Luther and Jake... Buck is still in Florida.

The pens in the Navy facility are 30 by 30. That is six feet by six feet more than is required by law. Okay. Minimum horizontal dimension. Minimum circumference, if you will, of a circle or one side of a square is not the same as ideal by any means. It's one of the things I find most troublesome about US law. US law set up so that it can only establish minimum dimensions of an enclosure. It cannot mandate ideal dimensions.

If the minimum dimensions are truly minimum, then some facilities are gonna try to get away with just the bare minimum, okay. Minimum in this case, since it's all they can mandate, should be very generous on the side of the animal, it should give every benefit of the doubt to the animal. Ultimately the constituent of the animal and plant health inspection service of the USDA is the animal. But just get them to admit that, to them the constituent is the industry. That's terrible.

WHAT ABOUT ACTIVISTS AND ADVOCATES ON THE CAPTIVE WHALES AND DOLPHINS ISSUE? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON SOME OF THE MORE FRINGE GROUPS?

Fringy.. yeah, they're pretty fringy. Well there's something about whales and dolphins. I think it's because they're so alien. I mean there's something about wolves too, and there's certainly something about elephants. But whales and dolphins are that and more because they live in the ocean and there's so little that we see of them. I mean up to 90 percent of what they do down there we have no clue. And I think that's ultimately it, the mystery.

Add to that the fact that they are also in appearance and in abilities quite unique and alien, because of that water environment, the way they've evolved with the echo location, the ability to hear through their lower jaw, the whole ability to see with sound. The power of their leaps, the intelligence, their vocalizations, everything about them is just so ..alien is the word I always use, that you end up with they do something to people's minds. I think about that they somehow make people crazy. (laugh)

And I feel it too, I mean I did not casually go into marine mammal biology. I felt that myself from the minute I saw my first Jacques Cousteau special, whatever, I was caught up in the magic of whales and dolphins and whatever it is that spell that they cast. I definitely understand it because I felt it myself.

But as I got to know about them as a biologist, the mystical alien attraction faded away to just a pure fascination for them as animals, as non human animals because of course humans are animals too. And they are worthy of our respect and our fascination purely for what they are, not for what we want them to be or for what we imagine them to be or for what we project on them. They deserve our respect just for what they are. And there's this (laugh) fringe element as you call it, of folks out there who can't let go of the fairy tale, if you will, can't let go of the mystery.. well not the mystery 'cause they of course are extremely mysterious even from a biological point of view, but they can't let go of the fairy tale.

And I think that that's damaging to the animals. What I mean by that is, in the end, it does seem flaky. And we have to sort of get things done in a real world here, I mean the dolphins and all of wild life and human beings too live in the real world. And no matter what we wanna believe spiritually, pragmatically speaking you gotta get laws passed, you got to get laws enforced, you gotta get industries controlled...

And I think that pushing the spiritual agenda too hard makes that difficult. I don't know what really more to say about that because I don't wanna restrict people's beliefs, I don't want to say don't feel that way, don't think that way. That's not my point here, I just think we can't ask the dolphins. We can't say, do you want this? Do you like us? What do you want? Is this good, is this bad? We can't ask them those questions, we just have to go with what we feel. We can only judge what's best for them from our perspective.

That automatically sets up a problem, of course, because we're selfish, I mean all animals are and when we judge what's best for them, we're really talking about what's best for us. So that immediately sets up a problem and what I'm saying here is that I wish people would try harder to really imagine what it's like to be a dolphin, than to dream what they would like dolphins to be like. Because if they actually thought about it in these practical terms of being a dolphin, swimming in the ocean and needing what they need, we might make better decisions, and we might approach problems with more pragmatic, approaches, can-do approaches, then dreaming and hoping and just agitating to no good effect. So, dolphins aren't a religion, they're living beings that need our help.

THE INDUSTRY EMPHASIZES THEIR OUTREACH AND EDUCATION PROGRAMS. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THESE PROGRAMS?

I think that marine parks and aquariums can be very useful in terms of education. They could be. I think they're failing on most counts. They're very good right now at teaching sort of basic biology, and sort of just getting people to realize that you know, dolphins and whale aren't fish, they're mammals and that kind of stuff. In terms of teaching conservation ethics, I think they're falling far short of the mark. And the reason is, that most people get their education from commercial facilities, not from non profits, there are nonprofit facilities out there, but the big ones like Sea World are for-profit commercial enterprises.

In the end, what's important to a commercial enterprise? The bottom line, profit. Therefore, their agenda is not to be, some good Samaritan who out of the goodness of their hearts teaches people the right stuff. It's what will advance their cause and their profit and their needs. so the education they give is going to be very selective. And it's (laugh) very selective.

You go to those facilities, you watch the show, you read the graphics, you see what literature's available, and it only highlights what they want to highlight. One of the things that bothers me the most about these facilities, these big corporations that could have so much influence, they could be so effective in conservation. The reason they're not is because some of the issues they won't touch with a ten foot pole are too controversial for them. But those are the things that need their efforts the most.

Perfectly good example: whaling. The public display industry doesn't do a quarter of what it could do on that issue, okay. You should know when you go to Sea World, for instance, you should be able to tell, from the educational efforts that they present to you once you get in there, that whaling is still a very big problem, what's going on at the International Commission. That whales are still being killed, over a thousand whales a year are still being killed by Japan and Norway. Whaling, harpoons, exploding grenades - all still happening, didn't stop, ever. Okay.

But most people still think that whaling's not a problem anymore. The whales are saved! The whales are not saved. And non profits and non governmental organizations like the Humane Society of the US are doing their very best to reach as many people as possible to let them know that, to get that message out. But think, how many more people would be reached and how more easily they would be reached if Sea World was giving that same message in exactly the same kind of priority way, I mean they were making it a top priority.

Instead people go to Sea World and they come out and they don't know anything about whaling. Why is that? I'm bothered by that. It's too controversial, okay. They have business deals with Japan and Norway, I don't know. I mean I'm just speculating here, but I mean they're got ties probably, business.. I don't know, everybody buys Budweiser. And so, they're not gonna touch that with a ten foot pole. They're gonna keep it non controversial, I mean it's not like they never say the word whaling at all but they're very low profile about it. They shouldn't be low profile, they should be top priority about it. That's just one example.

During the killer whale shows, they talk about how intelligent they are and all of this. But they never talk about the family structure in the wild, that's one of the most fascinating things about them. I mean you.. every time I talk to tourists - I used to do that a lot when I was doing my research up in British Columbia - I would get onto the whale watching boats and talk to the tourists, they love that stuff. It's fascinating stuff - that the sons stay with the mother for their entire life, and pods are just descendants of the matriarch and they all speak the same dialect and.. fascinating stuff.

You never hear a word of that at Sea World because if people knew how these animals really lived in the wild, they might start questioning how they live in captivity. That all these are strangers to each other, none of them are relatives, that they're artificial pods, and that there are stresses and aggressions that are never seen in the wild. And the whole idea that a lot of those animals in that enclosure were caught from the wild, and therefore they must have been torn away from their family to end up in that tank.

BRIEFLY CAN YOU DISCUSS THE CANDU- SHAMU STORY?

At Sea World in San Diego they have a whale called Corky, who's also known as Shamu. And they had another whale, another female named Candu, who I believe had also sometimes played Shamu, it's a stage name. And apparently there had been some tensions between these two females for some time. Corky couldn't have calves, or she'd have seven and they'd all died. And she was apparently no longer ovulating so she was barren.

Candu had just had a calf. I believe the calf was about a year old at this time. So there apparently was some tension maybe jealousy I'm not gonna speculate but there was tension. They had been aggressive toward each other in the past. Apparently at the start of one of their shows, the gate would open and I don't remember which one would come out into the main stage area. And when they opened the gate, Candu charged Corky. The mother charged the barren female. And as I said, there may have been some jealousy, maybe Corky was trying too hard to get close to the calf, I don't know, I really don't.

Candu charged Corky and she hit her so hard that she broke her jaw, Candu broke her jaw. And in so doing, she severed a major artery. And remember this is at the beginning of the show. So the audience is sitting there. Candu started to bleed profusely, I mean there's some footage of it and she was blowing blood out of her blow hole, there was water.. the blood was just seeping into the water, the tank was turning red. And in about 45 minutes, and I mean, just imagine that she bled to death. And that kind of aggression between females, has never been observed in the wild.

The kind of aggression you see between males or between males and females is extremely less heightened in the wild. It's more pushing and shoving and an occasional whack with a tail. This was full force charge that resulted in breaking a major bone and of course severing a major artery. That kind of aggression is simply not observed, and certainly would never be observed between a whale like Candu and a whale like Corky who were completely unrelated, Candu was from Iceland, Corky was from the Pacific Northwest. These two whales would never have encountered each other. Completely unrelated, totally different gene pool, totally different dialects. They never would have met in the wild. This was a completely artificial situation.

SEA WORLD SAYS TO ITS AUDIENCE IN THE VOICE-OVER OF THEIR SHOW - 'JUST BY BEING HERE YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING TO THE PRESERVATION OF THESE...

MAGNIFICENT CREATURES.'

To a certain extent that's certainly true, Sea World does contribute moneys to research and to some conservation efforts, some non controversial conservation efforts. Beach cleanups, that kind of thing, strandings. They're very good with strandings, I'm not denying that. I believe it's about one percent of their budget. For a corporation that makes a heck of a lot of money, that's not terribly impressive.

So yes, it's true that just by being here and paying your 35 dollars at the gate you're contributing to the preservation and conservation of these creatures but not much. What is that? Three dollars and fifty cents? (laugh) Of what you paid at the gate? And the rest of it goes to CEOs and you know, vice presidents and stuff like that, their salary. And the stockholders and all of that, I mean it's a for-profit corporation.

THE HUMANE SOCIETY IS.. DEDICATED TO THE PRESERVATION AND CONSERVATION OF SPECIES. WHAT IS YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRESERVATION OF THE SPECIES AND PRESERVATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT?

Well, the Humane Society of the US has a very broad mission in terms of animals because we deal with companion animals, farm animals, research animals and wildlife. Our wildlife department is called the wildlife and habitat protection section, because we recognize that without habitat, you don't have wildlife.

In our opinion, and this is our policy so this is just our opinion, and our membership's opinion --wildlife in captivity is half wildlife is diminished. They are only truly whole in their natural environment. So as a general matter we do not support removing wildlife from the wild and putting them in captivity regardless of the purpose.

So I mean that's just a general sort of feeling and opinion and policy. When you look at specifics, you know, we modify our position depending on what's best for the animal. Certainly for instance in a stranding situation it's best for that animal at the moment to be in a tank because it's injured or it's sick or whatever. So as far as protecting and preserving and conserving, all of these terms that are used, we're preservationists we'll come right out and say that, we believe in preserving unspoiled wildlife habitat because without it you can't have wildlife. It is not an option to put all of these species into an ark - that's what the zoos like to call themselves, an ark as in Noah's Ark. That's not an option. It's not right, and it's not an ecosystem to have all these animals in the zoo.

So, we're preservationists when it comes to ecosystems and habitats. We are animal protectionists first and foremost though. Aside from just preserving species, we're into alleviating individual animal suffering, because there's a difference, There's a lot of conservation organizations that will accept without too many qualms the sacrifice and the suffering of individual animals for the preservation of an ecosystem or a species. And that's not where we're coming from because it actually matters to us.

And the reason it matters to us is not so much, I mean there's millions and billions and trillions of animals out there so it's not that it matter so much to us because we care about every single little one that.. every single little suffering That's impractical. Although certainly every time I see an animal suffering I feel, right then and there. It's because if we don't start caring about the suffering of non human animals, how can we care about ourselves? The reason the planet is in such trouble is because we think we're better than all the other living things on this planet.

Because we think, in fact, that we do have dominion over all the other living things on this planet. That's a mistake. We're an equal part of the ecosystem, okay. If we keep dominating and thinking we've got the right even the destiny and the necessity of dominating, we won't last for very long. And so we're trying to effect a change in attitude, this whole humane society. If we start caring every time we hurt or do something that even inadvertently harms and animal, if we start actually caring about that and thinking about it and trying not to do it, we believe that in the end we'll end up with just a better planet, I mean I know it sounds kind of Pollyanna-ish but it's actually quite logical. Most people don't care.....