The fishing industry’s callous disregard for the rights of sentient beings who live where they, the fishermen, work can best be illustrated by their use of the term ‘bycatch’ to describe a dolphin entangled in fishing gear and suffocating to death.  Dolphins as ‘bycatch’.  This is an absurdly offensive concept.  And we shouldn’t let seafood producers get away with it.  

Bycatch refers to fish or other marine species unintentionally caught when going after the target species.  It occurs because modern fishing gear can be very efficient at capturing everything over a large area.  The problem is that it is also highly unselective.   As a normal part of doing business, large numbers of dead individuals of  ‘undesired species’ are thrown back into the sea.  And this includes tens of thousands of dolphins every year.

Now this would be crazy even from a ‘sustainability’ standpoint.  But that is most emphatically not the bigger issue, even though it would be a good enough reason by itself.  We’re talking about wantonly destroying the lives of individuals with highly complex, sophisticated cognitive skills and social intelligence.  Animals with interpersonal bonds every bit as meaningful to them as ours are to us.  The carnage inflicted upon cetaceans by the fishing industry is horrific, and shocking.  And now it turns out that those ‘dolphin friendly’ labels we’ve long relied on don’t protect us very well from these ravages of our seas, by an industry that is literally out of control.

But we are not powerless to do anything about it.

We hold in our collective hands a tool (or a weapon if you prefer that formulation) which can drive enormous, meaningful change if wielded properly.  And what is that tool or weapon?  It is the principle that we can effect enormous changes in consumer behaviour as a result of our awareness raising campaigns.  Simple as that.  Easy to understand, and highly effective, though not as easily done.  It takes time, patience, and perseverance in the face of an adversary who is typically much better funded than we are.  But in the long run it’s what is making all the difference.    

This principle applies across a very wide range of human endeavors – many of which are vitally important to our common future.  We can only hope that someone will be prepared to devote their time, intelligence and passion to each of them.  The problem for us as individuals is that no one has the time and resources to fight all of them – so each of us has to make choices.  How you live your life really matters, and you can be supportive of efforts to move a large number of things in the right direction, as best you’re able to determine what that is.  But when it comes to where you put the bulk of your energies, there’s an opportunity cost to everything, so you do have to pick your fights carefully.  

At the Canadian Cetacean Alliance (CCA), here are ours.  

We are aiming our awareness-raising efforts at principally three industries: 

1. Entertainment (dolphin captivity), 
2. Travel & Tourism (cruelty and neglect of any species, including cetaceans) and 
3. Seafood (cetacean deaths by entanglement and drowning in fishing gear, as well as the industry’s unsustainable depletion of stocks the very health of our oceans depends on).

Our focus on the first of these in particular will see us join with other like-minded individuals and organizations in a new initiative we’re calling #CetaHub, which takes off in a few weeks’ time.  This will be our latest contribution to the ongoing global effort to bring about the end of whale and dolphin captivity. CCA’s campaign under the #CetaHub banner will launch August 14, 2021.  We’ll consider the job done on the day that there is not one legally-held captive cetacean anywhere in the world.  So we’re making a twenty-to-thirty year commitment today, because that’s how long we believe it will take for that awesome day to arrive.  There will be a great deal of toil and heartache between now and then, but it will be worth every bit of it.  

In the meantime, our broader mission will proceed as always – to increase  awareness and thereby raise the public profile of issues that impact the lives and wellbeing of cetaceans all over the world.  A great many things need to happen in order for humankind to reach a day when we can claim to be doing right by that other ‘highest order intelligence’ we happen to share our world with.  These involve a wide range of tasks, and will require a great many people to perform them.  Each of us who’s chosen to be a part of this fight has her or his own unique role to perform within that bigger picture.

CCA’s role is less costly and resource intensive than many others.  As a result, the fundraising we need to do to cover our expenses tends to be very limited, while giving us the luxury of advocating on behalf of a great many other organizations whose operating costs can at times be considerably greater.  Virtually all of our respective organizations rely on the generosity of donors.  A few are funded by taxpayers, like much of the research done within an academic context, but practically all of the rest is paid for with donations (or merchandise sales, some crowdsourcing, sponsorship etc.).  Though our many organizations can and do cooperate effectively, the way we get the bulk of our financing effectively puts us in competition with one another.  This is a fact of life, and we all need money to operate.

But we can and must draw out synergies from within our community, and though we will always be a collection of organizations competing for the same donor dollars, it is incumbent upon all of us to continuously grow the available donor pool. And as we do this, it is tremendously important for all of us to remember that we are in a race to avoid losing a war of attrition with the captivity industry.  Aquariums can take new captives far more easily and cheaply than we can build sanctuaries or rehabilitate dolphins for life back in the wild.  Our collective undertaking gets that much harder with each new captive, and worse with every new captive facility built.

So if you are part of an organization, keep the overall mission in mind, and remember that we need to work together.  

As an individual who is concerned about this or any other issue impacting cetaceans, keep the big picture in mind and apply your donations, your volunteer hours and your voice carefully.  Work to your strengths, commit to continuous learning, and persevere.  And if you really want to be great at what you do as an activist, know that being well-informed also means that you will beware the confirmation bias we’re all susceptible to as human beings.  Don’t just seek out those stories that appear to confirm what you already believe, or what you think you already know.  The truth really matters in fights such as these.

As a consumer, know that we collectively have considerable power to encourage companies worldwide to recognize that good behaviour is good business.  This focus on the commercial side doesn’t mean we halt our efforts to bring about legislative change – such as France’s recent decision to end captivity in that country, or the introduction of legislation to effect the same thing in California.  But those outcomes only come about once the same process has been underway for a while.  Politicians largely vote for such change only after a significant proportion of the population has told them to do so.  Wide scale public awareness remains the key.

If you’re relatively constrained in terms of the options available to you to pursue at this stage in your life, know this.  If you decide to do one thing and one thing only on behalf of cetaceans, make it this one – make the decision to never, or never again, purchase a ticket to a dolphin show, or to interact in any way with captive dolphins.   Every empty seat we add to a SeaWorld performance brings us that much closer to the day that the terrible injustice of cetacean captivity will end.

So let’s go #CetaHub.  We’re in this for the long haul.  Working with colleagues from around the world, together we will put an end to the abhorrent practice of depriving whales & dolphins of their liberty and forcing them to perform pointless tricks for our entertainment.  Two-to-three decades from now, the world will be a little kinder, more compassionate and more fair. 

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Anna, Chris, Dakota, Dani, Jason and Phil (contributing writers)

and all of the Canadian Cetacean Alliance Team