it. I think they say the misinformation, but basically attributing it to You know things like blackfish and and absolutely for what it's worth and this is my policy Cred comes in they're very carefully not attributing it to fly. Oh, okay I'll tell you why they're attributing it to the bill that was attempted in california They're attributing it to that and the reason they're not attributing it to blackfish Is because then the obvious question is why aren't you suing them for lying? Yeah, yeah You cannot sue for libel or slander unless you can show a financial harm in this country You can't just say you're defaming me if you can't show that it hurt you somehow and in this country it tends to be financially hurt Right, so even when they call me all sorts of names I can't sue them for defamation because I can't show a court that they've actually harmed my livelihood Right that doing great You do better. I think better. I do and so I can't show any kind of harm. All right from their lives If blackfish is just one big lie, which is what they've claimed And now it's actually caused serious financial hardship for them their stock is down their tendencies down their revenue is down Then they have a great case It's a super definition Why aren't they yeah, well They aren't because they're claiming it's not because of blackfish blackfish is just a nat a fee You know, it's it's because of this bill in california They have to be very careful not to blame blackfish or the question of why aren't you suing them becomes very obvious And the reason they wouldn't sue them even if they did admit it was blackfish is because it's true That's the truth. It is not in fact a lie and defamation truth Are mutual exclusive your defense in a defamation lawsuit is if you were actually telling the truth, right? And so it is very In my opinion and extremely amusing Condundrum they have they can't blame blackfish for what is Ailing them because then the question becomes why I'm saying Now, okay, let's put a scenario together because I want to think about the future of sea world And I'm I'm an optimist and in what I'd like to see That was the same I know but what I is it possible in your like obviously you can't say scientifically because this is more of a personal opinion kind of question Is it possible to see a sea world survive without uh, an orca show yeah without a dolphin show and more towards Saving like more of a rescue operation more of a conservation organization Still with the rides and and you know the sort of the iconic You know, I'm sure saying can you can you see can you visualize a successful sea world? I actually wrote a piece for CNN around the time they started airing blackfish Which is when the soul thing really took off right because when it was still just in the theaters You know, nobody goes to see documentaries and theaters when it's airing it on CNN. That's when it hit big Yeah, basically because millions and millions of people saw it at that point Um around that time at CNN's request. I wrote a piece for them. I'll not bet And I called it the win-win solution for sea world Okay Now I'm no business person and maybe they wouldn't survive if they lost their iconic Whale shows. I don't know right but I don't think they would because in a lot of ways They've already lost their iconic whale show because they're too walker right now And it's actually a pretty boring show. Yeah, so they're not filling the stadium Let me let me tell you that. Yeah, I've been told you several times since don branja died and they're not filling the stadium So in some ways they've already lost their iconic show. They're not in the water anymore That beautiful water ballet is just not taking place anymore. They're not selling that anymore And so it's actually kind of boring So I believe and of course they're also losing money But my point is is that they're losing money right now more because they're being freaking stubborn than because Of anything. I agree. We're telling about them. Yeah, this is a situation where the paradigm is shifted and they're not shifting with it the Acceptable Is changed and they're not changing with it If they got ahead of the curve and they decided to become the hero of the hour We're going to build sea pen sanctuaries and they're going to stay open to the public. Why not? Yeah, there's things where retirement sanctuaries. They're not Rehabilitation for release sanctuaries. They're not trying to Desensitize or dehabituate animals to human presence. They're going to still have human presence So keep them open to the public set up, you know a viewing area or whatever You're not going to get the show and you're not going to have them like guaranteed to be on this side of the pen as opposed to the far side But you'll have a video feed in the visitor center and you'll have you know live, you know You'll have cameras in 15 different locations in the pen and You'll have CGI and animatronics. You'll do a Jurassic world, you know with whales, you know and basically You could win think You've been here. I would go back to see world that they Everybody who currently is an animal activist and just like someone would go back to see Just to support it to show. Hey, look exactly just support it Yeah, and and their fans would be like, oh, where's the show? But kind of they're already where's the show and so they might you know grow and and change with it and I think they would have to sort of Structure their financials. I think they would make less money but they wouldn't make so much less that they wouldn't be able to be viable as a business and Meanwhile, they stopped the breeding there are no more orcas and captivity in say 30 years These animals are going to live 34 years. They've got one animal that one bird one calf is quite young. You know, it's just born this year Go ahead and in that interim while they're a trading where they're while they're disappearing through attrition Come up with something new come up with huge cool CGI animatronics virtual reality thing that's just over the horizon Replace shambu stadium with a freaking roller coaster. I mean do whatever, you know We have one example of a theme park that had killer whales for a very long time for I think 30 years And finally lost Last one by sending her away because she was alone And they knew that was wrong. So they actually sent her to sea world. She's the 11th whale or actually the 10th At San Diego and then they've had a birth since then, okay But anyway, chuca was sent from reamold africa, USA, which is now discovery kingdom up in bellejo, California She was the last orca They had it for 10 years as a solitary animal which is pretty hard for and they finally sent her away to sea world and in fact Showing that you can transition these animals. She was solitary for 10 years She transitioned into sea world pretty well. That's good. Hey, she didn't freak out or kill another whale. She she transitioned so They sent her away and they they became a killer whale list facility and they are saloon Now it wasn't their iconic animal. They still have other animals So we'll see what see what we'll still have penguins. Yeah, absolutely So Why not do that get ahead of the curve be a leader instead of Digging in your heel it means a stubborn about it. Yeah, and I you know a lot of people think I'm all about shutting down sea world What in the world would I want to share? Well, I love theme parks Why would I waste one minute of my time time to put a business out of business? I don't I got better things to do I want them to do is stop exploiting these animals that cannot adapt to what we're doing to it and so This is a win-win. They get to keep the whales. They get to keep making money off the whales for 30 to 4 years They get this really long transition period to come up with something better They they're the heroes. Yeah, blah blah blah. I mean, I don't understand it And I try to say this to Joel Mandy who's their new CEO. We wrote a letter to him. He didn't reply It's too bad. It really is too bad how stubborn sea worlds being I think I agree with you I think they could make they can transition that part very well They obviously have a great marketing team and a great PR team and they can do what they really want I have to disagree with you a little bit. I don't think they're that great Well, not anymore. I guess dollars in there and their stock is there. Yeah, I think I think they but I think Before the dawn the before what happened to dawn. I think they they did a good job at yeah I think it's just there's certain events that you just can't hide and when like you said that discovery happened in the core case That I think I do think I just wanted that, you know, I've said this to others and I'll say it to you I obviously care very deeply for these animals. Yes. I'm an animal protection advocate I I do think they're suffering. I want that to stop But if you, you know, really push me and say what is it about sea world that irks you so It's that they're lined people. Yeah, the hypocrites. Yeah, they are twisting science They're misrepresenting science They're telling people lies about the biology and ecology and natural history of these animals. Yeah That really bothers me. I'm a very logical person. Yeah I'm a very uh Fact-oriented person. I mean, yeah, partly that's just because I'm a scientist and partly it's just the way I was built And when I see this big corporation that has a lot of trust in You know in amongst the american public and you know, it's like I said, it's like mom and apple pie Just totally telling lies. Yeah, not misleading not spinning lying. Yeah, okay, and Hey, see world sue me for saying that. Yeah, let's go to court about that And I am being a little melodramatic here But seriously it bothers me that they are telling people things about these animals that are not true Yeah, it bothers me. Yeah. No, I I agree The way I put it over and over again, you know as a metaphor is The emperor is wearing new clothes and so many people are like god. That's a great suit of clothes He's naked folks. Yeah, he's wearing nothing. They are lying about the biology They are lying about their breeding program. They are lying about the research they've done None of that's true. Yeah, so yes, you know getting back to you know Was everything in blackfish true and nothing see world said true Obviously, you know for filmmaking purposes some of the stuff in blackfish wasn't 100 But when you get down to it 95 of what's in that film is completely accurate And the 5% that isn't was just the sort of You know minor mistakes that a non-biologist makes when she tries to make the film all right Sea world it's the other way around 5% of what they're telling you is true and 95% of it is false Really that much. It's sad It's so sad because I mean at least you know if you wanted to defend sea world in an idealistic world You can say at least they're saying at least they're telling good science and trying to conserve the species But it's that's not the case. You did some good stuff. Right. And I'm when I said 5% 95% I meant the truth about killer whales. Yeah, um They do a lot of rescue sea turtles, manatees, you know, not just marine mammals, but other species other taxa They do support some research. They have a conservation fund and that they do give up grants are quite small Yeah, they're a multi billion dollars. Yeah, embarrassing how small some of those grants are but they do it. Yeah, they um They do have educational programs that are Uh, when they're not about marine mammals pretty good when they're about sharps or sea turtles or manatees Manatees are marine mammal, but they are endangered and everybody's on the same side as to what needs to be done for them And so they tend to do better with those species But when it comes to their iconic money-making generating species They're terrible They are mis-educating people Even when it comes to their great education programs. They've got shanloo tv in san diego The school system shows shanloo tv if you don't think that's corporate mind control You're not paying attention. Yeah, and they're telling kids False information. Wow. That's really disturbing. Yeah, and you know these kids want to gobble all that stuff up too, right? Because they want to learn about marine mammals a lot of them probably want to be marine biologists when they grow up And and that's the other thing a lot of people tell me especially colleagues of mine. They'll be like well I was inspired by going to seawall. Yeah, yeah And you know, I'm very grateful to be able to say today that that's not how I got inspired to be Mammal biologist because if it was the way I was inspired I'd be in a bit of a pickle Um, I actually got inspired by seeing a television special right? I can pinpoint seeing that saying I want study dolphins when I grow up But I did go to seawall after that and say, you know, this is cool You know, so I'm not denying that there's some value to these facilities for some people. Yeah My feeling is is that if you had something different like a future seawall where it's all CGI and animatronics You might still get inspired. Yeah The fact is is that how many kids love dinosaurs? Really love them could tell you everything about stegosaurus. They never seen a live one. Yeah Okay, you don't need to see the live animal. You really don't you don't know it because they're available to you right now Yeah, but if they weren't if we had decided as a society to phase that out You would still have the opportunities to be inspired. Yeah, absolutely ways that if that was what you were interested in You could be inspired. Absolutely And that's the future I would like to see I'm not trying to close doors I'm trying to open them and I'm not trying to see what them I'm trying to show them a new way to be yeah And what I really want in the end of it all is for us to stop exploiting species that don't thrive in captivity. Yep That's the future I know Now me I just want to thank you because I'm looking at the time and we've gone about an hour and 42 minutes and it's been fantastic Uh, and I just appreciate you taking this time to explain the science behind, uh, you know You can even get it in science. There's a lot like for sure the questions about What is the science that shows that they don't thrive? There's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, the the longevity stuff is the basic metric for this if you want it, right? Exactly and there's there is a big case from a scientific point of view And that's why I wanted to have you on here is just it's it's basically confidently just says like this is not a good idea And then like you said these animals are suffering and it's not part of their natural way Um, and I think it's it's good for the speak up for blue community to hear that from an expert from somebody who's studied this for years Um and has been around these animals for years, uh in the wild and There's two things I'd like to say three things I'd like to say if I can and absolutely yes, absolutely One is please read death at sea world by david curby Um, that was the book that came before the movie. They're not the same they were made at the same time The author was writing it at the same time the filmmaker was making the film Okay, cover the same issue and the book of course can go into it in more depth So, um, please do read death at sea world by david curby I have a facebook community page called from the dolphins point of view and if anybody who's seen this Webcast wants to ask me any questions for example about the science. I just mentioned that it wasn't able to bring up They can code to from the dolphins point of view and ask me those questions And if they aren't on facebook, this third thing I wanted to say you can in fact ask me directly I am more than happy to take correspondence from people from the public on this issue It's part of my outreach and my work. Um email address is nayomi my first name at A w i o n l i n e at dot org, which is a w i online dot org. Awesome. Thank you very much What we'll do too is we'll put those links on the show notes for this for this podcast Um, so the facebook page and everything like that also if people want to put comments on that page too I'll direct if there's any questions I'll direct it to you and you can maybe come on in and answer that as well And I appreciate you just kind of opening up and and taking that time to to answer questions from people Yeah, yeah, and I get a lot of um grief as well. I'm sure see wolf fans They had a facebook event to urge me to retire. Wow Yeah, so, you know, it's it gets very personal sometimes for them And it's kind of funny because they accuse us of being emotional, which I find hilarious Yeah, well and especially coming from like a science You know, but I you know, but I I got a thick skin. I don't really care if you want to you know, rag on me or give me grief You go for it. I'm very public person and I don't really care Well, i'll tell you any questions anybody. Yeah, well, i'll tell you one thing is is on My site on speak up for blue. I don't any of our our social media platforms Personal attacks are a no no. Um, I understand you got anybody comes to my facebook page. Yeah But i'll tell you what like I think it's good that you just say look I you've dealt with this So many years it shouldn't happen that you get attacked like that Um, but the fact that you just keep going and presenting the science and saying this is this is the truth This is what we've found and it's not just you. It's it's a scientific community Exactly. I'll tell you what remember at the beginning of the interview. I talked about how our science was founded I'm not sure we might have been our pre it was a pre yeah. Yeah, our science is found was founded on captivity Right. Okay. Um, some of the giants in marine mammal science Started studying dolphins for example in captivity and in fact one of our true giants in the marine mammal community Dr. Ken Norris was a co-founder of seaworld So it is not was not totally hip to uh to criticize captivity Prior to blackfish. Yeah But blackfish opened another door to scientists to finally feel comfortable saying this species Yeah, shouldn't be in captivity. Yes too large too social too intelligent Gets bored too easily dangerous species gets bored And so it's a growing body of scientists who are speaking out against at least this species being in captivity So I am no longer a voice in the wilderness and I have to tell you Of all the things that have happened since blackfish that for me is the most gratifying that I am no longer Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I mean it's that's a lot of stress on you to have It was an interesting uh the 1990s were very interesting. I can imagine especially being like I you know Someone who just graduated like in the early 90s and and you're just new to the field But you know, you know, you knew right off the bat from your studies that this is not the right thing you start speaking at Exactly what it was like and uh, fortunately, I always had a thick skin, but it got a lot thicker Oh, I'm sure it did By the way, Naomi, thank you very much again I really appreciate and I'd love to invite you back on at a later time to just discuss Uh more about orcas and the science behind orcas and Jim I'm in more than happy to do that, but there's also some other issues going on with captivity that I that you might be interested in as well But um, I'm always talk about That's fantastic. Thank you very much. No, we I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Well, it's after there. Bye. Bye Okay, that was one of the greatest interviews I've ever done Uh, that was dr. Naomi rose talking about orcas Uh, they're a plight the issues they face how we can help how we can help them Um, and how we can get them out of captivity and what we expect see world to become Um, I really like talking about that at the end. That was really cool And what we should do with these orcas if see world finally decides to give them up put them in sanctuaries Uh makeshift sanctuaries so that they can enjoy the rest of their lives Um in a semi enclosed area Um, but in the actual ocean. So hopefully one day we will see that happen and happen soon Um as soon as possible, but if you want to get uh, the resources the links from From what uh, nayomi was saying, uh, you can go on the show notes. It's w w w dot speak up for blue dot com slash session 12 So that's w w w dot speak up for blue dot com slash Session 12 and if you want the free gift that I mentioned earlier in the intro All you have to do is text To the number three three four four four you just text conserve my ocean all one word And you will get access to the free pdf of 10 things you can do 10 tips you can do to or 10 tips on conserving the ocean That's the title 10 tips on conserving the ocean So it's really a beginner's guide to how you can conserve the ocean from home And if you want to up it a little bit, there's some things you can do Um joining organizations and volunteering and so forth Um, but I think it's a really handy resource or really handy guide. Please share it feel free Um, and uh, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it So you can just comment on the show notes that I mentioned earlier Um, and we can start the discussion on how to conserve the ocean and and if you have ideas on how to conserve the ocean or you're doing something To conserve the ocean, please let us know in the comments on the show notes I'd love to hear it. Of course you can connect with us on our speak up for blue facebook page twitter account Um, I don't have an instagram account, but you can get me at ar luen Uh, I believe 99 ar luen 99 on instagram and i'm going to be on periscope soon too I've just discovered that and that looks like a lot of fun So maybe do some ocean news stuff on there to start that off, but anyway Um, and of course don't forget To look out for the link to our spread shirt store for speak up for blue. So when you buy some ocean swag You're supporting not only us to keep bringing you ways to raise awareness of You know of how to conserve the ocean and raise awareness of the issues that are happening But you're also supporting seaterals forever.org Um, and we're going to be adding some more partners on there. So Um, look out for that link and Uh, it'll be it'll be a lot of fun I think it'll be a lot of fun to follow these projects along and see what we can do to help seatertals Help take plastics out of the ocean and help a great organization So I appreciate you listening you taking the time to listen to this extra long interview But I enjoyed doing it. I hope you enjoyed listening Next week, we got a nether great episode. We're going to be um Potentially, I'm hoping to get this interview in potentially talking to Uh, Paula see bravo About underwater photography and videography and what she sees in the ocean and why she loves doing this kind of thing So Look out for that next week and look out for a bunch of things coming It's a new day for speak up for blue. I'm very excited and I will talk to you next week I'm your host and your luen happy conservation [Music]