Whales are beautiful and transfixing. So it’s no surprise that increasingly they star in lots of videos. And the videos are sometimes pretty great to look at.
But I have to admit to a feeling of unease when I watch these sorts of videos. I like that we hear from the thought-provoking Alan Watts.
But what are these videos really about?
Do viewers come away more knowledgeable about the plight of whales, or simply gratified and ready to move onto the next viewing experience?
Do they notice the dying coral, dappled with algae, and connect it to human culture, or is their attention entirely consumed by bikini-clad divers?
Do they wonder what the whales think of having their tranquil spaces invaded by video production teams?
Are the whales anything other than props for a slick GoPro promotion?
Sorry to ask. But I have a hard time watching all the ways in which we use the natural beauty of the world and its creatures for our own purposes. Because our preoccupation with our own lives, our own commerce, our own feelings, and its impact on everything else on the planet is the backdrop I increasingly see in all these whale videos.
David Roberts (hey, I thought he was unplugging!) is not hopeful, but tries to make the case for holding onto hope:
Though it may seem odd, I find comfort in chaos theory. For all our sophistication, we remain terribly inept at the simple task of predicting what will happen more than a few years out. All our models fail. That means those who predict a steady extension of the status quo will be wrong, too.
The outcome of the climate crisis depends not just on physical forces but on human beings, complex economic, social, and technological systems, and complex systems are nonlinear. We forget this; our instinct is to think the future will look like the recent past, only more so. We don’t anticipate the lateral moves, the lurches, the phase shifts. Because of this, the Very Serious thing to do is always to predict that things will not substantially change. If you say, “There will be a series of brilliant innovations that make clean energy cheap,” or, “There will be a sea change in public opinion on climate,” or, “Young people will take over and revive politics,” you sound like a hippie dreamer. Those aspirations are a matter of faith, a triumph of hope over experience.
And yet: things change! History unfolds along the lines of what Stephen Jay Gould called “punctuated equilibrium.” Things can appear stable for years and years while tensions gather beneath the surface, hairline fractures develop, and the whole system becomes highly sensitive to small perturbations. (The butterfly flaps its wings and causes a hurricane, etc.)
We do not know what those perturbations will be or when they will emerge, but we know from history that Don Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” are inevitable. The North American natural gas boom, the precipitous decline in solar PV prices, the financial crisis — none were widely predicted. And there will be more like them.
Will unexpected, rapid changes in coming decades be good or bad, positive or negative? That depends on millions of individual choices made in the interim. Some of those choices, if they happen at just the right moment, could be just the perturbations that spark cascading changes in social, economic, or technological systems. Some of those choices, in other words, will be incredibly significant.
Personally, I don’t have much hope. I think that climate change is happening faster than humanity can develop wisdom, or make the political, economic and cultural changes that will blunt its impact on the Earth. We are by evolution a self-interested species, and that is not something that is easy to change. Sure, a miracle is always (remotely) possible, so why utterly abandon hope. And, in any case, because doing more to mitigate the full impact of climate change is better than doing less, we do have a responsibility to keep learning and to try to find ways to live that are more in harmony with the planet and all its other species.
What it really is is a satellite image of a factory farm waste lagoon, that is part of a series curated by British artist Mishak Henner (hat tip to Rachel Clark for pointing the provenance out to me) that seeks to reveal the true impact of factory farming on the American landscape.
Big food companies are always trying to convince us that their products come from idyllic family run farms, although that rosy image couldn’t be further from the truth. A recently released batch of aerial photographs by British artist Mishka Henner show that factory farming is taking its toll on our planet. In addition to producing nutrient-poor “food” rife with GMOs, these farms are literally carving swaths of death through the American landscape. Henner’s shocking photos provide bird’s eye proof of the destruction that follows when industrial beef farming moves into town.
The images, discovered by Henner while researching satellite photographs of oil fields, look more like post-apocalyptic wastelands than acreage in America’s heartland.
““While I was working on that series I was looking intensely at the American landscape, and that’s when I came across these really strange-looking structures, like a big lagoon, or all these dots that look like microbes,” Henner told Fast Co. “We have factory farming in England, but we don’t have it on that scale. I was just absolutely blown away.”
The aerial shots of factory farming feedlots are open source satellite imagery, so Henner doesn’t have to worry about the legal risk of publishing them. In recent years, the commercial agriculture industry has sought to hide its disgraceful practices from the public’s view, and journalists found photographing feedlots have faced arrest and criminal charges under bogus “Ag Gag” laws. It’s not hard to see why they’d rather no one know what they’re up to.
“Massive waste lagoons, which waft up dangerous hydrogen sulfide fumes and can contaminate groundwater with nitrates and antibiotics, first resemble open, infected wounds,” explains Fast Co. The land on which the feedlots sit is totally barren, brown and dry. Brightly colored waste from the poor animals housed there gives off an alien glow against the neutral backdrop of dying land. The cows themselves look like ants from the aerial perspective, crowded together with no shade or comfort from the harsh conditions.
“To me, as somebody in the U.K., looking at something [like] the feedlots I was shocked on a very personal level,” Henner told Fast Co. “I think what the feedlots represent is a certain logic about how culture and society have evolved. On one level it’s absolutely terrifying, that this is what we’ve become. They’re not just feedlots. They’re how we are.”
Here’s are some more photos (full set here). Very powerful.
Ecologist Carl Safina, a writer and the founder of Blue Ocean Institute, developed the first sustainable seafood guide in the late 1990s. Before that, there was really no such thing as “sustainable” seafood: “If a piece of fish landed on your plate, you just ate it,” he said. “It was like bread. You didn’t talk about it.”
When we talk about sustainable seafood these days, we’re mostly concerned with whether a population is being overfished. According to the United Nations’ 2012 “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” report, about 85 percent of the world’s fish stocks are fully or overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion. We no longer take it as a given that there are plenty of fish in the sea, and some go so far as to suggest that our generation may be the last to enjoy seafood.
The creators of consumer guides to sustainable seafood, of which there are now many, pay careful attention to overfishing. They also look at whether the methods used to catch fish are harming the aquatic habitat, and if they cause a lot of bycatch – the inadvertent snaring of unwanted fish, dolphins and sea turtles. Some of the guides investigate whether fisheries are well-managed. Other factors, like how suppliers deal with waste and whether they use harmful chemicals, are often taken into consideration as well.
“Consumers making the conscious choice to try and buy more sustainable seafood is an important first step,” Tim Fitzgerald, a senior policy specialist who runs the Sustainable Seafood Program at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), told me. And these organizations do seem to be doing everything in their power to arm consumers with the tools they need to make these choices. The EDF, for example, takes the extra step of providing a version of its guide written in the language of sushi. (When you order “tako,” what you’re getting is octopus, which, by the way, is a very bad choice.)
But in many cases, providing enough information for the consumer to make a truly informed decision is next to impossible. For instance, while there’s a clear distinction between Pacific and Atlantic salmon – Atlantic is always farmed and thus, always bad – whether my Monterey Bay app categorizes my Pacific salmon as a “best choice” or a more cautious “good alternative” depends on how it was caught. There’s really no way, said Safina, for me, or even the restaurant or supermarket I’m purchasing my fish from, to know that.
I wasn’t able to get in touch with the Monterey Bay Aquarium to talk about the way in which they see their guide’s ultimate utility. However, I noticed an extra “consumer note” attached to its entries on salmon. “Buyer beware!” it reads. “Different species of salmon are sold under many market names – and several are available from farmed and wild sources.” Wild and farmed salmon, said Fitzgerald, are among the most commonly mislabeled products. Call a fillet “wild,” after all, and you can sell it at a premium.
“You can’t rely on anybody selling you fish to be truthful 100 percent of the time,” Safina said. This isn’t limited to how the fish are caught; the sustainable option you pick might not be sustainable at all, because it’s an entirely different fish.
It’s not that it isn’t possible (though I have my doubts given the overwhelming global demand for fish). It’s more that our knowledge and understanding of how fish gets to the plate is limited, or even obscured by the fishing industry. Just as more reporting and more investigation led to a better understanding of the depredations and environmental and health costs of Big Meat, the more we dig into where fish comes from and how it is fished the less appealing or sustainable it appears.
For example, take this recent report about farmed salmon and the potential impact of sea lice on wild population:
The scientific study published in Agricultural Sciences by a scientist of Ireland’s Marine Institute, which, it has been claimed, justified the salmon fishing industry’s stance that a mere 1%-2% of wild salmon deaths are due to sea lice, has been challenged in a key publication.
A recent critique by scientists from Scotland, Canada and Norway and led by Martin Krkosek of the University of Toronto’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, published in the Journal of Fish Diseases, argues that the Marine Institute’s work has “fundamental errors”.
Hughie Campbell Adamson, chairman of the Salmon and Trout Association Scotland (S&TAS) is now demanding that the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO) retract a statement made by its chairman, Professor Phil Thomas, six months ago dismissing the impact of sea lice on wild salmon.
The new interpretation of the research claims there are “grave mistakes in measuring control and treatment groups, leading to wide inaccuracies”.
The fresh examination of the original data shows that the impact of sea lice on wild salmon causes a far higher loss (34%) of those returning to Irish rivers than the 1% loss that was calculated in the original paper.
Many scientists and environmentalists have been looking to aquaculture — fish farming — as a potential savior for today’s radically diminished wild-fish stocks. Indeed, aquaculture in the crucial Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora has doubled every few years over the past decade. In Harper’s, I pointed out that farmed salmon, shrimp, and tuna require massive amounts of fishmeal, which is usually harvested from wild populations. The recent news displays another problem that I didn’t mention, but that is equally problematic: cramming thirty shrimp into one square meter is a little like putting thousands of people into unsanitary prison camps. Disease runs rampant.
Traditionally, there are several ways to address this issue, none of them ideal. The first is simply to desert the ponds as soon as diseases appear, then build a new one instead. This practice is common in Southeast Asia, and it occasionally happens in the mangrove forests of Nayarit and Sinaloa, too. But La Borbolla, one of the most environmentally sensitive farms in the regions, isn’t built on destroyed mangroves, and it isn’t easily moved. Instead, Mexican farms tend to rely on antibiotics, administered via fishmeal. But disease adapts quickly to antibiotics, and it’s a constant struggle to keep producing drugs that can combat the diseases.
Ironically, Mexico’s state of emergency was announced less than three weeks after theUnited States verified that it would certify Mexican wild-caught shrimp imports as environmentally sound. Hundreds of loggerhead turtles were dying after becoming tangled in the nets of the Mexican fishing fleet. (For perspective, the entire Hawaiian fleet is allowed only seventeen accidental turtle deaths per season.)
It turns out, not surprisingly, that plates mounded with cheap shrimp float on a veritable sea of ecological and social trouble. In his excellent 2008 book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, the Canadian journalist Taras Grescoe took a hard look at the Asian operations that supply our shrimp. His conclusion: “The simple fact is, if you’re eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide- and antibiotic-filled, virus-laden pond in the tropical climes of one of the world’s poorest nations.”
Lest anyone think otherwise, these factory farms generate poverty in the nations that house them, as Grescoe demonstrates; they privatize and cut down highly productive mangrove forests that once sustained fishing communities, leaving fetid dead zones in their wake.
And now, a new study from University of Oregon researcher J. Boone Kauffman findsthat the flattening of Southeast Asian mangrove forests is devastating in another way, too, and not just for the people who have been sustainably living in them for generations. Mangroves, it turns out, are rich stores of biodiversity and also of carbon—and when they’re cleared for farming, that carbon enters the atmosphere as climate-warming gas.
Kaufman estimates that 50 to 60 percent of shrimp farms occupy cleared mangroves, and the shrimp that emerges from them has a carbon footprint 10 times higher than the most notoriously climate-destroying foodstuff I’m aware of: beef from cows raised on cleared Amazon rainforest.
Kaufman calls the shrimp-farming style that prevails in Asia “the equivalent of slash-and-burn agriculture,” because farm operators typically “only last for 5 years or so before the buildup of sludge in the ponds and the acid sulfate soil renders them unfit for shrimp,” hetoldScience.
Cheap shrimp, like cheap oil, is looking increasingly like a dangerous delusion.
Okay, I’ll stop piling on the shrimp-eaters. But given our very imperfect understanding of how fishing is really being done on the high seas, and how farming fish instead will affect the ecosystems around it, it is misleading for anyone to try and say any fish is “sustainable.”
And until we know more, or we truly do find a sustainable fish-producing strategy, the right thing do do is simply not eat fish. Sorry, fish-lovers and pescatarians, by now we know enough to know that we need to know more.
A study of 11,135 fisheries showed that introducing catch share roughly halved the chance of collapse. The system caught on in the 1980s and 1990s after decades of other well-intentioned efforts failed. Economist H. Scott Gordon is usually credited with laying out the problem and the solution in 1954.
Modern environmental economists accuse their predecessors of forgetting about incentives. Catch-share schemes issue permits to individuals and groups to fish some portion of the grounds or keep some fraction of the total catch. If fishermen exceed their share, they can buy extra rights from others, pay a hefty fine or even lose their fishing rights, depending on theparticular arrangement. The system works because it aligns the interests of individual fishermen with the sustainability of the entire fishery. Everybody rises and falls with the fate of the total catch, eliminating destructive rivalries among fishermen.
Environmental economists have lately turned their attention to Atlantic bluefin tuna and whales. The National Marine Fisheries Service has just proposed new regulations that would for the first time establish a catch-share program for the endangered and lucrative bluefin. And a group of economists is pushing for a new international agreement on whaling.
In both cases the problem is overfishing. The bluefin tuna population has dropped by a third in the Atlantic Ocean and by an incredible 96 percent in the Pacific. And whaling, which is supposedly subject to strict international rules that ban commercial fishing and regulate scientific work, is making a sad comeback. The total worldwide annual catch has risen more than fivefold over the last 20 years.
Ben Minteer, Leah Gerber, Christopher Costello and Steven Gaines have called for a new and properly regulated market in whales. Set a sustainable worldwide quota, they say, and allow fishermen, scientists and conservationists alike to bid for catch rights. Then watch the system that saved other fish species set whaling right.
The idea outrages many environmentalists. Putting a price on whales, they argue, moves even further away from conservationist principles than the current ban, however ineffective. They’re wrong. “The arguments that whales should not be hunted, whatever their merits, have not been winning where it counts — that is, as measured by the size of the whale population,”says economist Timothy Taylor, editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
This is logical in economic terms. But it is utilitarianism divorced from morality, and fails on moral terms. Economists could also reduce the overall rate of child kidnapping, or murder, with catch, or kill, shares. But societies are not prepared to sanction kidnapping or murder, because kidnapping and murder are morally repugnant. So is slaughtering sentient, intelligent, whales without true need (we could argue about whether hunting and killing bluefin tuna is morally repugnant, as well, but let’s leave that aside for the moment).
The goal, as with kidnapping and murder, needs to continue to be to eradicate the act itself–not to legalize and sanction the act in return for some reduced rate of violence and death.
The ocean is so full of trash, it’s easy to create an entire art exhibition from it. Expedition Gyre hopes that the resulting display will get people who view it to think about their consumption and how so much of the stuff humanity uses or throws away ends up in the oceans.
It’s heartbreaking to see the reality of our consumption culture. So more power to the Expedition Gyre team. They are certainly getting lots of media play. However, in my view there is one thing, and one thing only, which will make a real difference: levy an environmental tax on every item of packaging and plastic, and charge for any garbage that is not recycled. Art can inspire. But make people pay, and they change their behavior. Fast.
As this “PR battle on the high seas” continues to unfold, important questions should be raised. Who will win this PR battle? Should this be cause for concern with SeaWorld investors? Are there more attractive investment options in the amusement park industry? We will be diving into the answers to these questions and see how even if SeaWorld “wins the argument,” the damage Blackfish is currently wreaking will outweigh, and there are better options for investors to look into.
Why SeaWorld will be harmed
To approach the question by pitting Blackfish against SeaWorld and asking who will win or lose is erroneous. Even if SeaWorld successfully disproves Blackfish’s claims, the company will most likely have already lost in the court of public opinion. Consider the example of the “Gasland” documentary, and how public debate has erupted and actual policy change has been enacted over hydraulic fracturing. Even though the claims of Gasland are hotly disputed, and a counter-production to Gasland was created, Gasland’s bad PR effect on hydraulic fracturing is still influencing people and policy-making today. Blackfish will most likely have the same negative affect on SeaWorld at a time when SeaWorld badly needs revenue.
In the beginning of 2013, I wrote a blog post about SeaWorld going public entitled “Shamu Makes a Splash on Wall Street: The New SeaWorld IPO.” In that post, I outlined why SeaWorld’s stock price might have some potential to rise, but overall the company is a very risky investment to stay away from. Many of the talking points I raised in that post are still legitimate almost eight months later. SeaWorld does have a fairly nice dividend payout, but I would stay away from SeaWorld stock for now, especially in light of the growing Blackfish scandal. The fallout from Blackfish shouldn’t be overestimated and will most likely last only a few months to a year at most. SeaWorld still needs to grapple with other looming issues first, though, and that is why SeaWorld stock is a risky gamble at best.
A little over a year ago the Toronto Star started running a series of blistering exposes about Niagara Falls’ Marineland.
Here’s the story so far:
At the heart of these exposes is the relationship between former Marineland trainer Phil Demers and a walrus called Smooshi. For Demers, perhaps the single most difficult aspect of his departure from Marineland, and all that followed, has been his inability to take care of, or even see, Smooshi, who has eating and regurgitation problems along with other chronic health issues. Smooshi also had an incredible attachment to Demers, always seeking him out, or following him around Marineland.
While Demers was at Marineland he was able to try and tend to her needs. Since he has been gone from the park, and can’t set foot anywhere near Smooshi, all he can do is wonder, each and every day, how Smooshi is doing and whether she is even alive. The only way he can really get any answers is through occasional sightings of Smooshi that pop up on video.
A few weeks ago a video of the show at Marineland was posted to YouTube. In it, Smooshi makes an appearance. I asked Demers to analyze what he sees.
Here’s the video:
And here’s Demers’ analysis:
Smooshi and my relationship is a true anomaly that few people are capable of understanding. She is still waiting and always searching for me – it’s heartbreaking.
There are few situations where we can possibly ever be re-united, but those are the situations I’m hoping for.
Here’s the vid breakdown –
@ 2:52 Smooshi emerges from the barn. She is playing with fish or sucking the floor – the trainer doesn’t have her attention.
@ 2:55 Smooshi immediately looks around the stage (away from her primary trainer). Historically when I was training other trainers to work with Smooshi I would be elsewhere on the stage, but she would always find me (she has an amazingly keen sense of hearing and smell), so eventually I would have to hide away altogether). She is looking for me – always.
@ 2:59 The trainer tries to get Smooshi’s attention by giving her a little tap on the shoulder area – it’s proves futile. The trainer waves (which is intended to get Smooshi to wave, but she doesn’t). Smooshi continues to ignore the trainer and look about the stage.
From this moment till about 3:13, Smooshi can be seen surveying the stage for me while bobbing her head up and down. She is simultaneously regurgitating whatever fish she has brought from backstage. This beats the hell out of me – she is searching for me and regurgitating due to her anxiety.
The trainer continues to try to “work” her, but Smooshi is not interested. A few hand signals go ignored until finally she rolls over. This is done reluctantly as well, as her criteria for this behaviour is just horrible. The trainer is clearly frustrated and tries to play it off as laughable. There’s nothing funny about watching an animal pine for what she believes is her mother.
Up until 3:50, the trainer continues to try to get Smooshi to perform – Smooshi continues to search, paying little to no attention to the trainer’s repeated requests.
@ 3:52, Smooshi once again places her head on the stage to regurgitate. The trainer then opts to walk away from Smooshi to try to ger her attention. This is a subtle threat of punishment, as Smooshi knows that if she is left alone on stage (which makes her nervous as she’s a very social animal), she will also not be fed any more fish. The other trainers take this cue and leave stage.
Smooshi continues to search for me.
Finally at 4:10 Smooshi begins to perform a wave, then is cut off by the trainer asking for a “no” behaviour. The trainer insists on asking for multiple behaviours in the hopes that Smooshi will perform 1, which will hopefully get her attention back. The “no” works.
Finally at 4:15 Smooshi performs a “wave”.
The trainer then asks Smooshi for another behaviour (which is ignored) prompting the trainer to once again threaten Smooshi with the “I’m leaving you and taking my bucket” threat. The camera then pans away. The trainer makes good with the threat, as she’s seen grabbing the bucket and walking away.
This video breaks my heart. Watching it makes me feel ill. All Smooshi ever thinks about is me – that’s the sad nature of our relationship. Always has been, always will be – until we meet again.
I don’t wanna watch this video again.
It’s a great reminder that all the lawsuits, and all the hue and cry, is about the well-being of the animals in captivity at Marineland–thinking, feeling, unique, animals, one of which has a unique bond with a human being that hopes he can somehow win her a better life.
Demers and the other Marineland whistleblowers have gone through a lot this past year, too. And the only way they can somehow make it all worth it is if they endure, and then win, the legal assault they are under from Marineland (you can help them here). Because that could lead to change for the animals, and maybe a better life for Smooshi.
This has always been one of the most puzzling questions related to dolphin drive hunts, like Taiji, and the wild orca captures of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s (that are featured in Blackfish). Dolphins (and orcas are large dolphins) do not attack humans–even though they easily could–that are slaughtering them or taking their calves. It is hard to imagine almost any other species, reacting with the same passiveness or pacifism. Imagine trying to kill or take the cubs from a bear or a lion.
I’ve occasionally asked this question of dolphin experts like Lori Marino, but there is no obvious or satisfactory answer. Here, Laura Bridgman takes a shot and digs into the science that might suggest some answers to this profoundly complex question:
Our brains share many structural similarities with dolphins. For example, we both have a limbic system, which is responsible for handling emotional information. One difference between us, however, is that the dolphins’ limbic system is much larger than ours and, says scientist Denise Herzing, it “may be stretched out over more of the brain,” indicating that “the dolphin brain may have more of a ‘global connection’ to [emotional] information”. This could mean that dolphins are more emotional than humans, and that emotions could figure more prominently throughout their thought processes.
While it might be tempting to think that increased emotions would lead to greater aggression when being backed into a corner, another compelling feature of the dolphin brain appears to account for this notion. Sterling Bunnell, in The Evolution of Cetacean Intelligence points out that the cerebral cortex, responsible for logical thought and reasoning in both humans and dolphins alike, is controlled by the emotional activity of the limbic system. This process is facilitated by what are called ‘neocortical association neurons’.
Bunnell observed that, in human studies, the ratio of these neurons to limbic-system brain stem neurons “is necessary for such qualities as …emotional self-control” and that a decreased ratio is associated with “impulsiveness, emotional instability, irritability, loss of humor”. Bunnell points out that dolphins possess a higher neocortical-limbic ratio than the average human, suggesting that their control over their own emotions is greater than what we experience.
It could be that dolphins, while being more emotional, are more emotionally stable than we are, and are therefore able to better control themselves in stressful situations. This could explain their apparent control over the impulse to lash out at the humans who are so callously ending their lives.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but it makes me wonder what the evolutionary advantage or benefit of controlling emotions might be when experiencing an existential threat. In other words, in these situations it would be to the dolphins advantage NOT to control emotion and remain passive.
Whatever the answer, I suspect that if and when we do come to understand why dolphins behave with such pacificism when under attack by humans the answer will humble us.
The Earthist Chronicles 