Episode 9 - Cove, Death and Robots

This is A Dolphin Pod. I’m Amy Grisdale. I’m a stand-up comedian, marine biologist and writer for This Paranormal Life. I’d love to make a joke here at the top like normal but I gotta tell you, this episode is dark. Obsidian.

I’m going to explain what happens in The Cove, the documentary about the brutal slaughter of wild dolphins in Japan. I’ve also got a ton of fun facts about how we’re running the planet and how it’s affecting dolphins.

That's the spirit. Then I want to walk you through the whole history of whaling and update you on the current sitch. It won’t all be horrible, I promise. It’s not all doom and gloom. If you make it through the cove and the death part you get to hear about a really cool robot.

It’ll be worth the wait. There was one country conspicuous by its absence in the episode where I harped on about where it’s legal to capture wild dolphins. Japan. They are world-famous for their dolphin-killing efforts, and we see a small glimpse of that in The Cove.

It came out in 2009 and shows animal cruelty and death from the onset and throughout. I don’t blame you if you haven’t seen it. I actively avoided it for 14 years and I’m sure there are plenty of others that have done the same. I didn’t want to fill my head with those images.

I’m not going to suggest that any of you go and watch The Cove, I don’t want that responsibility. It’s really horrible. Plus you’re about to be subjected to the world’s most detailed spoiler so there’s really no point.

But if you want a taster documentary, a Cove LightTM if you will, I can recommend SeaSpiracy. It’s still traumatising, but it’s nowhere near as full-on. I used it as a kind of gateway documentary and worked my way up to The Cove.

The filmmaker Ali Tabrizi set out to make a documentary about how terrible plastic is for marine mammals, but ended up uncovering that the fishing industry is a much larger threat. It was released on Netflix in 2021.

It features snippets of footage from The Cove that had me ugly crying. Hideous crying, in fact. When I finally did watch The Full Fat Cove, my word. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, and anybody who knows me in real life knows I watch a lot of really messed up stuff. And it stayed with me for weeks. Totally ruined Christmas.

I wish I had seen The Cove when it was first released. I was still at university, dolphin training was still just a dream. It probably would have made me think twice about my career choice.

Now that I have seen it, I know two things. 1) You shouldn’t watch it. It will ruin your day, if not your quarter. But 2) There’s a ton of vital information in The Cove that you shouldn’t miss out on.

So, I’m about to walk you through what happens without you having to see it. My eyes have fallen on this visual grenade to save you the mental imagery. You’re welcome.

As always I’m not going to get ultra-graphic with my descriptions but I still think some of you might find this at the very least unsettling, so do listen with caution. 

In a nutshell, it’s the horrifying true story of routine dolphin slaughter and the courageous efforts to expose it to the world. Hundreds of dolphins are herded into a cove in Taiji, Japan and trapped there with nets. Their fate is either to be sold to an aquarium or killed for their meat. This is no urban legend, it’s absolutely certified true.

The main voice of the film is a man called Ric O’Barry, who I’ve mentioned countless times already on this podcast.

I’m sure you remember he worked with the Flipper dolphins and turned against the industry when he realised how cruel it was.

During his activism, he found out that fishermen in certain areas of Japan were involved with the mass killing of dolphins. And this solid gold hero of a man made it his mission to bring this dirty little secret into the global spotlight.

The doc opens with Ric and his photographer friend Louie Psihoyos driving in Taiji, Japan. They’re both wearing masks because they want to blend in with the locals. Although, it’s more than that. He’s hiding his identity.

To this day, when Ric visits he has to take a whole host of disguises. He says he’s cross-dressed to evade detection by the police there. In the documentary he calls Taiji the little town with the big secret. And he’s there to expose it.

On the face of it, Taiji is beautiful. It’s a gorgeous coastal sound on the very edge of the Pacific Ocean. Even better, it’s plastered with depictions of whales and dolphins, which might make you think at first glance that they’re into them. But that’s not the case. Taiji is just one town among many others in Japan that relentlessly slaughters wild dolphins.

Ric talks a little bit about the consequences of being outspoken against the industry. Well, I say outspoken. There’s a lot of footage of him freeing captive dolphins seemingly without permission. He’s a man of action.

 Some of the backlash is pretty minor. He was pulled as a speaker at a marine mammal conference in San Diego because the sponsor didn’t like his anti-captivity message. The sponsor in question was a company called SeaWorld. Make of that what you will.

 He speaks about two colleagues that he says were murdered for their activism. Jane Tipson was killed on the island of St Lucia on the 17th September 2003. Her killer hasn’t been identified, but a prevailing theory is that she fell victim to a contract killing.

She was shot in the back of the head at close range, and anybody that listens to RedHanded or watches Line of Duty knows that’s the classic hitman MO. And please don’t think I’m making fun of this, quite the opposite.

Captive marine mammals make big money. Back in 2009 when The Cove was made, each dolphin taken from the wild could be sold for $150,000. I can only imagine what that figure is now. Before Blackfish, SeaWorld could bring in $500 million in revenue over a three month period. That is huge money.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that a powerful company would take an activist down. Especially because Jane Tipson had taken on a powerful company. The Dolphin Fantaseas group were trying to build a dolphinarium on Pigeon Island and she started an unstoppable opposing movement.

The dolphinarium was never built, although there’s still a Facebook page up for the proposed construction. But there are a lot of people that believe they had her killed either as revenge or a last-ditch attempt to save their plans… and profits.

The big supporters of this theory are the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which was founded by our new best mate Ric O’Barry. They suspect the local police of contaminating the crime scene and giving the case low priority.

Others, including Jane’s own sister, don’t think there’s a connection between her murder and her involvement with the campaign. I obviously can’t say either way, but as someone that’s literally received threats from an aquarium for being outspoken about their dolphins’ welfare I’m not going to rule it out.

Plus, there’s the case of Jenny May, a dolphin trainer who was found hanging on a beach in Tel Aviv in the winter of 2014. She allegedly had connections to the CIA and the Israeli defence services.

She was also linked to intelligence agencies in Africa, Russia, and others but that is all the information I could find. That’s from an Israeli three-part documentary called The Woman Who Knew Too Much that only exists on the internet in the form of short write-ups.

It may still all sound very far-fetched to you, but I found a Guardian article from September 2022 that says that more than 1,700 environmental activists have been murdered in the last decade, which is an average of almost one every two days.

And the pandemic didn’t slow them down. In fact, in 2020 a record number of 227 environmental defenders were taken out. Who’s doing these killings, you ask? The article names the top three guilty parties - hitmen, organised crime groups and members of government. So, maybe it’s not crazy to think that Jane and Jenny met the same fate.

I have been intimidated by aquarium owners. I’m still so scared of them that I’m not giving away a hint of detail about Facility A or B. Especially B. I don’t think they’ll kill me. I think they might have if I’d gone back there and tried to shut them down.

Ric says that the very next day after his best dolphin bud Cathy died he was out cutting nets and freeing dolphins from local aquariums. That’s a genuine dream of mine. I wanted to go and free Trixie from Facility B. I just wish I’d had the courage to do it. The guards had guns, you guys. And they were on shift all night.

Anyway, Ric mentions something that I missed out when I was giving you my arguments against dolphin captivity in episode two. I did mention that their primary sense is sound, but I didn’t bring up the implications that has when surrounded by solid walls.

Dolphins constantly produce sound to communicate and echolocate. The concrete, glass or whatever it is creates an uncomfortable echo that can hurt the animals’ sensitive hearing. Not to mention the droning of mechanical aquarium pumps, local traffic noise and the thunder of screaming crowds.

If that little bonus reason wasn’t enough to convince you that dolphin captivity is not okay, then maybe this will sway you. It’s the captive industry that’s fuelling the drive hunts in Japan. A dead dolphin only sells for $600 worth of meat. As I mentioned earlier, a live dolphin trade can be 250 times more lucrative.

The drive hunts have become a streamlined operation, most likely because they’re so immensely profitable. I’ll spare you the really horrible details, but what they do is take out a bunch of boats and drive them in a line behind an enormous group of dolphins. They bang on metal rods to frighten them, constantly herding them towards the cove.

After a night trapped there, a team of dolphin trainers arrive to pick the animals they think would be best to train up and sell. They tend to choose young females because they’re typically very keen learners.

Those selected are put in small sea pens and introduced to the concept of training. You see them doing jumps and flips on command and being fed dead fish from buckets. That is their life now. Everything they’ve ever known is gone.

That was a really upsetting part for me personally. Every dolphin I’ve ever worked with was taken from the wild bar two. The one born at Facility A was an accident, too. I was told it happened because of a contraceptive mishap. Her mother’s implant came loose and fell out.

 It was difficult enough looking those animals in the face knowing they’d been free just a few short years ago. But seeing the moment they’re condemned to a life of an enslaved performer was horrible on a whole new level.

Once a buyer has been found, the animals are packed up and shipped off around the world. In 2010 Taiji was the biggest supplier of dolphins for aquariums and dolphin swim facilities on Earth.

China, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the Philippines have all imported dolphins from Taiji. Oh, and don’t forget America! There’s now a ruling in place that captures of marine mammals should be humane, and therefore those hunted in Japan are now illegal to bring to US soil.

But that’s only since 2015. Small toothed whales like false killer whales were regularly obtained by SeaWorld, the Indianapolis Zoological Society, Miami Seaquarium, and the U.S. Navy.

Another development since The Cove is that since 2015 Japanese aquariums no longer buy dolphins captured in Taiji. There are a lot of news articles about it, you can’t buy that kind of press. But they still buy dolphins caught from the wild, just not from Taiji. And they still capture and kill them in Taiji and other places.

Anyone can show up and watch the trainer selection process in the cove, but the next step is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, the fishermen of Taiji seem to have a real penchant for privacy. There are signs everywhere prohibiting photography and there are violent reactions from locals for breaching the rule.

Even the police warn those armed with cameras to stay away. I can’t say I’m surprised given what they’re trying to hide. Because the rest are herded round the corner and slowly stabbed to death with sharp sticks. They show it in the final portion of the documentary. The whole point of The Cove is to get the slaughter on camera so Japan can’t deny it any more.

The hunting season runs from September to March and back when The Cove was being made an estimated 23,000 dolphins and porpoises were being killed in Japan every year. Around 2,000 of those would meet their ends in Taiji.

The majority of the dolphins Japan kills die elsewhere, but Taiji’s become the poster child because their herding and hacking method results in so much needless suffering. And all these years later it’s still happening.

Thankfully, it’s on a smaller scale. I’m not going to make you wait until the end for good news. Quotas have dropped over the years, so they’re targeting fewer these days. At least on paper. The demand for dolphin meat is low, which is also great news. That’s one reason fewer are being killed.

Another reason is that their numbers are likely being affected by mass hunting. Are the fishermen in Taiji catching fewer dolphins because they’ve removed so many from the ecosystem over all these years? I had to check into their population data.

 There are a minimum of nine different species targeted by the Taiji fishermen. They’re all toothed whales and while none are endangered, there’s little data on their population status. So, we don’t know if their numbers are dropping drastically or not.

We can always learn from history though. Iki Island is another place in Japan that once hunted dolphins in their thousands. The hunts no longer happen though, because the region ran out of dolphins. None left. Even the captive dolphins at the aquarium had to be imported. From Taiji.

The Cove explains that dolphins did once have legal protection, but an organisation called the International Whaling Commission put a stop to that. They’re an international governing body that was created to regulate whaling before it was banned in 1986.

It says on their website in black and white -

“The IWC does not regulate hunting of dolphins and porpoises”

To be clear, that’s 49 of 90 species of whale that can be hunted without consequence. Certain countries have their own laws preventing it, but not very many. In all my research I only found 16 nations that have legislation preventing dolphin capture, captivity or both.

The IWC are dropping the ball with bigger whales too, and the culprit once again is Japan. When whaling was outlawed worldwide in 1986, Japan dutifully stopped commercial whaling but quickly started performing scientific whaling.

Japan killed 4,500 minke whales, Bryde’s whales and sei whales in the name of science between 2011 and 2020 alone. Sei whales are endangered, just so you know. But as promised, I’m saving the whaling chat for later.

The International Whaling Commission feature pretty heavily in The Cove. Japan are very active within the organisation and seem to have a lot of influence. Ric O’Barry said they are the reason dolphins and porpoises don’t have protection. The IWC would be the ones to grant that protection, but they fail to see the need.

Japan recruits small countries to join the IWC and vote in their favour. At least 10 different nations have been a part of the commission at some point in recent history because of Japan’s sway. They offer incentives, like money. They also build fish processing plants in impoverished nations to keep them on side.

If things are going to change, it’s the International Whaling Commission that will write the new rules. There’s another organisation with a similar acronym that I’d like you to know about too.

The actual harpooning is being carried out by an administration called the Institute of Cetacean Research, or ICR. Remember that name, it’s coming up again later.

We can only hope the practice of whaling continues to dwindle, and I’ve found some encouraging statistics. In 2012, 1,200 tons of whale meat was sent to auction and 900 tons was left unsold.

They did sell a few bonus tons directly to the consumers, but most of it went to waste. And why? At the time the market was flooded. Maybe because they were killing so many whales. But the demand is low today because whale meat is extremely polluted.

All the nasty chemicals and poisons that leak into the oceans and find their way inside the life within it. Whales are at the top of the food chain. They eat vast quantities of toxin-laden prey and pollutants quickly build up in their systems.

Whale meat is rich in mercury, pesticides and industrial chemicals. Mmmmmmmmmm. Pregnant women are advised against consuming it, as are young and old people and those with weakened immune systems. Also, everybody else.

In Japan the legal limit for mercury in food is 0.4 parts per million. When tested, meat from bottlenose dolphins captured in Taiji contains 5,000 times the maximum.

Genuinely toxic. At one point there was even suggestion of putting dolphin meat in compulsory school lunches in Japan as a way to use it up. SCHOOL LUNCHES.

It’s all so backwards, isn’t it? Scientists are supposed to be the good guys, so why are they killing endangered whales in their hundreds? I guess in life sometimes scientists are the bad guys.

I’d like to take a closer look at the Taiji Whale Museum featured in The Cove. I love a good museum, but this one sounds like my worst nightmare. You can literally watch a dolphin show while eating dolphin meat. There might be a couple of Jeremy Clarksons out there that would be delighted to do just that, but I personally will not be doing either.

The whale museum has a big role in the drive hunts. Ric says they broker the deals with aquariums. Besides that, the museum doesn’t feature too heavily in The Cove. I’ve done my own research into the Taiji Whale Museum and it’s just wild.

It’s without a doubt the first time I’ve ever seen a life-size whale model displayed with a boat of a dozen harpoon-wielding men actively stabbing it. All to scale, of course.

Nor can I say I’ve seen an exhibit of preserved specimens of every prenatal stage of the striped dolphin. I’m talking a line of 10 jars increasing in size from left to right like grim Russian dolls, each filled with a pickled dolphin foetus.

I also don’t think I’ve been to a museum with living exhibits before, but this one has a lot of them in the form of, you guessed it, dolphins. I checked their website and looked at all 236 visitor-submitted images on Google maps to find out what species they keep at the museum.

From all the pictures I saw I can tell you the Taiji Whale museum has been in possession of the following species over the course of Google image history.

Risso’s dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, rough-toothed dolphins, Pacific white-sided dolphins, false killer whales, short-finned pilot whales, orcas and possibly Heaviside's dolphins.

This shouldn’t be a brag, but I’m really good at identifying dolphins. I usually know by sight, but I also know what to look for if I’m not sure. There were at least three that I’m still not satisfied that I figured out. I’ve never seen so many different dolphin species at one facility. It’s clear they have their pick of a fresh supply.

Their daily schedule is posted online. They host a dolphin show in the dolphin show pool four times a day, each performance lasting an estimated 10 minutes.  Three times a day there’s a whale show in the whale area that lasts around a quarter of an hour.

The fact that they make that distinction annoys me because all dolphins are whales. And the animals that feature in the whale show are all dolphins. Same with the dolphin show.

Then there are other events that run all day long, presumably for an additional cost. It does specify that the shows are free. Running from 9AM to 4PM on a daily basis, visitors can participate in the following experiences.

Touch the Dolphin

Kayak Adventure

Dolphin Trainer Experience

Petting on the beach

Feeding experience

They did once offer a swim but that has since been discontinued. There is a little disclaimer underneath that says they reserve the right to cancel or change the schedule depending on weather and the physical condition of the animals.

 All of that information was up to date in October 2020. I can’t be sure of what their schedule looks like now. You’ll be pleased to hear that’s all I have on the Taiji Whale Museum. Thank you for listening so politely to the results of my fixation.

As much as I don’t want to talk about the dolphin slaughter, it’s time to talk about the dolphin slaughter. I’ve told you why they do it, but I still haven’t told you why they do it. Yes they sell the animals, and yes they sell the meat, but they are motivated by more than money.

Ric says he offered to subsidise the fishermen. He would pay them not to kill the dolphins, but they wouldn’t agree to that. They’re doing it for what they call pest control. Japan is a big fishing country, and they feel that whales and dolphins are using up too much of the world’s stock. If they eliminate the whales, there’ll be more fish.

I cannot tell you how angry that makes me. Dolphins and their relatives have been on Earth longer than humans have. Who are we to decide which species should and shouldn’t exist? Especially when we as a species are being so irresponsible with the planet.

We’re populating, polluting and poisoning every corner of the Earth and at this point, we’re doing it knowingly. Our dolphins are toxic, guys. Things are bad. And one thing we’re really messing up is the ocean.

We’re going to have to put The Cove to one side for a little while now. It’s tangent time.

You’ve heard a lot about how captivity simply cannot compare to the open ocean, and that’s true. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Wild animals are locked in a constant battle of survival. They’re hungry, tired and scared around the clock. Sadly, that’s the nature of … well … nature.

It’s like what we talked about way back in episode two. Only the strong survive and those that can’t cut it don’t live long enough to pass on their substandard genes. It makes the species stronger overall.

That’s how it normally works, anyway. But normal went out the window when we humans came along. We’ve obviously existed as a species for a long time now, but in the grand scheme of things we were actually pretty late to the party.

The Earth has been here for billions of years.

The first life emerged in the form of microscopic single-celled organisms 3.7 billion years ago. The earliest vertebrates didn’t appear until 600 million years ago.

It wasn’t until 300 million years ago that dinosaurs eventually popped up and the first primates didn’t come about until 65 million years before now. It took until just 200,000 years ago for humans to show up.

People have only been on the planet for 0.004% of geological time. And even though we’ve basically only just arrived we’ve already messed things up beyond belief.

This won’t be news to you. We already know we’re ruining the planet. Quite frankly, these days we’re so au faix with the idea that it’s almost become cliche. Okay, enough with the French.

We all know the Earth is in trouble but I think it’s worth getting familiar with the specifics. Where whales are concerned, we’re starting with a disadvantage. Humans have already hunted many of the big species to near extinction. If we don’t start being more careful we might lose some of them forever.

Extinction is a terrifying prospect, and it could have enormous consequences for the rest of the marine ecosystem. Cetaceans are keystone species, which means they make the environment better for everything else just by existing.

You might think this is gross, but big whales can produce 200 litres of excrement with each bowel movement. That’s over 240 large fountain drinks or more than 4,500 shots of espresso. It’s a lot.

In fact let’s do the maths on this. Unfortunately we don’t know how many times a day they make these … deposits though. I’ll assume they match up to the average human with three movements roughly every 24 hours. Does that sound right to you guys? I don’t want to out myself as a super pooper.

There are somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000 blue whales on Earth but let’s take an average and call it 18,000. Three emissions per day for 18,000 whales adds up to …

380 billion litres of liquid faeces per year. All that waste creates a lot of food for the tiny animals that live in the sea. The animals at the top of the food chain support those at the bottom … literally.

Big filter-feeders even contribute to the ecosystem after death. There are several species that live on whale carcasses that have sunk to the bottom of the ocean. There’s a bivalve mollusc called Adipicola crypta that in turn hosts a bacterial species that breaks down whale bones.

These microbes are so new to science that they are still yet to be given their Latin names so I don’t have that to geek out on. In case anyone’s wondering, the name Adipicola crypta comes from the Latin words for fat, inhabit and crypt. Put them together and you get ‘those that dwell in fat in the deep’. Cool, huh?

Okay, tough crowd. Nearly got lost in the Latin there. The bacteria that must not be named are actually the ones that process the whale carcass, and indirectly I might add. They oxidise the sulphides produced by other microorganisms feasting on the fat of the dead whale.

They themselves are the only food source for Adipicola crypta. Those are just two species that would cease to exist should whales disappear.

But what about dolphins? They too have a significant impact on marine ecosystems, especially in rivers and warm, tropical sea. Toothed whales also help keep fish and squid populations under control, although now that overfishing is such a big problem their numbers are all over the place. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

Dolphins play a vital role in spreading nutrients around between distant ecosystems. That basically means that they feed in one area then poo it out somewhere else. The rest of the episode isn’t going to be quite this pooey, I promise.

I’m not just talking about distance here. Deep-diving species like spinner dolphins, orcas and Fraser’s dolphins feed in the murky depths and drop their bombs in the light-filled waters of the surface.

Like baleen whale waste, their excreta are a vital food source for plankton that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Now could actually be a good time for a plankton tangent. Firstly I want to give a definition because there’s a chance not all of you listening to this studied marine biology. It’s not a single species, and it’s not only out for the Krabby Patty formula.

In the simplest terms, plankton is the passively floating or weakly swimming animal and plant life of a body of water. By that definition the term plankton includes animals like jellyfish. Heck, according to that I’ve been plankton a few times in the pool on holiday.

Generally speaking we’re talking about minute organisms here. So small they’re invisible to the naked eye. There are two types. Zooplankton are the little animals and phytoplankton are microscopic plants. Vegetable plankton is probably the most important resource in the whole ocean. It’s at the bottom of the food chain, meaning it’s essentially the foundation of all life in the sea.

But even more importantly, it’s a carbon sink. If you add it up, the world’s phytoplankton absorbs four times the carbon dioxide than the entire Amazon rainforest. It accounts for half the photosynthesis that occurs on Earth. Without it, climate change would be spiralling out of control. Y’know, even worse than it already is.

The world of plankton is beyond fascinating. Most planktonic animals are so small that regular sea water feels as thick as treacle to them. That’s not remotely relevant to this but I needed you all to know that.

The point I’m trying to make is that big whales, dolphins and porpoises are vitally important to the environment. They don’t just need preserving because they’re nice to look at and we like them. They just need preserving, full stop.

The first example that comes to mind is pollution. We’re all in the know about plastic these days. Somewhere between five and 13 million tonnes of plastic finds its way into the ocean every year. In terms of mass that’s the equivalent of somewhere between 25,000 and 65,000 blue whales.

Like I told you earlier, there are a maximum of 25,000 blue whales alive today. The amount of plastic we let go into the sea every year outweighs those blue whales. Maybe by more than double.

Now there might be some of you thinking ‘So what? There’s plastic everywhere! What harm does it actually do?’

Well, this is the harm it does. Firstly, clear plastic floating in the sea can be easily mistaken for jellyfish that bigger animals like to eat. Turtles are hit especially hard, as are deep-diving animals like sperm whales. They’re turning up dead on beaches with stomachs full of plastic.

Secondly, marine animals can get tangled in it. It can impede their ability to swim, and for air-breathing animals in the sea it can be a death sentence.

Finally, plastic is harmful when it breaks down. It takes a loooong time to decompose, but it releases toxic chemicals into the water as it does so. Not only that, but it can absorb other pollutants and transport them over miles as the rubbish drifts along ocean currents.

That brings me neatly on to chemical pollution. There are countless ways chemicals can make their way into the sea. There’s oil, detergents, sewage and industrial pollutants, not to mention things like fertilisers.

We treat farmland with nutrient-rich chemicals that help crops grow, but eventually they wash away and trickle into the ocean. That causes algae to explode into life, sucking up all the oxygen and turning once-fertile ocean into wasteland that can’t support any other living thing.

The worst chemical pollutants we get in the oceans are heavy metals - and I’m not talking about music. There’s lead, mercury, copper, zinc, cadmium, nickel and even arsenic in seawater from a myriad of industrial processes from mining to manufacturing things like batteries.

Even in low doses, exposure to these toxic chemicals has irreversible effects. It’s worst for the animals at the top of the food chain because the poisons have seeped into every branch below them along the way.

Dolphins are apex predators that eat a lot of fish. As we heard last episode, all of these fish are laden with poisonous elements and they accumulate in dolphins in frightening concentrations.

Bluefin tuna are critically endangered. Less than three percent of their historical population remains alive today. Tuna! There are probably tins of tuna in most of our homes this very minute.

I’ve been promising a nuclear attack on the fishing industry and it’s finally D-Day. Strap in.

Since it was industrialised, the fishing trade is worth more than 40 billion US dollars. We’ve come a long way from the days of fishing with rods and hooks. 

Let me outline some of the standard methods used around the world today. I’ll start with long-line fishing. The basic idea is a long line of hooks attached to floats to keep them near the surface.

When I say long, I’m not exaggerating. Every single day, enough of these lines are set into the sea to wrap around the entire Earth 500 times. That’s 12 and a half million miles. 20 million kilometres. Every day. 

Oh, and at this point I should probably mention that no variety of fishing gear is specific. That means, there’s no method of catching fish that can target a single desired species.

So, long line fisheries hope to catch swordfish or tuna, they don’t have any control over what kind of animal they actually hook. I say animal because it’s not always fish. In fact, sea birds often fall victim.

They see the bait from the sky, dive into the ocean to catch it and get stuck on the hook and drown. This is known as bycatch. Any fish, mammal, bird or otherwise that the boat catches accidentally counts as bycatch, and often the quantity is alarming. It can even outweigh the haul of the target species. 

I can’t name names for their own safety, but one of my university professors was a retired fisheries inspector. I will never forget them telling us about the things they saw at sea, especially about bycatch of endangered species.

They said that on a longline boat when the crew were hauling in the hooks there’d be a fish, then an albatross. Fish, albatross. Albatross, albatross, albatross, albatross, fish, albatross. 

This person also told us that throughout their entire career they’d never once seen a single fishery completely abiding by the rules. Not one. And they were old.

That was long-line fishing. There’s also trawling.

Trawler boats chug along dragging nets behind them. There are some that aim for the mid-section of the sea, but others trundle along the ocean floor.

Seabed trawling absolutely destroys the environment. The nets are weighted down and usually have heavy wheels that roll along the ground. Corals, habitats and vital marine vegetation get ripped to shreds.

Both kinds of trawling have high rates of bycatch. I’ve read about shrimp fisheries that reported 75% of their haul to be accidental bycatch. There’s no way to tell what’s entering the nets seeing as they’re being towed so deep under water. By the time the nets are emptied it’s usually too late to save whatever dolphins, seals or anything else that’s got trapped.

My least favourite means of fishing are called gill nets. These are stationary nets that are attached to the sea floor. Imagine an underwater tennis net. The idea is that fish get stuck by their gills trying to swim through it.

Sadly, marine mammals get tangled in gill nets all the time. Nets stationed in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico are directly responsible for the sharp decline of the vaquita.

I’m sure most of you haven’t heard of the vaquita. It’s the smallest species of whale on Earth but it’s about to go extinct. As of right now there might be as few as 10 left. It’s safe to say that people listening to this after 2023 or so will be living in a world where the vaquita has already died out.

That brings me to the last on the list - purse seine nets.

The boats set out like a curtain of net then drive round in a circle to envelop as many fish as possible. The top is then pulled tight, like a drawstring bag, and the fish are brought aboard.

This is generally agreed to be the most ethical means of fishing because it doesn’t mess with the seabed and they can use a wide mesh to allow smaller, immature fish to escape and live in the wild until they’ve matured enough to breed and help replenish stocks. That doesn’t mean their bycatch is zero though. Far from it, I’m afraid.

Long story short, fishing isn’t remotely good for the environment or the animals that live in it. And no, fish farming isn’t any better. It messes with the water table, they’re a breeding ground for bacteria and viruses and they use up massive stocks of small fish like anchovies to feed the salmon or whatever marketable species they’re raising.

I mentioned SeaSpiracy earlier I’d like to circle back to it quickly. Something else the documentary mentioned that was also covered by my university syllabus was about labels on food.

I hate to break it to you, but the vast majority of labels on animal products are meaningless. Companies pay to display certain labels. Customers see the little sticker and could be more likely to buy that product if they think it’s ethical.

SeaSpiracy names and shames the Earth Island Institute. It’s a US charity that claims to protect dolphins from deadly fishing practices. They make a big chunk of their income from selling a ‘dolphin safe’ label to fisheries.

Mark Palmer is the associate director of the International Marine Mammal Project, which is operated by the Earth Island Institute. When asked if he can guarantee ‘dolphin safe’ tuna really is safe for marine mammals he replied with this.

“Nope. Nobody can. Once you're out there in the ocean, how do you know what they're doing? We have observers onboard — observers can be bribed and are not out on a regular basis.”

They’ve backtracked massively since the release of the documentary but having known fisheries inspectors in real life I’m fully ready to take that first statement at face value.

Members of Ric O’Barry’s organisation Sea Shepherd reckon they’ve seen a quote-unquote “dolphin safe” fishing boat slaughter 45 dolphins to catch a grand total of eight tuna. 

I found out how terrible fishing is for the planet in 2008 and haven’t eaten seafood since. SeaSpiracy maker, my main man, Ali Tabrizi interviewed some staff of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a project of the Earth Island Institute.

They were sharing a lot of information about pollution and raising awareness about microplastics. He wondered why they didn’t have anything on their website about how harmful the fishing industry is to the ocean when he’d found it to be a much bigger threat than anything else. He went to the charity in person to meet with the staff.

The first person he’s shown interviewing agrees with his anti-fishing stance. She suggested that if you want to care for the ocean you can - and I quote - 

“Eliminate or really reduce your intake of fish.”

Then they showed him talking to the founder of the project, Dianna (dee-ONNA) Cohen. She wasn’t at all impressed by that statement. She appears to get very defensive, but I don’t know if there’s some editing trickery going on. Here’s what she says.

“A consumer message to eat less fish? Yeah, it’s not my area of focus. I hear you, I don’t have time. We have an event. Can you turn off the cameras? Thanks.”

The rest of the exchange is audio only.

“I’m not interested in focusing there, I don’t have an opinion about that.”

Ali leans on her, saying -

“It’s just I was talking about what people can do to make a difference about fishing net trash in the ocean, and Jackie said we could eliminate or reduce fish consumption.”

“She didn’t say eliminate fish. I know that she didn’t. She didn’t say eliminate fish.”

She definitely did, and she’s right. We absolutely should be eating less fish. I want to give you the rest of the quote, because she really nails it.

“One thing you can do is eliminate or really reduce your intake of fish, and to really let those populations rebound and also that will eliminate as much materials being used to get those fish.”

When Ali asks why this important message isn’t on their website, she replies -

“I don’t know, I don’t make the website.”

I urge all of you to go and watch just that clip. It’s on Youtube, just search for ‘SeaSpiracy - The Truth About ‘Dolphin Friendly Labels’.

It makes sense to me that the founder is anti-anti-fishing. If less fishing happens, they can’t sell their ‘dolphin safe’ label to as many companies as inhumanly possible and they make less money. Anybody that cares about the environment should be shouting from the rooftops about the fishing industry. Or at the very least - 

“Eliminate or really reduce their intake of fish.”

Like I said earlier, fishing is a much bigger environmental threat than plastic pollution. Here’s the kicker. You know the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It’s a huge raft of non-biodegradable waste floating out on the ocean. It really is massive. It’s more than six-and-a-half times the area of the UK.

46% of it, so nearly half, is made up of fishing gear. Nets and other plastic components used in the fishing industry get shredded and lost at sea all the time. It’s called ghost gear, and in certain areas it makes up 85% of waste in the ocean.

But the people that profit from the fishing industry aren’t about to tell you that. It’s a wasteful, destructive practice that is catastrophic for the environment. Don’t believe the ‘dolphin safe’ labels you see on fish. I don’t think there is any such thing.

Since SeaSpiracy was released, Earth Island has called its message a conspiracy theory. I can tell you right now, I know it’s not, because I’ve known about all of this for 15 years at this point. It’s not something Ali Tabrizi’s dreamed up, this stuff was on my degree syllabus.

I think the organisation’s claim it’s all a carefully-crafted lie would be a lot more believable if fishing wasn’t directly responsible for a ton of the charity’s revenue.

Very little in Seaspiracy was news to me. Like I said, I learned about all of it at university when I was 18. I’ve already told you I don’t eat fish. I don’t eat anything from the sea, in fact. Not even seaweed. I gave it up when I learned about the horrors of fishing methods.

And unlike the Earth Island Institute I’m not afraid to encourage others to do the same. In fact, In early 2020 I got the chance to write a book about sharks to be sold on World Book Day in America.

The last two pages were about practical things readers could do to help sharks thrive in the wild. I couldn’t wait to sprinkle the seeds of my anti-fishing rhetoric into the minds of children and I’m only realising now how weird that sounds.

I actually dug out my copy of the book so I could read you all exactly how I phrased it but when I flicked to the back of the book … it was gone.

It had been cut from the finished product. Luckily I went back to check my original Word document which I’ve kept like a good little geek and boom, there it was.

“Think about reducing your overall seafood consumption. If fewer people ate fish and other marine species then there would be less accidental bycatch and entanglement.”

Perfectly written, I’m sure you agree. But the editor decided to lose it. Unlike Earth Island I’m not about to leap to conspiratorial conclusions but I do think it’s a bit … fishy, if you’ll excuse the pun. I have no idea what could possibly be so offensive about those two sentences. 

The readers of my book have missed out on that message, but at least I could share it with you. And if you’re a cheapskate like me, you’ll be thrilled at the prospect of saving money on pricey seafood that’s been fished unsustainably and, remember, has had life-long exposure to pollutants.

When it comes to abstaining from seafood, I’m only one person. But if enough people do the same the demand for fish will be lower, and they’ll have to stop catching as many. Not that I’m telling you what to do, of course.

Although, while we’re here… there’s a point made in The Cove that I’d like to bring up. A few of the Japanese people advocating for killing dolphins justify it by saying that in the west we kill intelligent mammals like cows and pigs.

Now, Japan you do that too so get off your high horse. But it’s a thought-provoking argument. Maybe we shouldn’t be killing animals for food at all. Some of you might be horrified by that thought because you like the way animal products taste. As a vegan, I can’t help but implore you to think about that reasoning.

There have been a lot of things that were once widely accepted that are now deemed reprehensible. We used to make animals fight to the death for our entertainment. That was normal. I’d be so curious to know the public opinion on eating animals in 100 years’ time.

Humans as a whole cause mass suffering to animals on a daily basis. Japan is far from the only culprit. Like with fish, if fewer people consume animal products we won’t need to generate as much. Fewer animals will die, and we can dedicate the land that we once grew food to feed those animals to grow food for humans. That’s my vegan dream at least.

Well, that was quite the tangent. This is such a cheery episode, isn’t it? Let’s keep the good times rolling and head back to The Cove, where Ric O’Barry’s trying to figure out how to tape the dolphin slaughter without getting caught, arrested or assassinated.

 There’s a point in the documentary where things start to take on a real heist feel.

Ric O’Barry and Louis Psihoyos put a team together. Their first port of call is Simon Hutchins, the master of stealth.

He’s got military experience and has a talent for covert surveillance. They can’t get caught, and this guy will make sure they won’t.

Next is Joe Chisolm. The muscle.

As in, there was a lot of equipment to bring and he needed to use his muscles to carry it. Finally, they invited a pair of free divers called Mandy-Rae Cruikshank and Kirk Krack who I’m calling the merpeople.

They would be instrumental in placing hydrophones and underwater cameras ready to capture the act the fishermen were so keen to hide.

Louie Psihoyos talked to the Industrial Light and Magic model shop to help with the project. They aren’t in business any more, but at the time they were only too happy to build camouflaged cameras to hide around the cove.

They made them look like rocks, taking the natural landscape into account. They looked brilliant. But they faced the problem of how to put them in place. They’re being hassled just standing around near the cove, what will the fishermen do if they catch them placing secret recording equipment?

Planting the cameras and hydrophones was done in the middle of the night. The first mission was to wire the cove for sound. The team snuck down to the cove and the free divers slipped into the water with the mics. 

The next phase was to set the cameras. They had some under water and the camouflaged rock cameras went on the surrounding hilltops. They even managed to get one on the shores of the secret cove that’s usually completely hidden from view.

They capture the fishermen hanging out on the beach before the killing starts. They’re talking about how great things were before restrictions on killing whales were put in place. That’s stomach-churning enough, but the slaughter is so much worse.

The dolphins are herded right into the shallows and trapped in with multiple rows of nets. Some of the fishermen go out on boats and others wade out from the beach. Then they begin to stab the dolphins to death.

It’s an unbearably slow process and the animals definitely suffer a lot. There’s so much blood the underwater camera shows nothing but red within minutes of the onset of the slaughter.

 The water’s so opaque with blood that the fishermen have to swim around to locate the bodies. The dead, and still slowly dying, dolphins are loaded up on to boats and transported away for processing.

Right at the end of the documentary, Ric is shown talking to Hideki Moronuki, who at time was the deputy of fisheries in Japan. Mr Moronuki, who incidentally has MORON in his name, is calmly explaining to Ric that the dolphins in the cove don’t suffer.

He says they’ve improved their kill method to make it more humane and that half of the animals die instantaneously without feeling any pain. Ric is armed with the footage they managed to capture of the animals being tortured to death and shows it to Mr Moron.

It was so satisfying to see him get caught out lying right there on camera. His reaction? He merely asks how they got the video. He knew he’d been rumbled. He was fired after The Cove came out, though not before being found to be positive for mercury poisoning. Moron by name, moron by nature.

The final part of the film shows Ric O’Barry crashing an IWC meeting wearing a monitor showing footage of the dolphin slaughter in The Cove. He’s banned from attending assemblies of the IWC, so he was quickly removed.

To this day, dolphins and other small toothed whales are not covered by IWC protection. It still refuses to regulate dolphin hunting. It sure would be a shame if people started spamming them. I hope nobody visits iwc.int/contact (that’s IWC.INT/CONTACT) and starts blowing up their various inboxes.

That would be a bad thing.

There are a couple of memorable quotes I’d like to pick out for those of you that will never watch The Cove. Pretty early on, Ric O’Barry says that -

A dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception

We’re humans. To us, a smile means happiness. We do it to show how we feel inside. But let me make this 100% clear. Dolphins are not smiling. That’s literally just the shape of their mouths. It doesn’t reflect the animal’s mental state. They can’t change it.

But we see that quote-unquote smile and interpret it as happiness. When we do that we’re anthropomorphising. We’re applying human concepts to animals where they do not apply. Dolphins are not happy in captivity. They’re miserable.

Another one of the lines came from Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson. He was talking about how we can make the world a better place. He says -

All social change comes from the passion of individuals

I agree. We can’t rely on companies and organisations. It’s up to us. If we consume less fish and don’t visit aquariums, these industries will die out. And I’d rather see the back of them than the extinction of dolphins. I hope you feel the same, or at the very least understand why that’s my viewpoint.

I would like to commend the crew of The Cove for their unbelievable bravery. If they’d been caught, they may well have been killed. In fact, I’d like to extend that to every single activist that’s protested at The Cove. It takes guts to risk your own personal safety to stand up for the voiceless.

Ric O’Barry says the Yakuza, also known as the Japanese mafia, have deep ties to whaling and fishing in Japan. They pose a much higher risk to the lives of the activists than the fishermen and police combined. Classic Ric, risking a mafia hit.

The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2010. I’m so proud of them for that. Earning that honour brought the attention of the world to what’s happening in Taiji.

 They spread vital awareness both in Japan and around the world. It sparked international outcry and the practice is falling from favour. Not fast enough for my liking, but in time we can only hope it shrinks to nothing.

Now that I’ve lavished The Cove with praise, the sun is rising on opposite day. In the interest of balance, which I’m sure you noticed I’m a real stickler for, I thought I should try and find at least one minuscule point that goes against my opinion of the film.

Some people have criticised The Cove for being one-sided. Not me. We hear the Taiji fishermen and their supporters arguments for the dolphin slaughter. Those arguments are just stupid though. They got way more air time than they deserved.

Others think the film was too graphic and wanted to be spared the gory visuals. Those people should have listened to this podcast. I didn’t enjoy the footage of the slaughter one bit. But it’s really important to show it. If we never see the dirty truth, we can never clean it up.

The closest thing I have to criticism is that there may have been a tiny amount of creative editing in the documentary. For example, there’s a gathering of the International Whaling Commission with the apparent purpose of telling Japan off.

 They show delegates of other countries imploring Japan to stop whaling and we see the Japanese delegate to the IWC yawning and nodding off to sleep. That may not have happened during the impassioned speeches. Maybe it did, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. He may well have been giving it his full attention and taking diligent notes. 

I’m really nit-picking here, because aside from wishing I hadn’t seen all those dolphins meet such a needless violent end I think this is an impeccable documentary.

Now that we’re dancing around the topic of whaling I can’t resist the urge to keep talking. No change there. It was once a booming business all over the world and could date as far back as 6,000 BCE. Their various body parts were tragically useful for all sorts of things. 

Meat is an obvious one. There’s literally tonnes of meat on a whale. In the olden days there wasn’t much in the way of refrigeration so they had to sell it off quick sticks before it went bad.

The fringed plates of baleen in a whale’s mouth that it uses to filter-feed were sold off to make corset stays, fishing rods, skirt hoops and umbrella parts.

I’m afraid the only way you can get your hands on baleen is to take it from the mouth of a dead whale. 

Then there’s ambergris. It’s a disgustingly smelly wax produced by sperm whales that was handy in making perfumes and cosmetics.

It’s secreted by the whale’s digestive tract if it gets irritated by a sharp squid beak. Sometimes they spit out great lumps of the stuff that wash up on beaches but it’s faster to just kill your way to it.

Plus there’s all the lovely whale oil. Again, the only way to get that is by killing the animal. Oil was actually the number one whale derivative. Sperm whales are chock full of it because they’re such deep divers and it helps them with their buoyancy.

But the real star of the whale oil world was the blue whale. They’re the biggest animals that have ever roamed the Earth. Bigger than any dinosaur. A single blue whale could yield 120 barrels full of oil. It was a miracle substance. It didn’t smell strongly and stayed liquid at cold temperatures.

But what was this oil used for, I hear you cry? Again, it was useful for production of soaps and cosmetics. It was also valuable for lighting. We relied on oil lamps and candles before we had electricity and whale oil went into both.

It was also highly prized for lubricating machinery. In the most ridiculous example of irony I’ve ever heard, oil from little pygmy killer whales was used to grease the delicate chronometers on whaling ships. Hold on while I swallow my anger.

It wasn’t just whales either. The Caribbean monk seal was basically hunted to extinction for its oil. In the 1700s Spanish explorers were killing upwards of 100 seals in a single night just to fuel their lamps, not to mention the countless more to lubricate the machinery used on sugar plantations.

In the beginning most of the big whales were safe because hunting methods were so primitive. Things really took off after the invention of the explosive harpoon in 1868. Funny thing though, soon those oily, oily blue whales became harder to come by. Weird.

So, they turned their attention to slightly smaller fin whales.

Then sei whales.

Then minkes.

By the mid 1940s there were so few big whales left the whole world agreed it was time to leave them alone. The International Whaling Commission, or IWC, formed in 1946 to help prevent overhunting. But it wasn’t until 1982 that they called for a total moratorium on whaling. 

Interesting fact, right whales earned their name by being the ‘right’ whales to hunt because they were so slow and friendly. The North Atlantic Right whale is still endangered today they were hunted that extensively. There are only around 350 on the planet right now, and that’s if we’re lucky.

Whaling still happens though as we’ve already talked about. There are small indigenous communities that catch a limited number of animals that sustain people for months on end. I’m not happy it happens, but I’d rather people didn’t starve to death.

Then there are countries that have a tradition of whaling that’s now drying up. Two examples that spring to mind are Norway and Iceland. 

I can tell you right now that these countries aren’t massive threats to whales. Norway’s whaling quotas have been shrinking for decades because the demand for meat has dropped so low.

It’s a similar situation in Iceland, but there’s one key difference. The people keeping the whaling industry going in Iceland are tourists. They flock to Reykjavik restaurants for a taste of minke whale, or even endangered fin whale.

 If you’re planning a trip to Iceland I beg you please don’t try whale. I’ve never had it myself but I’ve heard from countless people that it’s not that good. The whales will thank you for abstaining. Well, I’ll thank you on their behalf.

Iceland does also trade in whale meat though. They sell a lot of their fin whales to Japan. Dolphin enemy number one. On top of the heap of dolphin bodies they try and sweep under the carpet are a whole lot more dead whales.  As we know from The Cove, Japan have done a lot of what they call scientific whaling.

The body in charge of is called Institute of Cetacean Research, or ICR for short. I’m completely impartial on this issue, of course, but there are some that say that the ICR is full of it.

 It could have something to do with the fact that its parent organisation is the Japanese Fisheries Agency. Or maybe it’s the fact that despite being a “research organisation” they’ve only managed to publish two peer-reviewed studies since 2005. The Wikipedia page puts it brilliantly. 

'“The ICR is a Japanese entity that claims to be a research organisation specialising in the "biological and social sciences related to whales”.”

Claims to be. I love it when Wikipedia gets passive-aggressive.

I found a fantastic FAQ section on their website that reads like those fake Amazon tweets dissuading their workers from unionising. They use the phrase ‘perfectly legal’ five times.

They say they’re investigating the following four things:

“Examination of the role of whales in the Antarctic marine ecosystem

Examination of the effect of environmental changes on cetaceans 

Estimation of biological parameters to improve the stock management of the Southern Hemisphere minke whale

Examination of the stock structure of the Southern Hemisphere minke whales to improve stock management.”

In case any of that went over your head, stock basically refers to the number of animals in the wild population, ready to be caught. Usually improving stock management, as the ICR say they’re trying to do, involves trying to increase the wild population.

But seeing as they’re killing all these whales, it doesn’t strike me that they’re concerned with growing whale stocks. In fact, it makes me wonder if they’re aiming for the opposite.

Japan has routinely killed hundreds of whales of four different species, at least one of which is endangered. So, how are they justifying killing all these whales? This is from their website:

“More than 100 data items and samples are taken from each whale including ear plugs for age determination studies, reproductive organs for examination of maturation, reproductive cycles and reproductive rates, stomachs for analysis of food consumption and blubber thickness as a measure of condition.”

They determine a whale’s age by measuring its ear plugs and harvest ovaries to examine their reproductive rates. They collect stomach contents to investigate dietary data. They also gather samples from a variety of other internal organs to study pollutant levels.

In fairness, it’s hard to measure all of those things on a live whale. But they don’t seem to be doing anything of note with all these measurements they’re taking. On their propaganda website they list a few things they’ve found out.

“Valuable information related to genetic make-up, reproduction and geographical distribution has resulted from these research programs.”

Valuable information, eh? Prove it. Next.

“Our research has also showed that contaminant levels in Antarctic minke whales are very low.”

Now even if you think that little finding that’s definitely true worth killing roughly 14,000 whales over, you might be interested to learn that they make a tidy profit selling the meat. Personally I don’t know who they think they’re fooling, because it certainly isn’t me.

They clearly have incentive to proclaim the meat to be safe to consume when it probably really isn’t. More on that story to come. Let’s hear the more of the ICR’s ground-breaking discoveries.

I don’t mean to brag about my dedication to researching this podcast, but I carved out some time and read all two scientific papers linked on their website. Neither contained anything groundbreaking. I have to be honest though, a quick search of Google Scholar reveals page after page of research that’s come out of the ICR.

There are a good number of papers about distributions of various species, which you don’t need to use lethal force to measure.

Quite a lot of their published material seems to be descriptions of their various methods and proposals to implement new technology. Oh great, they’re getting better at whaling. Perfect.

 I found a 2021 paper about the ICR adding UAVs to their fleet that made very interesting reading. Their reasoning was threefold, and on the surface it’s rock solid. Drones can survey areas that are restricted to boats by law, and can also spy on shallow water inaccessible to large vessels. Capturing images of whales can also help identify individuals without the need to tag them.

That’s all well and good, but a cynic might not be able to take that at face value. It might be the case that the reason they want eyes in the skies is to better locate whales to catch. After all, they sell the meat of the animals they haul aboard.

Another one of the ICR’s findings they’ve reported makes me even more suspicious.

 “Much has been learned about the feeding habits of whales through analysis of stomach contents. The research has found for example that whales are consuming 3 to 5 times the amount of marine living resources as are caught for human consumption.”

Aaaaaand there it is. Just like their motivation to eliminate dolphins, they’re trying to take out their competition. They also mention that minke whales eat at least 10 species of fish commercially important to Japan.

This came up a lot in The Cove too. Organisations like the ICR are using the fact that cetaceans consume a large amount of seafood to justify their barbaric practices. Yes! Obviously whales eat a lot of fish. They’re supposed to. We’re the ones deviating from the natural way.

For a long time Japan has been all too happy to kill off whales to make more fish available for humans to catch and sell.

You’ll be relieved to hear that there’s some good news on this front. In March of 2020 the ICR promised to stop selling what they term “whale research byproducts” and claimed from that moment on they would only carry out non-lethal research.

We can only hope they’ve realised how critical the fish stocks are and are finally taking action. Fingers crossed this is a permanent move, not a blip. 

Do you know what time it is now? It’s robot time!

With our ever-advancing technology, it’s now possible to build mechanical dolphins that could theoretically replace live animals in marine parks.

A New Zealand company called Edge Innovations has created a robot dolphin named Delle. They’ve made animatronics for Free Willy and Anaconda, along with moving monsters for theme park attractions like the dinosaurs in Jurassic World at Universal Studios.

Good CV so far, but I’ve been to Universal Studios and I knew the whole time those dinosaurs weren’t real, and not just because they’re extinct. But with Delle, a test audience reportedly couldn’t tell which was the robot and which was the real dolphin.

Reading that made me very curious. I would say I’m more familiar with dolphins than the average person and I was sure I wouldn’t be fooled. So I looked up a video.

They started by showing a real dolphin swimming around in a pool. I figured they were giving the audience a frame of reference so they could see how realistic the animatronic is in comparison.

I kept waiting for them to show the robot, but it wasn’t until halfway through the video that I realised it had been the robot the whole time. The whole time?

*TABLE SLAM AND CUTLERY/PLATES JANGLING SFX*

THE WHOLE TIME!

Delle might be the company’s most advanced creation to date. She’s controlled with a mixture of puppeteering, programming, and artificial intelligence. Marine biologists consulted on exactly how she should move, which is why she’s so lifelike.

Please take a few minutes to see footage of Delle yourself. It comes up if you search YouTube for ‘robot dolphin’. It’s insanely realistic, and it’s now a life goal of mine to swim with Delle.

As cool as it would be to have remote-controlled cetaceans replace the current captive population, it’s probably far out of reach.

 As we’ve heard, a live dolphin costs somewhere in the region of $150,000. That’s a healthy sum, but it pales in comparison to how much it costs to make a robot like Delle which is $3 million. With the installation, access to specialist software and extensive training to use said software, a single mechanical dolphin could set back an aquarium $26 million.

The company makes a good point in favour of the cost, though. The robot dolphin would last a lot longer than a living animal. We know bottlenoses typically only reach around a quarter of their natural lifespan in captivity. The invulnerable robot dolphins could last decades longer than living breathing animals.

 But if the aquariums aren’t willing to let any moths out of their wallets, swimming with Delle may still be possible one day. Edge Innovations published the following on their website edgedolphinspirit.

“We are currently developing our first pilot attraction scheduled to open to the public in the Summer of 2022. Follow us on Social Media to stay informed. Uh, Amy? That was ages ago.”

I know. I did indeed follow them on social media and while there are a few sporadic videos of Delle in the pool with people, they don’t appear to have a steady attraction up and running. Not yet at least!

 With dolphin shows still slowly falling from favour, maybe facilities are going to look in new directions for unconventional attractions that will guarantee ticket sales. I’ll be first in line.

It’s a bit dystopian, the idea of replacing animals with machines. But everything’s so crazy nuts these days it’s all a bit surreal. 20 minutes ago I was talking about ritual dolphin killings.

 I mean, there was a dolphin that was fitted with a replacement tail. Does that count as being part robot? But you know what? That’s a story for next time. The last time, in fact. This is the penultimate episode of this series.