Dolphins are directly ¹ harmed by humans in essentially two ways.  We deprive them of their liberty, normally through the use of legally sanctioned hunts, in order to have them spend their lives entertaining us.  And we kill them, in hunts both legal and illegal.  Let me explain why we should be able to solve the former problem long before we are able to effectively tackle the latter.  In our long-term battle to protect cetaceans, putting an end to the practice of captivity will be attainable over a much shorter time horizon.  Ending their being killed by humans presents much greater challenges.  The scenarios we need to deal with are inherently more complicated.

Let’s consider the poaching of a terrestrial species, the rhino, to illustrate this. 

Every species of rhinoceros is endangered, and killing them is illegal everywhere.  The penalties for violations are serious, even including shoot-to-kill policies for law enforcement in many countries.  Despite this, we haven’t yet been able to stem the tide of poaching to a degree that will allow their numbers to recover.

Even to a man armed with a high-powered rifle in the African (or SE Asian) bush, an encounter with a rhino nevertheless presents considerable risks.  But it also represents, in the poacher’s mind, an enormous opportunity. Of the kind that comes around very rarely.  Given the scarcity of rhinos in every place they still live, it may be just this once in this man’s lifetime.  The horn is the prize.  The rest of the rhino might be useful as bush meat, but not in this case.  Time is of the essence, and it wouldn’t be worth the risk.  If he can make the kill, the horn will be hacked off the face of the dead rhino, and the rest will be left to rot in the bush.

This man may or may not know that a rhino’s horn is mostly made of keratin (a protein also found in hair, hooves or fingernails), and despite its potency as a symbol of power and virility, it possesses no medicinal value whatever.  But he is well aware that there are many people elsewhere in the world who believe otherwise.  A successful kill means a huge windfall for him and his family.  Perhaps in the range of USD $2,000.  The per capita gross national product in his country might be $450, perhaps a little more.  In Canada, that would represent a windfall of nearly $200,000.  Now, it’s true that I wouldn’t kill a rhino for 200 thousand dollars, but I hate to think that there are more than a few people who possibly would.  Also, I don’t normally think about my family not having the essentials of life, because I’m very fortunate to live where that simply isn’t a realistic possibility.

But for this man in, let’s say, DR Congo, who has long been accustomed to living day-to-day, it’s likely that he doesn’t believe he has the luxury of being able to care whether rhinos still exist in the world in 10 or 20 years.  Or, he may actually care, but believes that if he doesn’t do this thing, the opportunity for this windfall will simply transfer to someone else.  Or, in truth, he may be simply motivated by greed.  Either way, if he has the shot, there’s a much higher probability that he’ll elect to take it, and the world will have one fewer rhinos. (And again, every species is highly endangered.)  And this game will simply play out again and again, for as long as rhinos last on Earth.  Which may not be much longer.

Poaching of wildlife, endangered or not, is economically driven, and takes place across the entire spectrum of the animal kingdom.  The tragic circumstances we described above most certainly apply to dolphins and small whales, in many parts of the world.  This is the bad news.  Sea Shepherd vessels guarding a vaquita refuge area off the coast of Mexico are sometimes attacked by poachers.  There are fewer than 30 vaquitas (the world’s smallest dolphin) left in existence, and yet the poachers’ instinct is not to protect them, but to risk killing every last one so that they can continue unrestricted fishing for the totoaba fish, which is in high demand for its swim bladder.  This is shocking.

But for dolphins there is some good news when it comes to the other direct threat they face from us.  When it concerns the issue of putting a permanent end to cetacean captivity, the nature of the beast means that the greed that drives the industry cannot continue to have an impact after captivity has been made illegal.  Aquariums and marine parks are fixed assets which cannot be hidden or moved.  They can’t operate in an underground economy or black market.  They are highly visible, and need to actively promote themselves and compete with other available forms of entertainment to get visitors to spend their discretionary income on a dolphin show.  Once they’re made illegal, there is no realistic way to continue to operate such a facility.  It is not possible to hold a dolphin in captivity, which is expensive to do, and to turn it into a profit-making enterprise by charging patrons to view it.  Not if you can’t do it openly.

For this reason, captivity is a threat to cetaceans that will fall long before we are able to rid the world of illegal hunting.  With these hunts, persuading governments to ban them is just a short part of the distance we need to travel.  It only gets you partway there.  Before the hunts can end, we need to eliminate the economic incentives, OR, we need to provide economic alternatives.  It is almost certainly in the latter that we will find the more lasting solutions.

Either one presents a daunting prospect.  There are many more of us humans than there are of them – the species under siege (whales, dolphins, elephants, orang-utans, pangolins ….) .  It takes a very small percentage of the world’s human population to create a lucrative market for the last few rhino horns, elephant tusks or tiger skins and bones.  It is implausible that we could educate the bulk of humanity quickly enough.  From a conservation standpoint, we simply don’t have that kind of time.  

Which means that, along with the development of more effective enforcement mechanisms, if we’re to stem the tide, we need to provide attractive economic alternatives to the hunts.  The progress made by Dolphin Project in the Solomon Islands is a great case in point.

Take a step back from any of the multitude of individual cases you can think of and, taking the high-altitude view, you’ll quickly recognize that if we don’t want to lose things which are infinitely precious to all of us, we have to raise the general level of prosperity of all humanity.  If that sounds unrealistic, simply consider the alternatives.

Footnote 1 – There is also the question of indirect harm, such as pollution, habitat loss and depletion of food sources.

Phil, Canadian Cetacean Alliance