A few different links popped up on my Facebook newsfeed today that I shared without having time to write my thoughts on them. (I have since added comments).
What started it was an article about the dangers of swimming with dolphins. Danger not to the human, but to the dolphin.
Nothing in the article was a surprise to me. It wasn't disturbing, simply because I've been fortunate to know about these horrors for a while.
There were about 5 months in my 9-year-old past where I wanted to be a dolphin trainer, but then I saw marine mammals in the wild and people educated me about the problems with keeping these creatures in captivity.
I remember being somewhere around the age of 12, on a whale watching expedition with my family, having a "discussion" with one of the dads on the trip about places like SeaWorld and how terrible I thought it was and how I thought they should all be closed. He and others talked about how great they were that they could bring marine mammals to places that wouldn't normally have them—to people who would not normally be exposed to them.
Sure, I get it. The first time I saw dolphins was at the Shed Aquarium. But there's no excuse for the torture we put marine mammals through.
At the time I could only fight back tears, now I have more words. That was ten years ago and the fact that it's still happening is just fueling my fire.
It's really easy for me to be cynical right now simply because I have been fortunate enough to have people in my life telling me about this from a very young age and passionate enough to have wanted to learn more on my own. I don't understand how people could not know that swimming with dolphins against their will is torture, but not everyone has had the same experiences I have. If you have taken advantage of some of the swimming with dolphins facilities around the world I'm not going to blame you. Obviously it's not in the corporations' best interest for you to know how terribly they are treating the animals.
Again, nothing in the second article surprised me either. I've known about the pod of orcas it mentions who face some of the same dental issues because of their diet of skates and rays ever since I read Alex Morton's book Listening to Whales years ago. I know that these creatures have never harmed humans in the wild and the only reason they're aggressive is because of the huge amount of drugs they're on and the fact that they are literally going crazy.
We're putting marine mammals in solitary confinement. There have been studies done on the dangers of solitary confinement and how people put in these units very often go insane, become more aggressive, even kill themselves to get out of the torture.
This is exactly what we're doing to marine mammals. And it needs to stop.
The last article is long—I haven't even read all of it—but here's a quote I pulled that I think really sums up what I wanted.
If humans can't even respect each other it seems hopeless to think that they could respect other species, but damn, we have to try.
What started it was an article about the dangers of swimming with dolphins. Danger not to the human, but to the dolphin.
Nothing in the article was a surprise to me. It wasn't disturbing, simply because I've been fortunate to know about these horrors for a while.
There were about 5 months in my 9-year-old past where I wanted to be a dolphin trainer, but then I saw marine mammals in the wild and people educated me about the problems with keeping these creatures in captivity.
I remember being somewhere around the age of 12, on a whale watching expedition with my family, having a "discussion" with one of the dads on the trip about places like SeaWorld and how terrible I thought it was and how I thought they should all be closed. He and others talked about how great they were that they could bring marine mammals to places that wouldn't normally have them—to people who would not normally be exposed to them.
Sure, I get it. The first time I saw dolphins was at the Shed Aquarium. But there's no excuse for the torture we put marine mammals through.
At the time I could only fight back tears, now I have more words. That was ten years ago and the fact that it's still happening is just fueling my fire.
It's really easy for me to be cynical right now simply because I have been fortunate enough to have people in my life telling me about this from a very young age and passionate enough to have wanted to learn more on my own. I don't understand how people could not know that swimming with dolphins against their will is torture, but not everyone has had the same experiences I have. If you have taken advantage of some of the swimming with dolphins facilities around the world I'm not going to blame you. Obviously it's not in the corporations' best interest for you to know how terribly they are treating the animals.
Again, nothing in the second article surprised me either. I've known about the pod of orcas it mentions who face some of the same dental issues because of their diet of skates and rays ever since I read Alex Morton's book Listening to Whales years ago. I know that these creatures have never harmed humans in the wild and the only reason they're aggressive is because of the huge amount of drugs they're on and the fact that they are literally going crazy.
We're putting marine mammals in solitary confinement. There have been studies done on the dangers of solitary confinement and how people put in these units very often go insane, become more aggressive, even kill themselves to get out of the torture.
This is exactly what we're doing to marine mammals. And it needs to stop.
The last article is long—I haven't even read all of it—but here's a quote I pulled that I think really sums up what I wanted.
The article was written by an inmate who was in solitary confinement for 26 years. What he describes is probably very similar to what orcas, dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals are experiencing in captivity everywhere. The only difference is that we don't have the intelligence or apparent emotional or intellectual capacity to understand the signals they're giving us. Just because they don't speak our language doesn't mean they shouldn't be respected.
"I’ve experienced times so difficult and felt boredom and loneliness to such a degree that it seemed to be a physical thing inside so thick it felt like it was choking me, trying to squeeze the sanity from my mind, the spirit from my soul, and the life from my body. I’ve seen and felt hope becoming like a foggy ephemeral thing, hard to get ahold of, even harder to keep ahold of as the years and then decades disappeared while I stayed trapped in the emptiness of the SHU world. I’ve seen minds slipping down the slope of sanity, descending into insanity, and I’ve been terrified that I would end up like the guys around me that have cracked and become nuts. It’s a sad thing to watch a human being go insane before your eyes because he can’t handle the pressure that the box exerts on the mind, but it is sadder still to see the spirit shaken from a soul. And it is more disastrous. Sometimes the prison guards find them hanging and blue; sometimes their necks get broken when they jump from their bed, the sheet tied around the neck that’s also wrapped around the grate covering the light in the ceiling snapping taut with a pop. I’ve seen the spirit leaving men in SHU and have witnessed the results."
If humans can't even respect each other it seems hopeless to think that they could respect other species, but damn, we have to try.
