Danny Jones Podcast - #39 - Dead Or Alive, Wild Dolphins Fuel A Million Dollar Industry | Lincoln O'Barry
Aired: 2020-04-28
Duration: 01:18:42


=== Lincoln's Dolphin Activism Roots (14:15) ===

[00:00:01]  Hello, world.
[00:00:02]  On number 58 of the Concrete podcast, our guest is Lincoln O'Berry.
[00:00:07]  Lincoln is a filmmaker and activist who, like his father Rick, has dedicated his life to ending the captivity and slaughter of wild dolphins.
[00:00:15]  Lincoln has been traveling to countries all over the world, releasing captive dolphins since he was six years old, including places like Taiji, Japan, which happens to be the birthplace of Japanese whaling.
[00:00:25]  In fact, in 2009, Lincoln and Rick created a documentary called The Cove, which won the 2010 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
[00:00:33]  The Cove is a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills, change Japanese fishing practices, and educate the public of the risks of mercury poisoning in dolphin and whale meat.
[00:00:42]  Lincoln also directed and executive produced the award winning Animal Planet series Blood Dolphins, which documents the lucrative captive dolphin trade in the Solomon Islands.
[00:00:53]  This podcast really gives a gripping perspective on one of the most brutal and inhumane practices that is still happening in our world today.
[00:01:02]  So, without further ado, please enjoy this episode with Lincoln.
[00:01:06]  O'Berry.
[00:01:15]  So, thanks again for doing this, Lincoln.
[00:01:17]  Glad to do it.
[00:01:18]  Just give everyone out there who may not know just a brief background on who you are.
[00:01:23]  My name is Lincoln O'Berry, and pretty much my whole life I've worked with my dad.
[00:01:27]  We have an organization called Dolphin Project, and basically our mandate is for the welfare and protection of dolphins worldwide.
[00:01:35]  And we primarily deal with dolphins with the captivity issue and also dolphins that are being slaughtered in that issue.
[00:01:42]  So, how did you get?
[00:01:43]  I mean, obviously, your dad is like a super.
[00:01:47]  Famous figure in this world.
[00:01:50]  And, you know, he's, you guys have been a part of movies like The Cove.
[00:01:55]  How did he bring you into this whole world?
[00:01:58]  I just got brought into it because it was, you know, in the house when the phone rang, it was usually somebody calling for the Dolphin Project.
[00:02:04]  And so I just, you know, as a little kid, just got used to hunching the phone, like Dolphin Project.
[00:02:08]  And, you know, well, it was just what I knew.
[00:02:11]  Like, you know, we had, like, when I was a little kid, we had a facility with dolphins when I was, like, you know, a baby.
[00:02:16]  And so I grew up just having dolphins right there, basically at the house and stuff.
[00:02:20]  You know, he, for those that don't know how he got his star, Rick O'Berry, my dad, he was initially a trainer at the Miami Sea Aquarium, which at the time was like the second or third dolphinarium in the entire country.
[00:02:32]  And it was located in Miami.
[00:02:35]  And this was the very early 1960s.
[00:02:39]  And basically, when he got out of the Navy, he got a job at the Sea Aquarium.
[00:02:42]  I think his first job was working on their collection boat.
[00:02:46]  And that was the boat that would go out and get all the animals that would go to the reef and they'd get fish and they'd get turtles and they'd catch dolphins as well.
[00:02:55]  And a lot of them were caught here in Miami, the original dolphins at the Sequarium.
[00:03:00]  And then Flipper came along, and just to a chance meeting one day at the Sequarium, my dad met Rico Browning, who was the director and kind of creator of Flipper.
[00:03:09]  And at that time, they were just shooting the initial pilot, which was actually a movie.
[00:03:14]  And Rico was the trainer on the movie.
[00:03:17]  And then it was very popular and got picked up as a TV show.
[00:03:23]  And so they decided to use the back lot of Sequarium to do the series.
[00:03:27]  And my dad had met.
[00:03:28]  Rico and so my dad became the head trainer.
[00:03:31]  Rico wanted to be the director, and so he directed all the episodes.
[00:03:35]  My dad was the trainer, and so they actually went and caught five dolphins that were going to play Flipper because you have to have multiple dolphins in case one doesn't want to work or some are better at some tricks than others.
[00:03:47]  Yeah, so my dad helped a year or two before the show even started shooting, help catch the dolphins.
[00:03:55]  They were in a back part of the Mime Sea Aquarium and then train the dolphins, and then basically, you know, they would shoot.
[00:04:03]  All the exterior shots with the dolphins all at one time for all the episodes.
[00:04:08]  So they would come for like a month or five weeks and shoot all those shots.
[00:04:13]  And then everything else was done in sound stages and other locations.
[00:04:17]  And so then my dad was basically left alone for most of the year with the dolphins.
[00:04:21]  And so he lived there right when you see the Flipper TV show, like where Ranger Rick and his family live.
[00:04:27]  Like that's where my dad lived.
[00:04:28]  And he had the dock right there.
[00:04:29]  And he would sometimes take the TV set with a long extension cord and put it out on the dock and like watch Flipper with Flipper, the dolphins, and like.
[00:04:38]  He lived there with them and he was employed by the TV show and the Sequarium at the same time.
[00:04:42]  So he was like the highest paid person at the Sequarium and was driving a sports car.
[00:04:47]  And then with the popularity of Flipper, Flipper, the TV series took off like a rocket.
[00:04:53]  So now everyone wants to hug a dolphin, kiss a dolphin, see a dolphin.
[00:04:57]  So now Miami Sequarium, where he works, started catching dolphins and selling them.
[00:05:02]  I think it was like a female dolphin was like $350 and a male dolphin would be $250.
[00:05:07]  And you could literally pull up in your station wagon to this aquarium, and for $350, they'd load a dolphin in your car and you could drive off.
[00:05:15]  And they didn't know if it was going to someone's house or going to an aquarium or where it was going.
[00:05:19]  And so you saw a proliferation all of a sudden of dolphinariums.
[00:05:22]  They were popping up everywhere with the popularity of Flipper.
[00:05:27]  And so eventually the Flipper series ended, and those dolphins were partially owned by the TV show and the aquarium, and they were actually just warehoused in the back.
[00:05:39]  They weren't used for shows after that.
[00:05:41]  And my dad, after he needed some time off, and he was just kind of hanging out, and he gets a phone call one day that his favorite dolphin named Kathy there were five dolphins that played Flipper, but one he identified with the most and spent the most time with.
[00:05:56]  He got a call that she was near death.
[00:05:57]  So he went to this aquarium and she literally swam into his arms and died.
[00:06:02]  And he just at that moment kind of had this moment of epiphany like, what have I done?
[00:06:06]  Like, I'm the guy that trained Flipper that made dolphins popular, and now they're popular.
[00:06:12]  Now there are dolphinariums everywhere, and I helped catch a lot of those dolphins.
[00:06:16]  And this was in 1970, approximately right around now.
[00:06:24]  It was like the beginning of April, end of March, is when the flipper died.
[00:06:29]  And so he just kind of didn't know what to do.
[00:06:31]  And so on Earth Day 1970, which is 50 years, we're selling that anniversary this month on the 22nd.
[00:06:39]  My dad flew to Bimini, where they had sold somebody there three or four dolphins.
[00:06:48]  It was called the Lerner Marine Laboratory.
[00:06:50]  It was owned by a family that owned a chain of shopping stores called Lerner.
[00:06:56]  And they had their own lab that they created.
[00:06:59]  It was basically their pet dolphins, but they had like kind of like other animals in cages and you could see them.
[00:07:04]  And they said they were doing research, but it was really just a family thing.
[00:07:09]  Anyhow, all the dolphins had died.
[00:07:11]  There was only one left named Charlie Brown.
[00:07:13]  So on Earth Day 1970, my dad flew to Bimini wearing a green armband in symbolic for Earth Day.
[00:07:21]  And he went that night of Earth Day and cut the pen to let Charlie Brown go.
[00:07:27]  And the pen fell away, and the dolphin was swimming around.
[00:07:30]  He wouldn't leave.
[00:07:32]  And so my dad got in the pen.
[00:07:33]  He's trying to chase the dolphin out.
[00:07:34]  It wouldn't leave.
[00:07:35]  And finally, my dad had rented a little rubber, 12 foot rubber boat with a motor to get out to the sea pen.
[00:07:42]  And it was very high tide.
[00:07:44]  And so he was able to get the boat into the pen and was trying to chase the dolphin out for hours, and the dolphin wouldn't leave.
[00:07:51]  And eventually the tide dropped, and now the boat is stuck inside of the pen that he rented.
[00:07:56]  So it's going to come back to him.
[00:07:57]  So he just put his green armband on.
[00:08:00]  He walked down to the office of the Learner Marine Lab, knocked on the door, and basically told him, like, last night I tried to let your dolphin go.
[00:08:08]  So they arrested him.
[00:08:10]  And it was like front page of the Miami Herald, flippers trainer in a flap.
[00:08:13]  And there's the picture of him being led into jail wearing his Miami Sequarium t shirt.
[00:08:17]  He had a Sequarium t shirt on.
[00:08:21]  He spent like four or five days in jail.
[00:08:24]  And then the judge let him out and gave him a $5 fine and threw him out of the country.
[00:08:30]  And about two weeks after that, my dad was in Miami just milling about.
[00:08:35]  What do I want to do?
[00:08:36]  Like, what's going on with my life?
[00:08:37]  Like, you know, what?
[00:08:39]  And he actually went sailing with, he was best friends at the time with a guy named Fred Neal, who was a very famous folk singer.
[00:08:48]  He wrote the theme song to Midnight Cowboy Everybody's Talking.
[00:08:52]  That was a big song, but he's got many others.
[00:08:54]  And he was kind of the godfather of the folk music scene.
[00:08:57]  Many other musicians hung around this guy.
[00:08:59]  And so, Fred that day was going sailing with Stephen Stills from Crosby Stills and Nash and showed up at my dad's house, knew my dad was depressed and was like, come on, come on the boat.
[00:09:10]  And so, my dad's out sailing in the bay with them and they're talking about, you know, my dad just told him what happened and he quit his job and he just got arrested.
[00:09:19]  And he's like, I think I want to do this.
[00:09:20]  I want to let dolphins go.
[00:09:21]  I want to tear down what I've just built, this monster that I created, this dolphinarium industry.
[00:09:28]  And Stephen Stills and Fred Neal, I think, wrote it right there, wrote him a check.
[00:09:33]  They're like, as long as what you do is legal, we're behind you.
[00:09:35]  And they wrote him a check for like five grand.
[00:09:38]  And with that money, my dad went and printed some Dolphin Project t shirts.
[00:09:43]  And then he identified a dolphin in the Keys.
[00:09:49]  There's a place called Dolphin Research Center in the Keys.
[00:09:53]  It was called, I think it was called Flipper Sea School back then.
[00:09:59]  And it was a place where you paid us one with the dolphins.
[00:10:01]  And a guy named Hugh Downs, he was a famous broadcaster.
[00:10:05]  He used to host 2020 back in the day when.
[00:10:08]  2020 was like 60 minutes.
[00:10:09]  It was a respectable news show.
[00:10:12]  And he owned this dolphin.
[00:10:14]  It was like his pet dolphin.
[00:10:15]  And he left, it lived at this facility where they took care of it.
[00:10:19]  And whenever he was in the Keys, he'd visit it.
[00:10:21]  It was kind of like Bubbles, the chimp with Michael Jackson.
[00:10:24]  Like, you know, the chimp wasn't at Michael's house all the time.
[00:10:26]  It was like once in a while he'd go visit it wherever it was.
[00:10:31]  But so my dad convinced Hugh Downs to let him have the dolphin and that they wanted to release it back in the wild.
[00:10:36]  And so my mom and dad, who weren't married, they were just dating at the time, went down to the Keys, set up a tent.
[00:10:42]  It had a dolphin project logo that we still have to this day on the tent and lived there with the dolphins.
[00:10:48]  And we eventually moved them up to Coconut Grove, where I am now, Keep Escane.
[00:10:54]  And we set up a facility there where we had the dolphins for a couple of years.
[00:10:59]  And then eventually rented a seaplane, put the dolphins in it, and flew them to the Bahamas in 1974, I think, 74, 75.
[00:11:10]  And just flew around until we saw wild dolphins and landed the seaplane and let them go.
[00:11:14]  And that was the first, like, Release of dolphins that the Dolphin Project did.
[00:11:19]  And then, wow.
[00:11:19]  And so we basically had that mandate.
[00:11:21]  My dad basically spent the past 50 years of his life, 50 years on April 22nd, releasing, you know, trying to tear down this industry that he created.
[00:11:32]  And no, you know, there's been a lot of like whistleblower.
[00:11:35]  Blackfish had a bunch of whistleblower trainers because my dad has that experience of being in the industry to be able to speak about it.
[00:11:42]  But his story is just so unique because he was just there at the birth of the movement.
[00:11:47]  He can, you know, it's not his fault what happened, but he can.
[00:11:51]  He was in that position where he was part of what made dolphins popular and then also catching them.
[00:11:56]  And so he really felt responsible for it.
[00:11:58]  And so he's just, I think the guilt has kind of like led him his whole life.
[00:12:04]  It's almost like he's a vigilante of sorts.
[00:12:06]  You know what I mean?
[00:12:07]  How many times has your dad been arrested or you?
[00:12:12]  Have you guys both been arrested?
[00:12:14]  He's been arrested a half a dozen to a dozen times, but they were all by design.
[00:12:19]  Right.
[00:12:20]  You know, we went that day, knew that what was being arrested was part of the plan.
[00:12:25]  There was somebody already there to bail him out.
[00:12:27]  Like, you know.
[00:12:29]  Okay.
[00:12:31]  Back then as well, you know, we were really seen as the cusp.
[00:12:39]  You know, we're on the fringe.
[00:12:41]  You know, it's just my dad and me in front of an aquarium protesting.
[00:12:44]  There's nobody else there.
[00:12:46]  And so if you get arrested, that's going to get the news there, you know.
[00:12:49]  And like, how do you get on TV?
[00:12:51]  How do you get this issue out there?
[00:12:52]  Like you do it, you have to.
[00:12:54]  Because back then, there was nobody protesting.
[00:12:56]  It was not an issue.
[00:12:58]  It was always in the newspaper, SeaWorld says, or blah, blah, blah, aquarium says, and the Dolphin Project accuses.
[00:13:08]  We were always on the defense.
[00:13:09]  Like our word wasn't as good as their word because they're the experts, because they have, you know what I mean?
[00:13:14]  Like they're seen as the experts.
[00:13:15]  They have dolphins in their place.
[00:13:18]  Where we've totally flipped that script now.
[00:13:20]  Now it's completely the other way around.
[00:13:22]  Like, you know, what's happened in the past 10 years has just been a revolution.
[00:13:26]  And it took 40 years of work to make.
[00:13:28]  We've made it now part of pop culture for it not to be popular to have dolphins in captivity.
[00:13:34]  We've been spoofed on Family Guy, on South Park, on The Simpsons.
[00:13:38]  They've all done Cove or Blackfish themed episodes.
[00:13:44]  You know, Harry Styles in concerts said, don't go to SeaWorld.
[00:13:47]  50 million girls the next day, they don't even know what SeaWorld is.
[00:13:51]  They just know God just spoke.
[00:13:54]  There's a place called SeaWorld and they're never going there.
[00:13:58]  You know, it's like.
[00:13:59]  So that's like when you hit that level of pop culture, we've just flipped that script.
[00:14:03]  And it's like all these places are just kind of a dying archaic, like they're built on a model from like the 1950s, like roadside, like biggest ball of twine.

=== Whaling Quotas and Aquariums (06:19) ===

[00:14:16]  See the big lumberjack.
[00:14:18]  See, you know, Wiki Wachi in Sarasota, like the mermaids, dolphins on, you know, performing stupid tricks.
[00:14:25]  Like it's all this model that's phasing out.
[00:14:28]  Where are we today in regards to captivity of whales and dolphins in places like SeaWorld?
[00:14:34]  Compared to say 10 years ago, it just depends where you live.
[00:14:38]  Like, you know, places that were working really hard, like I'm working, we have a big project in Indonesia.
[00:14:45]  There, I'm seeing the, you know, it collapsing and we're shutting down places and we're confiscating animals.
[00:14:51]  But then you go to a country like China, they're building a new city the size of Miami every week, a new city they're building from scratch, every the whole city of everything.
[00:15:00]  And they're coming online and that city wants to have an aquarium, you know, so you see a huge growth of aquariums in China right now.
[00:15:06]  Huge.
[00:15:07]  Really?
[00:15:08]  Yeah, because they're literally building entire cities at once right now, and they're building them all over the place.
[00:15:15]  And so, you know, they're building everything at once all the movie theaters, the aquarium, and their aquarium's popping up.
[00:15:21]  That's probably the biggest, you know, right now, the main most famous exporter of dolphins is Japan.
[00:15:30]  And it was that's when you see that in the movie The Cove.
[00:15:33]  Right.
[00:15:33]  Probably Japan is probably the number one customer for Japan because they have many dolphinariums.
[00:15:39]  I think Japan is like the size of California, and they've got more dolphinariums than our country does.
[00:15:43]  They have like 50 or 60.
[00:15:49]  And most of them are pretty bad.
[00:15:50]  So they're disposable dolphins.
[00:15:51]  So they buy them all the time, and they get a certain price when they sell them inside Japan.
[00:15:56]  But when they export them to China, is when they get the maximum price.
[00:15:59]  Which is like in the hundreds of thousands, right?
[00:16:01]  They're probably the number two buyer of dolphins after Japan itself.
[00:16:06]  Are they still getting up to like 150 grand for a dolphin?
[00:16:09]  That goes into a tank for people to come by and watch it.
[00:16:13]  You look at Taiji, Japan.
[00:16:14]  Taiji is where they're slaughtering them, and there's a market there locally in the village for eating dolphins.
[00:16:20]  Neighboring villages don't eat dolphins, it's more of a localized thing in this village.
[00:16:25]  And so when you kill a dolphin and you hack it all up, it's worth about $500 in meat.
[00:16:32]  But if they take that same dolphin and export it to China, trained, if they break the dolphin and have some basic training, They can get up to 132,000, is what we've seen.
[00:16:44]  We've seen a sale for that much per dolphin.
[00:16:48]  You know, depending on the amount of training, untrained maybe 30,000, maybe 30,000 is the price inside of Japan for the dolphin.
[00:16:55]  So clearly, the captivity is the underpinning of the slaughter because at $500 a dolphin, they really, these guys couldn't really sustain the lifestyles that they have.
[00:17:09]  These are some of the richest guys, these fishermen in the village of Japan, Taiji.
[00:17:13]  They drive the nicest cars because they're selling captive dolphins and they're selling them for, An incredible amount of money.
[00:17:20]  And even in the movie, there's one point I think I remember when.
[00:17:25]  I mean, there's days when they catch 20, 30, 40 dolphins at once.
[00:17:27]  If you're thinking every 10 dolphins that they could potentially maxim get a.
[00:17:31]  That's $1.2 million every 10 dolphins.
[00:17:36]  That's like a day, you know, an afternoon's work to go catch 10 dolphins.
[00:17:40]  It's ridiculous.
[00:17:41]  Slip between all the guys.
[00:17:42]  It's like a pretty lucrative business.
[00:17:44]  And the meat, less people are eating the meat.
[00:17:48]  So there's no way they could survive on that.
[00:17:49]  It's the captivity that drives it.
[00:17:52]  And what for people that are listening that don't know about the Cove.
[00:17:57]  The Cove is a documentary and it's about a place in Japan, a very particular village, very remote.
[00:18:05]  And this village is the birthplace of whaling.
[00:18:09]  Whaling has been going on there for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
[00:18:13]  It's basically the birthplace of modern whaling, it is in this village.
[00:18:16]  But in the late 1950s, they started hunting dolphins.
[00:18:20]  So it is not a traditional, hunting whales is traditional and cultural in Japan.
[00:18:24]  Hunting dolphins is not traditional whatsoever.
[00:18:29]  It started in the late 50s after the war.
[00:18:32]  And they basically go out, it's 12 boats, and they look for pods of dolphins.
[00:18:39]  And when they see them, the boats will get into like, they'll form like a horseshoe shape.
[00:18:45]  And they'll have these poles that are coming from the top of the boat where they're driving the boat down into the water.
[00:18:50]  And where they go, the pole goes in the water, it flanges out like the end of a trumpet.
[00:18:55]  And so they bang on that pole with like a metal wrench while they're driving the boat in this horseshoe shape, and it creates a wall of sound.
[00:19:03]  And with that wall of sound, they drive the dolphins many miles from the open ocean into the cove in Taiji.
[00:19:11]  And forever, we knew dolphins were dying there, but the way the landscape is, where they killed the dolphins, you physically can't see it.
[00:19:19]  They blocked off any entrance to it from the road, the beach, you can't see around this part where they're.
[00:19:26]  We know they're dying, but we just couldn't see it.
[00:19:29]  And so the Cove movie, we were able to finally expose what's going on in that Cove.
[00:19:33]  And we were able to take, we worked with Industrial Light and Magic, who does all the Star Wars films, and we made rocks that matched exactly the rocks they have in Japan.
[00:19:42]  And we hid cameras in them.
[00:19:43]  And we went with like a special ops team in the middle of the night and hid microphones and cameras everywhere underwater and trees and drones.
[00:19:51]  And we're able to film for the first time in high definition, like what goes on there.
[00:19:55]  And what happens, it's a horrendous slaughter where they basically just drive a spike through the dolphin's head.
[00:20:01]  And what they're doing now is they actually, as soon as they pull the spike out, they put a cork in the hole so the blood doesn't flow out, so we can't get those graphic images anymore of the bay filling with blood.
[00:20:12]  And they've now taken a tarp, they have wires that run across the cove so they can run a tarp across and create like a little sheltered area.
[00:20:20]  Because now we go there as the Dolphin Project, we're there every day during the dolphin hunting season.
[00:20:25]  And with drones, with monitors, we're there every single day.
[00:20:29]  We live stream exactly what's going on, and they try every way to block it.

=== Toxic Seafood Auctions in Taiji (06:58) ===

[00:20:36]  But it's still going on.
[00:20:37]  It just ended on March 1st.
[00:20:40]  And it runs.
[00:20:41]  Every year, it's still happening.
[00:20:43]  Every year.
[00:20:43]  It begins September 1st through March.
[00:20:46]  And there's a quota.
[00:20:47]  They have, you know, I think it's about an estimate eight to nine species or seven species that they actually get a quota per animal for each species, how many they're allowed to slaughter.
[00:20:59]  And they try to meet that quota.
[00:21:00]  And then they also have orders for dolphins and they'll try to fill those orders.
[00:21:08]  And is it correct when in the documentary they talk about dolphin meat because it's such a big fish?
[00:21:16]  The meat is so full of mercury.
[00:21:19]  Right.
[00:21:19]  Yeah, it's actually a mammal.
[00:21:21]  But because it's such a big animal, its meat is full of toxic levels of mercury.
[00:21:27]  So it's not even good for you to eat.
[00:21:29]  Right.
[00:21:30]  You know, I mean, generally after that movie, and I met some of the experts.
[00:21:34]  And what I've learned is kind of you don't really want to eat fish that are bigger than your plate.
[00:21:40]  Because the bigger the fish is, the higher it is on the food chain.
[00:21:44]  The higher in the food chain, it's eating things that are eating other things that are eating other things.
[00:21:48]  And so the levels of toxicity build up.
[00:21:51]  And then, when you have dolphins that can live 20, 30, 40 years and they're big, the levels build up immensely.
[00:22:00]  And then, when you have whales, it's even more so.
[00:22:02]  And you know, with the dolphin meat, we were finding levels that were 2,000 times the legal limit.
[00:22:08]  And so, and Taiji also has a mortality rate 50% higher than any village of its size.
[00:22:17]  So, there's something going on in Taiji, like clearly.
[00:22:21]  And it's not in any other city.
[00:22:22]  And mercury poisoning is not something that, like, You wake up one day like I'm sick, like it's degenerative.
[00:22:29]  So, what happens is it's like changing the neurons in your brain and it's changing who you are as a person slowly, so you don't notice the changes, but you're slowly becoming this other person.
[00:22:40]  And like your hearing goes out, you're yelling, and like things like that happen that you don't really notice.
[00:22:47]  And so, it's hard, you know, they haven't really done the testing that they need to do there because clearly something's going on.
[00:22:54]  And didn't at one point.
[00:22:56]  Somebody said to the people of Taiji, to the fishermen in particular, Hey, we'll give you, we'll pay you all the money that you're making slaughtering these dolphins if you'll just consider stopping this killing and stopping the fishing of these dolphins.
[00:23:14]  And they refused it because they said it was a part of their culture that they didn't want to give up or it was something.
[00:23:19]  No matter what you hit them with, they come with some other reason.
[00:23:22]  So it's like, you know, it's not about, you know, it's, I've heard the reason it's pest control.
[00:23:29]  Like, there are no more fish in the ocean because the dolphins ate them all.
[00:23:34]  Like, they've put up charts before where they're like literally saying the dolphins and whales are eating all the fish, therefore, our fishing is clearly the overfishing that's causing there's no fish, not the whales.
[00:23:45]  So, they say it's pest control.
[00:23:47]  They say, you know, there are dolphins and fish, there's no difference between the two.
[00:23:52]  So, what's the big deal?
[00:23:53]  You know, you guys eat pigs and chickens and cows, and there's every reason.
[00:24:02]  So, so anyway, you know, but what happens with the mercury issue?
[00:24:05]  And so we hammer on it for us.
[00:24:09]  We, we, when we're there, we try to portray this not as it's not an animal rights issue.
[00:24:13]  We're not like, oh, they're cute dolphins, you need to save them.
[00:24:16]  We were like, they're full of toxic mercury.
[00:24:19]  These people are eating them.
[00:24:20]  When we first got there, eating dolphin meat was compulsory in the school systems, like it's no longer like that anymore.
[00:24:27]  But they were forcing the kids to eat dolphin meat because they were trying to make them dolphin eat, so there'd be a A pipeline that when they get older, they'll still buy dolphin meat.
[00:24:36]  So they could justify it.
[00:24:38]  They could justify it and also create a future generation of people that will buy this product.
[00:24:44]  In Japan, like everyone's family ate whale meat after World War II, they were dependent on anything they could eat.
[00:24:53]  And you know, historically, they are a whaling nation.
[00:24:56]  And if you go to Japan, it's very mountainous, they have a trouble.
[00:25:00]  That's why, like, all cattle, all beef from Japan is exported for imported from Australia.
[00:25:06]  You can't really, there's no place in Japan to grow cattle, so they're dependent on the outside world for their food.
[00:25:11]  They're an island and they're the fourth largest economy in the world, yet they're for their food.
[00:25:17]  They're completely dependent on the outside world, and so they're very cautious.
[00:25:22]  If, like, one cow gets mad cow disease, it's like they stop all imports into Japan, they shut it down.
[00:25:29]  Same bird flu, same thing, they're dependent on China for poultry.
[00:25:33]  But the reality is, in Japan, like 90% of people eat some sort of seafood 90% of the time, they eat everything jellyfish, fish.
[00:25:41]  I mean, when you get breakfast there, you'll get 10 different bowls.
[00:25:44]  You open one, there's eyeballs, and I mean, just all sorts of stuff going on.
[00:25:48]  That's just that culture there, and so.
[00:25:52]  If it turned out that the seafood is not safe to eat and there's mercury, that country's in real trouble.
[00:26:00]  They've now got a food crisis going on there because now they're completely dependent on the outside world for food.
[00:26:05]  They can't sustain themselves.
[00:26:07]  And so that's why the government there is so careful about how to approach this mercury.
[00:26:12]  There's definitely a problem going on in Taiji.
[00:26:16]  We were testing the meat, all the meat is toxic.
[00:26:18]  People are eating that meat, there's no warning labels on it.
[00:26:22]  Pregnant women are eating it.
[00:26:24]  Old people are eating it.
[00:26:27]  But I think the second the government admits there's a problem, it opens up liability that these people can now sue the government.
[00:26:33]  Everybody could sue the government in Japan, potentially.
[00:26:36]  So it's a Pandora's box that we've started with this mercury issue.
[00:26:42]  They're not like the US that can have their own cows and they could just cut themselves off from the world and do their own thing.
[00:26:46]  Like they're dependent on the rest of the world for food, especially if their seafood's not safe, which is what they eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
[00:26:54]  Aren't they also one of the biggest seafood exporters?
[00:26:57]  Probably.
[00:27:00]  And it's not necessarily caught there.
[00:27:01]  For instance, like tuna, like the tuna you buy at your store, you go to a sushi restaurant and there's tuna there.
[00:27:07]  That tuna might have been caught in Argentina two weeks before.
[00:27:13]  And then it was shipped to Japan where it goes through the tuna auction.
[00:27:17]  And then from that tuna auction, it was shipped to a seller, a buyer in the States.
[00:27:23]  So it's, you know, even though Japan may have not caught that tuna, a lot of the Fish goes through to Japan before it goes anywhere in the world.
[00:27:29]  That's where they have the big seafood auctions.
[00:27:32]  Interesting.
[00:27:32]  They control those markets.

=== Yakuza Links to Whaling Exports (10:10) ===

[00:27:35]  And that's one of the biggest tuna auctions in the world is in the village right next to Taiji.
[00:27:40]  And anytime you have, especially in a place like that, where you have like auctions and things like that and cash, the mafia is involved, the Yakuza.
[00:27:49]  And so there's a big Yakuza presence just in the neighboring village of Taiji, which would make me think they probably have their fingers in the dolphin.
[00:27:58]  Export business as well.
[00:28:00]  Akuza?
[00:28:01]  Yakuza, that's the Japanese mafia.
[00:28:03]  They're the ones who give Japanese guys full body tattoos.
[00:28:08]  Okay.
[00:28:09]  Like, you guys, you go to any hotel, like, they're all built on what's called an onsen, which is like a natural hot spring.
[00:28:16]  Every hotel there is built on top of one, and there's like, you go down this room and sit in the spring, but they all have signs like no tattoos, which I even have tattoos a couple, and I get problems there.
[00:28:26]  Clearly, I'm not Yakuza, but those signs are meant for Yakuza.
[00:28:29]  They don't want the mafia guys hanging out in the steam rooms.
[00:28:32]  Really?
[00:28:33]  They're everywhere down there.
[00:28:34]  You see them everywhere.
[00:28:35]  Have you guys had any run ins with those guys personally?
[00:28:39]  Not Yakuza, so to speak, but we have, they have an ultra right wing there, which would be like our version of like, you know, like maybe like the Proud Boys or like neo Nazis that hang out or like that.
[00:28:55]  They're like that.
[00:28:55]  And they even dress similar.
[00:28:58]  They'll dress in like high watered pants that are really tight with a button down shirt, shaved head, like skinheads that kind of dress up.
[00:29:09]  And they show up and they're prone to violence.
[00:29:12]  And they'll do the kind of stuff like one thing they do all the time is they drive with a truck with like a speaker on the top that looks like it's from like the 60s, like a giant bell, like the most massive speaker you ever seen on the roof of their van.
[00:29:27]  Yeah.
[00:29:27]  And we're there and they'll just go back and forth in front of our hotel for like 20 hours a day, like as loud as they can, like, go home, O'Berry, like shouting threats and like.
[00:29:38]  Wow.
[00:29:40]  When the Cove was shown for like a week in just a couple theaters in Japan, they found out who the mother is of the owner of the distributor that bought the Cove and they went to her house and surrounded it and banged on all the doors and windows and like shook her house.
[00:29:59]  It was a distributor, the company that.
[00:30:02]  When the Cove came out, this distributor in Japan bought the rights of the Cove and it only showed for like a week in like two theaters, but they went and like threatened his family with violence.
[00:30:11]  Wow, that is insane.
[00:30:14]  So, whether they're doing it on their own or whether they're just an arm of a bigger operation, a Yakuza operation, that they're the arm that goes out and handles shit like that, stuff like that, you know, like I don't.
[00:30:24]  Right.
[00:30:25]  You see it there.
[00:30:26]  It's not something I'm making up.
[00:30:28]  The mafia is a clear presence down there.
[00:30:32]  Now, does the whale meat in Japan, from all the whales they catch, have high levels of mercury like dolphin too?
[00:30:39]  Yes.
[00:30:40]  Okay.
[00:30:41]  And now you'll find, like, when you go to Tokyo, You'll find specialty restaurants that you know, maybe a few in Tokyo, specialty places where you can buy whale meat.
[00:30:51]  And in Taiji, of course, where the dolphin hunt is, there's tons of places there that specialize in it.
[00:30:58]  And in fact, you'll see tour buses coming every week, filled with old people that are taking a specific like whale eating tour from a neighboring big city.
[00:31:09]  They'll come six hours by bus to go to three different restaurants that specialize in whale meat and sushi and stuff like that.
[00:31:17]  Because they have some connection to it, because after the war, that's what they had to eat.
[00:31:21]  And so they have this connection.
[00:31:22]  So it's really an older generation.
[00:31:24]  On its own, whaling would die out.
[00:31:28]  Whaling is completely subsidized by the government.
[00:31:30]  It loses so much.
[00:31:31]  I think $40 million or something it loses every year.
[00:31:35]  And the government puts money into it to prop it up.
[00:31:37]  And what it is, you said, is they blame overfishing on the dolphins.
[00:31:45]  It's pest control.
[00:31:46]  It's.
[00:31:49]  There's plenty of dolphins, whatever excuse, because those excuses always change.
[00:31:52]  What it really boils down to is whaling is kind of the last vestige.
[00:31:59]  And it's like, it's their final thing of like, you know, we're our own.
[00:32:04]  Because after the war, we basically, the United States, we ran Japan.
[00:32:09]  We told them, you can't have an army.
[00:32:10]  You can't do this.
[00:32:11]  This is how you're going to have to now live and to be part of the society.
[00:32:15]  Because they were outcasts after World War II.
[00:32:18]  And so, It's one of the last things they're holding on to.
[00:32:23]  Like, you're not going to, no one's going to tell us to stop doing this.
[00:32:27]  Because none of it makes sense.
[00:32:28]  The whole whaling thing that they have to put money into it, no one's eating it.
[00:32:31]  They put it into schools to try to get young kids interested in it.
[00:32:35]  And, you know, the fact that it's full of mercury, every part of it is bad.
[00:32:41]  And last stubborn vestige of imperialism.
[00:32:44]  Like, you're not, you know, you're not, the big United States isn't going to tell us what to do.
[00:32:49]  And even on top of that, the Whaling Commission, it's so interesting how they can go out and they can find countries in the Caribbean, all over the world.
[00:32:58]  Yeah.
[00:32:59]  Countries all over the world.
[00:33:01]  They're basically bankrupt countries they can buy.
[00:33:04]  So explain to me how that works, how that whole process works, and how that works.
[00:33:08]  Benefits them.
[00:33:10]  Well, they'll do it for many.
[00:33:11]  You know, this is just one.
[00:33:12]  So there's the International Whaling Commission that regulates whaling.
[00:33:18]  Japan has left that now.
[00:33:19]  They're not part of it.
[00:33:20]  They just left two years ago because they're like, we're just going to resume whaling on our own and not be part of this.
[00:33:28]  And so, and so what you haven't been allowed to whale for years.
[00:33:32]  And so, what Japan did, there's a loophole that you can do some whaling for scientific research.
[00:33:37]  So they just painted on the side of all their whaling ships a big cross.
[00:33:41]  And wrote scientific research.
[00:33:43]  And like when people would fly over to monitor the hold up signs while they're chopping the whale up saying, we are testing tissue samples.
[00:33:51]  You know, but then the next week in the grocery store is that same whale.
[00:33:53]  He's everywhere.
[00:33:54]  He's in every grocery store.
[00:33:55]  And so what Japan would do is to try to control the whaling commission and make these loopholes, they'll go to countries that are not members of the whaling commission, like small, poor Caribbean countries or South Pacific countries, and they'll build something for them.
[00:34:12]  You know, we'll.
[00:34:13]  We'll build you a new runway.
[00:34:15]  We'll build you a new road.
[00:34:17]  We'll build you a fisheries building.
[00:34:20]  That was the famous one in the Caribbean.
[00:34:21]  They'd give them a, we'll build you a $10 million, like, you know, half these islands have no building that costs $10 million.
[00:34:27]  We're going to build you guys a $10 million building to house your fisheries offices.
[00:34:33]  Well, they didn't need a fisheries office before that and they didn't need one after.
[00:34:36]  So a year later, the building's empty.
[00:34:38]  There's chickens running through it.
[00:34:40]  They've got this, they call them white elephants.
[00:34:41]  It's like this project you build and then, just a year later, there's weeds growing through it and like, And but.
[00:34:48]  But for that you have to join the International Whaling Commission and you vote how we vote, and we'll pay every year when the meeting.
[00:34:56]  You know, Jim Hens, like every year when there's a meeting, we'll pay for your delegation to fly first class to the meeting and you know we'll give you whatever you want while you're there, your massages and stay in a nice hotel, and so it's a win for them.
[00:35:08]  Wow, I mean, you think about?
[00:35:11]  Think about Taiji.
[00:35:13]  The only people benefiting out of it are basically the 40 guys that are involved, The guys that run the boats, the guys that work on the boats, and the guys that work in the slaughterhouse.
[00:35:25]  They're the only ones profiting.
[00:35:27]  No one else in the village is profiting.
[00:35:29]  It's these 40 guys, their little fishery.
[00:35:31]  They have a dolphin hunting union, and that union is the only one profiting.
[00:35:37]  Japan allowed this to go on, and these 40 guys are the only ones benefiting.
[00:35:41]  The town's not benefiting.
[00:35:43]  The Cove probably did billions of dollars of damage to Japan's economy.
[00:35:48]  There are people that will never travel to Japan again, that will never buy a Japanese car.
[00:35:52]  That will never buy Japanese products ever again because of what they saw in the cove.
[00:35:57]  It was in tens of thousands of newspaper articles.
[00:36:00]  I mean, it was the worst PR campaign ever for them.
[00:36:04]  And they allowed it to go on and back up these 40 guys doing what they do.
[00:36:09]  It's just so bizarre.
[00:36:12]  It is so strange to think about it.
[00:36:14]  It's today, like current day, would you say that that cove in Taiji is the number one source of dolphins in Cacti?
[00:36:24]  Captivity, like, is that where most people are purchasing their dolphins for aquariums or for parks?
[00:36:31]  Year after year after year, I would say yes.
[00:36:33]  But also, I'm aware of a huge export that's happening that most people have no clue out of Cuba.
[00:36:39]  Cuba supplies a lot of dolphins.
[00:36:42]  Really?
[00:36:43]  Yeah.
[00:36:44]  And we're looking into that right now, but we've gotten, you know, it's a communist country.
[00:36:50]  So to get any government data is almost impossible.
[00:36:52]  But from what I'm hearing from people there, it could be close to Taiji as far as the export.
[00:36:58]  I think Taiji, I could look it up, but I think it's somewhere around 100 and something a year or 100 a year that maybe get exported.
[00:37:08]  I don't know if Cuba's like that year after year, or this like sometimes they'll have a spike and there won't be any exports.
[00:37:13]  But you know, throughout the Caribbean, you have like in Mexico.
[00:37:17]  I don't know if you've ever been to Mexico, but like near Tulum, every half mile, there's a place to swim with the dolphins for like 30 miles.
[00:37:24]  They're just one after the other, after another, after another.
[00:37:28]  Yeah.
[00:37:28]  A lot of those are, I think, coming from Cuba.
[00:37:31]  And they're all, you know, all over the Caribbean.
[00:37:33]  Anywhere a cruise ship stop, you'll find dolphins in captivity.
[00:37:36]  And so I'm thinking a lot of those in the Caribbean are coming from Cuba.
[00:37:41]  But Cuba doesn't do the slaughtering like Taiji.

=== Forced Groups vs Wild Dolphins (16:03) ===

[00:37:45]  No, no.
[00:37:46]  But they have a national aquarium where they have dolphins and they are always considered kind of like Castro's pet dolphins.
[00:37:53]  And actually, if I remember correctly, Che Guevara's niece, his niece, his sister, I think it's his niece, is then like the national vet at the aquarium.
[00:38:06]  What?
[00:38:06]  And so they're probably involved in the export.
[00:38:09]  You know, I'm sure the higher up.
[00:38:10]  And Cuba are getting, you know, making money off of that.
[00:38:13]  Do you guys have any plans to go down there to check that out at all?
[00:38:17]  Yeah.
[00:38:17]  And I live in Miami, so I don't know.
[00:38:19]  Half the people I know are Cuban, and I have friends that go back and forth all the time.
[00:38:22]  So I've had people looking into it.
[00:38:24]  The other documentary that you guys shot with Pete Zucchini, where you guys go to, I believe it's Indonesia.
[00:38:29]  Is that right?
[00:38:30]  Who's that guy?
[00:38:31]  TV show I did.
[00:38:33]  He was the crazy guy.
[00:38:34]  Pete's shot a.
[00:38:36]  He's worked on maybe a couple things we've worked on.
[00:38:39]  We've probably done.
[00:38:41]  Over a thousand documentaries, but yeah, the cove stands out because it won the Academy Award.
[00:38:46]  But then we did a TV version of the cove called Blood Dolphins, Blood Dolphin.
[00:38:51]  That's what it is.
[00:38:52]  That was like a mini series that I did for Animal Planet.
[00:38:55]  And who was that crazy guy who lived there?
[00:38:58]  He was kind of like, I mean, honestly, yes, what was his last name, Porter?
[00:39:03]  Chris Porter, Chris Porter.
[00:39:05]  Chris Porter reminds me of one of those people who run those, uh, those lion.
[00:39:13]  Petting zoos, like in that recent documentary that just came out on Netflix.
[00:39:17]  It's called Tiger King.
[00:39:18]  Tiger King.
[00:39:19]  He reminds me just like one of those people, like where he just has that giant swimming pool with all those dolphins in there and he goes in there and swims with them.
[00:39:26]  And that literally blew my mind.
[00:39:29]  Correlation with all those people, like, you know, there's a bunch of them.
[00:39:35]  There's, you know, there's all these, there's a guy on Instagram, the real Tarzan.
[00:39:39]  Someone showed me his account the other day.
[00:39:41]  And the guy's a clown.
[00:39:42]  It's like, it's never about the dolphins or the animals, it's about them.
[00:39:48]  The animals, the backdrop, and it's always about getting the picture of the Instagram picture as close as you can with a chimpanzee, with a lion, with whatever it is.
[00:39:55]  It's like any true sanctuary does not let you take selfies with the animal.
[00:39:59]  We don't like our place where we have the dolphins, the general public is not allowed in there.
[00:40:04]  There's no one coming.
[00:40:04]  You can't take selfies.
[00:40:05]  No one's coming and swimming with the dolphins.
[00:40:07]  The dolphins are retired.
[00:40:08]  Like they're just there to be wild animals, and that's what wild animals do.
[00:40:15]  I never, you know, there's a huge fascination.
[00:40:18]  With the Irwin family.
[00:40:19]  And for me, he was one of the worst things that ever happened to wild animals, Steve Irwin.
[00:40:24]  Really?
[00:40:24]  He comes to Zoom and he's just trying to promote animals in captivity.
[00:40:27]  And, you know, before him, when I grew up, all the documentaries, you know, when you saw a great documentary about lions, it was usually by a husband and wife team that lived in Africa for four years with the lions and had the absolute longest lens you could ever have and got you right in there with lions being lions.
[00:40:46]  Steve Irwin was all about how close can I get to the animal?
[00:40:49]  And it was all about a wide angle lens, not a zoom lens.
[00:40:52]  Like, how freaking, you know, how up close on top can I jump out of the truck and land right on the animal?
[00:40:58]  And it changed, it became a spin off of shows all about that.
[00:41:01]  And it just changed the relationship.
[00:41:03]  It used to be all about being as far away and letting the animal be an animal and seeing the behaviors that, as soon as you introduce a person, the animal's not doing wild animal behaviors anymore.
[00:41:13]  He's doing something else.
[00:41:15]  And so it changed our whole relationship with animals, not for the better, I think.
[00:41:20]  Yeah, there's sort of this weird primal desire that humans have to be next to them or to hold them or to like harness the power of this wild animal.
[00:41:29]  So, you see online a lot of these social media, so called sanctuaries, and it's the person who runs the sanctuary.
[00:41:34]  It's like they're in every picture.
[00:41:35]  It's like, that's not what I want to see.
[00:41:37]  I want to see the animals just being animals, not you.
[00:41:40]  It's not about you.
[00:41:43]  Yeah, it's so weird.
[00:41:45]  So, the guy Chris Porter, where does he live?
[00:41:49]  He's Canadian.
[00:41:50]  He's from Canada.
[00:41:51]  He's from Canada, but doesn't he live in Indonesia somewhere?
[00:41:54]  He was in the Solomon Islands, but that's all.
[00:41:57]  After that show, it all shut down.
[00:41:58]  You see, the dolphins let go, and when I was there, he was out of money.
[00:42:05]  Really, I was having to give him a little bit of 20 bucks every day just so to buy some food for him.
[00:42:09]  And the guy is like, he had no money, he had bought his ticket to be on that episode to get there and showed up with like zero dollars.
[00:42:18]  Like, because that was fascinating, man.
[00:42:22]  That was that thing the way that you guys had to travel to get there to interview the people that were living there that lived off these dolphins.
[00:42:30]  I go there all the time, I usually go there twice a year Solomon Islands, that's next to Papua New Guinea.
[00:42:36]  Why do you go there twice a year?
[00:42:37]  What do you do when you go there?
[00:42:38]  Well, a couple of things.
[00:42:42]  The reason he went there is because Solomon Islands is probably one of the only places in the world where they traditionally hunt dolphins.
[00:42:51]  They've been doing it maybe because it's only an oral history there, but it could go back 500 years, 600 years that they've been hunting dolphins.
[00:43:00]  And in Solomon's, they've kind of mixed like dolphin hunting and like.
[00:43:07]  Christianity and like Judaism into almost one thing where, like, you know, some people equate when they're sliding the dolphins that it's the blood of Christ.
[00:43:16]  And then they're in the Solomons, it's very tribal.
[00:43:20]  And so they do a dowry when they get married.
[00:43:23]  And this, the villages that do the dolphin hunting, dolphin teeth is a very important part of the dowry when you get married.
[00:43:29]  Every wedding, the bride and her whole family are dressed in head to toe wearing dolphin, you know, headbands and big ornate necklaces.
[00:43:39]  They string dolphins together to form like strings of almost like money.
[00:43:43]  And so it's very symbolic for them.
[00:43:46]  And so, what the dolphin dealers and dolphin hunters, people that sell dolphins to aquariums, realized countries that will allow people to slaughter dolphins will probably allow us to catch a few of them and export them.
[00:43:58]  So, people like Chris Porter realized oh, they're slaughtering dolphins in the Solomons.
[00:44:02]  I bet we could probably export them.
[00:44:05]  If they're catching them already, we could just pay them a little extra to catch them for us and we could export them out of the country to aquariums.
[00:44:12]  And so that's what he did.
[00:44:13]  And so He created a mess where tribes there were going and just catching dolphins.
[00:44:19]  And you know, Chris Porter wouldn't be around, he'd be in Canada, and they'd just catch the dolphins and have 30 dolphins penned together.
[00:44:25]  And they tried to keep them alive until Chris Porter showed up.
[00:44:28]  They didn't know if he was coming in a week or a month.
[00:44:30]  And these are villages that are barely catching one fish to feed themselves for that day, they're living in huts.
[00:44:37]  And now they're having to feed 30 dolphins for some guy that might give them money.
[00:44:41]  And so it just created disaster scenarios where you know, dolphins were being caught and dying in these pens, and the villages were getting upset and warring with each other over money of some white guy and like.
[00:44:55]  So, I've been continuing.
[00:44:56]  If you see blood dolphins, there's a tribe called Fenele.
[00:44:59]  They're the specific tribe that really hunt dolphins to this day.
[00:45:03]  And I've been slowly working with them to see if they will move away from dolphin hunting.
[00:45:08]  And so, I built them like schools, and I've been providing the kids' educations and different kinds of grants to the villages as the numbers of dolphins decrease that are killed.
[00:45:18]  And now, do you go there with like a team of people or?
[00:45:24]  No, I go by myself, or I go sometimes with.
[00:45:28]  There's an anthropologist that I work with.
[00:45:30]  She lives in Miami and she did her doctoral thesis on that village back in the 70s.
[00:45:36]  And so I go with her a lot just because she knows the village.
[00:45:40]  She's been going there so long, and I can speak their local language now, but I couldn't when I first went there.
[00:45:46]  So it was helpful.
[00:45:48]  Yeah.
[00:45:49]  Now, obviously, there's a controversy when you talk about dolphins.
[00:45:54]  A being, I mean, there's a difference between people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for dolphins to sell tickets to their aquarium.
[00:46:02]  But what about when there's dolphins that were injured?
[00:46:05]  Like, for example, in Clearwater, there's this dolphin named Winter who had its tail, whose tail was caught in a net.
[00:46:13]  They had to surgically remove its tail and build it a prosthetic tail.
[00:46:17]  And, you know, their claim to fame at Clearwater Marine Aquarium is that they'll sort of, Rescue dolphins who have been seriously injured that can't survive in the wild by themselves, and they'll take care of them there.
[00:46:31]  Right.
[00:46:33]  So, that dolphin, I mean, that dolphin was probably going to die.
[00:46:36]  And now they've rescued her, and she's living now in a sewage treatment plant that 600,000 people a year have to want to see her and clapping and screaming at her.
[00:46:46]  Like, what did she get saved from exactly?
[00:46:48]  I'm not sure.
[00:46:49]  Like, literally, that place was a sewage treatment plant.
[00:46:56]  That's an old sewage treatment plant for Clearwater.
[00:47:01]  How many dolphins have they released since that movie came out?
[00:47:06]  How many?
[00:47:07]  None.
[00:47:08]  Right.
[00:47:09]  That is, it's just pure exploitation.
[00:47:11]  It's like just because you make a sign that says rescue, rehab, and release or a sanctuary doesn't mean that's what it is.
[00:47:17]  Like they literally, I think in 2015, when that movie came out, they had 800,000 visitors there.
[00:47:25]  Every one of them wants to see Winter.
[00:47:27]  Winter is in an old round sewage treatment tank.
[00:47:31]  There's nothing when you go to a zoo, even the snake gets more consideration than the dolphin.
[00:47:37]  When you look at the snake in his tank, there's a rock and a stick.
[00:47:41]  And if the snake wants to get away from people, he can go behind this rock.
[00:47:45]  The dolphin isn't going to completely barren, there is nothing in that tank.
[00:47:49]  She can't get away.
[00:47:50]  The winter is just stuck all day.
[00:47:52]  Every kid is screaming at the top of their lungs in a line.
[00:47:55]  And then you walk past winter right into a gift shop.
[00:47:58]  That's what it's all about.
[00:47:59]  It's just about exploitation and money.
[00:48:01]  Right.
[00:48:01]  They wanted to do something with winter and rescuer.
[00:48:03]  The ocean is literally 50 yards away.
[00:48:07]  Why don't you build a sea pen right there?
[00:48:09]  Why is she in the sewage treatment tank in a building?
[00:48:12]  That's not rescuing.
[00:48:14]  They've kept her alive, but that's not living, is doing things.
[00:48:16]  If you're not doing things, you're not living.
[00:48:18]  That dog is that dolphin is just existing.
[00:48:21]  It's a very sad situation.
[00:48:22]  It's pure exploitation.
[00:48:25]  Yeah, and there's the guy at the head of it, David Gates.
[00:48:28]  Like when that movie came out, his bio on his Twitter was Winter's Agent.
[00:48:33]  I saw that.
[00:48:34]  Like, what is that?
[00:48:35]  Like, it's so cringe.
[00:48:36]  That guy.
[00:48:37]  Oh, I mean, I helped work on that movie and I had no idea about any of this.
[00:48:41]  And it's just how can we exploit this situation, you know?
[00:48:44]  And it's like now they're talking about building this massive new facility.
[00:48:47]  Well, that massive facility is going to need more dolphins that they.
[00:48:51]  To generate income to get people in there, it's just a revolving door of like misery, and it is massive, man.
[00:48:57]  I drove by it the other day.
[00:48:58]  It is, they are expanding it.
[00:49:01]  It's now gone to like four stories, I believe.
[00:49:05]  And we have the only dolphin sanctuary in the world.
[00:49:08]  I built it for about $75,000 in about three weeks.
[00:49:12]  Done, yeah.
[00:49:13]  The open ocean, the dolphin can look up, she can the dolphins can see the stars at night.
[00:49:18]  They're in the open ocean, the tide comes in and out every day, so there's a current to move against.
[00:49:23]  There's little sounds of the snapping shrimp.
[00:49:26]  There's fish swimming in and out of the pen.
[00:49:28]  That's living.
[00:49:28]  At least that's some sort of something.
[00:49:31]  Right.
[00:49:31]  They're just existing.
[00:49:33]  And for what purpose?
[00:49:35]  Like, there is, I have yet to hear any justifiable reason for having a dolphin in captivity.
[00:49:40]  Like, they're not ambassadors.
[00:49:42]  A dolphin is no more an ambassador than for dolphins, than like Mickey Mouse is for mice.
[00:49:49]  Like, these are just caricatures of the animals in the wild.
[00:49:52]  They're not, they don't represent the animals in the wild.
[00:49:54]  They're not doing any behaviors that the animals in the wild do.
[00:49:56]  Like, This is just a forced together group of dolphins that we've made.
[00:50:00]  And, like, you know, oh, well, if the children don't see them, then how are they going to learn about them?
[00:50:07]  We're educating 100 million, you know, 100 million people come through SeaWorld every year that we're educating.
[00:50:15]  That is ridiculous.
[00:50:16]  Like, I know eight year olds, the average eight year old boy knows like half of the scientific names for dinosaurs and the crustacean period that they lived in.
[00:50:29]  We've never.
[00:50:30]  Who's seen a dinosaur?
[00:50:31]  I've never seen a dinosaur.
[00:50:32]  Yet, kids know the name of every freaking dinosaur and what period they lived in.
[00:50:37]  Elephants we've had since the beginning of time have been in captivity.
[00:50:40]  They're on the verge of extinction.
[00:50:43]  I've never, I work with dolphins.
[00:50:44]  I've never in real life seen a blue whale, yet the blue whales came off the endangered species list without anyone seeing it.
[00:50:50]  So, there's no correlation seeing an animal and saving it.
[00:50:54]  If that were true, I think they say in Japan, like, I forget the number 100 million people a year go through their aquariums.
[00:51:02]  Well, if all those people are going through the dolphinariums and are educated, when the dolphins are being slaughtered, where are all these people?
[00:51:07]  I'm there by myself.
[00:51:09]  Like, where are they?
[00:51:10]  You're not getting any education.
[00:51:12]  You're not leaving Miami Sea Quarrying and being told that these dolphins are dying.
[00:51:16]  Like, this is what you can do.
[00:51:17]  You don't eat tuna.
[00:51:18]  Like, dolphins are dying of tuna nets or being slaughtered.
[00:51:21]  You don't get any of that.
[00:51:22]  Like, there's no education happening there.
[00:51:24]  No.
[00:51:26]  Was that.
[00:51:27]  And the idea.
[00:51:28]  Dolphins, if you think about all animals in captivity, like the most modern zoo now, they try to make it like the elephants are on an island, there's like a moat.
[00:51:36]  And it looks like wherever, and they're just being elephants.
[00:51:40]  The dolphins are literally evolutionary, the highest animal, and yet they're the only ones left that have to perform six times a day, seven days a week.
[00:51:49]  There's a show begging for their food, like doing the stupid, the dumbest tricks, wearing a Christmas hat or a fake beard or putting out a fire.
[00:51:58]  It's like that's like the 50s, some clown thing from the 50s.
[00:52:02]  Yeah.
[00:52:03]  No, it literally is.
[00:52:04]  It's the dolphin version of Tiger King.
[00:52:06]  It's just absurd.
[00:52:07]  Like that really.
[00:52:08]  Painted a very clear picture of it.
[00:52:10]  I mean, especially it rang true with me with just thinking of that guy, Chris Porter and David Yates.
[00:52:14]  He's kind of like the Chris Porter of Clearwater in a way.
[00:52:17]  And now, with me, you know, there's zero excuse because, like, I went like four years ago and I made the day the very first VR rig came out, where a rig for GoPros we could shoot virtual reality.
[00:52:28]  Okay.
[00:52:29]  The day it came out, the next day I had it literally, and I went and shot the very first underwater swimming with wild dolphins.
[00:52:35]  It's on our website, Dolphin Project.
[00:52:38]  If you watch it on our Facebook page or through YouTube, you get the 360 effect.
[00:52:41]  Oh, cool.
[00:52:44]  And it's basically you swimming with a pot of wild dolphins.
[00:52:46]  It's narrated by Ian Summerholden, the actor.
[00:52:51]  And I made that for like 10 grand, that thing.
[00:52:53]  And so the whole point of my video was like, someone like SeaWorld could spend a million dollars.
[00:52:59]  I mean, the last orca that sold in captivity was $15 million.
[00:53:03]  And then they had to probably build a $30 million tank and then the upkeep.
[00:53:08]  For a million dollars, you could make the most incredible virtual reality experience where the whole group of people comes into a theater, puts on the goggles, and you're in the wild swimming in a pot of wild.
[00:53:18]  It'd be incredible.
[00:53:20]  We can do that for 10 minutes.
[00:53:22]  We don't need animals in captivity anymore.
[00:53:25]  With VR, augmented reality, 3D, you can do incredible things that are far more immersive than any experience you're ever going to have in a zoo.
[00:53:34]  So, do you know any statistics on how many aquariums, like aquariums or SeaWorld locations, there are in the US right now?
[00:53:45]  I don't have those numbers off the top of my head.

=== Releasing Captives with VR Tech (15:34) ===

[00:53:48]  And what is the trend with?
[00:53:51]  With those places right now?
[00:53:52]  Like, what's going on with them?
[00:53:53]  I know orcas.
[00:53:54]  In the US, we're going, I would say it's going down.
[00:53:57]  Like, you know, you had the Cove, which created this wave of people now that love dolphins.
[00:54:04]  And then you had a second hit with blackfish.
[00:54:06]  So the wave got bigger.
[00:54:07]  Yeah.
[00:54:08]  And so places that were new were on the drawing board basically aren't happening because, you know, and then places like a recent place that had opened up in Arizona.
[00:54:21]  Most of the swim places with dolphins in Mexico, and they started infiltrating the US and they had opened up in Mexico, in New Mexico.
[00:54:30]  And they had a dolphin death, and there was just some local people that were protesting all the time.
[00:54:35]  And then they had another death, and then they had a third death.
[00:54:41]  And we got involved and we actually helped organize a couple protests right after the third dolphin death.
[00:54:48]  And there was a huge golf tournament, like one of the biggest ones in the country.
[00:54:52]  And so I rented a plane with a banner.
[00:54:54]  That said, uh, Dolphin Eris, why are three dolphins dead?
[00:55:00]  And we flew it over the golf tournament.
[00:55:02]  It was like something 200,000 people were on the ground at this golf course watching.
[00:55:06]  It was live on TV, and they actually, the TV camera for the golfing panned up to the camera, panned up to the plane.
[00:55:12]  You see it on TV on the thing, and plus all the local media covered it.
[00:55:15]  No way.
[00:55:16]  Why it's flying around, another dolphin died.
[00:55:19]  And I literally had to fly in because all the banner planes were being used for the golf tournament.
[00:55:24]  There was no numbers.
[00:55:26]  I had to change the dolphin number for three to four.
[00:55:29]  Because now four dolphins had died.
[00:55:30]  Literally, as I'm flying the banner, a dolphin died.
[00:55:33]  We had to fly in the number four from California on another plane.
[00:55:38]  And we flew the banner the next day at the tournament, wire four dolphins dead.
[00:55:41]  And when the people saw that, it just crushed the place.
[00:55:44]  Is that aquarium?
[00:55:45]  Within a week, they were done and the dolphins were shipped off out of the country.
[00:55:49]  Wow.
[00:55:50]  And so there's that kind of groundswell.
[00:55:52]  Like you didn't see that 20 years ago, but 20 years ago, it would have just been my dad and I, and we would have looked like freaks and they would have played us off as we're some fringe people.
[00:55:59]  But now, Literally within days, hundreds of people were in front of that place protesting, and like that's incredible.
[00:56:07]  Just change that, you know.
[00:56:10]  Now, your dad lives in Denmark, right?
[00:56:13]  He was in Denmark.
[00:56:14]  Is there a reason that he lives there or is it just a personal thing?
[00:56:19]  He married a Danish woman and she lived there for many years.
[00:56:22]  But when the Cove came out, probably for the three years after the Cove was out, he basically was that.
[00:56:28]  Because when you have a movie that wins an Academy Award like that, you're just on the road.
[00:56:33]  It's just week after week, somebody's wanting to screen it somewhere, the president of some country, and you can't say no.
[00:56:40]  It's like this could be an opportunity.
[00:56:41]  So he was just on the road so much.
[00:56:43]  She felt like if he wasn't around, she'd rather be back in Denmark than here.
[00:56:48]  So they've just moved over there.
[00:56:50]  Okay.
[00:56:51]  Now, is he still.
[00:56:52]  How active is he still with.
[00:56:54]  Completely active.
[00:56:55]  I was just with him.
[00:56:56]  We were in.
[00:56:56]  But right before the quarantine, we were in Bali where we have a dolphin sanctuary and we were preparing two dolphins that we're going to attempt to release there.
[00:57:07]  But now with what's going on, he's 80 years old.
[00:57:10]  It may not be safe for him to travel for a couple of years now.
[00:57:13]  We'll see what happens.
[00:57:14]  But up until now, he travels constantly.
[00:57:17]  So, when you went to Bali, for example, can you walk me through what your guys' plan is when you go there and what steps you guys take to release these dolphins?
[00:57:29]  When I went to Bali, I had a TV show, Blood Dolphins, and I was thinking about doing an episode there.
[00:57:35]  So, I went to investigate it.
[00:57:37]  Because when you're doing a TV show, you want to find places that are rich where they have more than one dolphin story.
[00:57:45]  Like Solomon's, if you watch that.
[00:57:48]  Episode There's you know Chris Porter, the dolphin dealer, in his facility, and I'm trying to shut him down and get the dolphin dealers out.
[00:57:55]  And then this village is hunting dolphins and killing them, and I'm trying to stop that.
[00:57:59]  And then there's some guy that had some dolphins in his backyard, and I'm trying to shut so it had a lot of stories and angles.
[00:58:04]  And so, when you're doing for television, it's helpful to have a lot of things like that.
[00:58:09]  And so, Indonesia was another place where there's a village that hunts dolphins, you had a traveling dolphin circus, the last traveling dolphin circus in the world, and then you had.
[00:58:19]  Tons of swim places in Bali.
[00:58:22]  And so we had many things going on.
[00:58:23]  And so I decided to do an episode there.
[00:58:27]  And then that led on to us beginning a campaign for 10 years in Indonesia.
[00:58:33]  And so one campaign, like I said, was Free Bali Dolphins, which is Indonesia is a massive country, but most of the tourism is based in Bali.
[00:58:45]  And so that's where all the swim with dolphins places are popping up.
[00:58:50]  And so I was like, if I can get rid of all of them here, that'll be a massive.
[00:58:52]  Step.
[00:58:53]  There are other places in Indo that we'll work on, but that's a big one.
[00:58:59]  And so that one, you know, I work with people that are similar to me.
[00:59:05]  I have people on the ground there that work for Dolphin Project full time on this.
[00:59:09]  And we would do, we created a puppet show about why dolphins should be in captivity and two of them that travel continuously every week in a different school, like around, you know, hundreds of schools.
[00:59:21]  Okay.
[00:59:24]  Bali is one of the capitals right now for graffiti.
[00:59:27]  All the biggest street artists in the world are stopped passing through Bali.
[00:59:30]  It's everywhere.
[00:59:31]  And so I bought thousands of dollars in paint and gave free paint to any artist that would do a free Bali dolphin mural.
[00:59:38]  And so they're everywhere.
[00:59:39]  You go every city block, there's a massive dolphin, free Bali dolphin, and it's repetition.
[00:59:45]  It's like the Obey poster.
[00:59:49]  You just see them so much, it's like a repetition thing.
[00:59:51]  So we have so many of these free Bali things, it's like you just see it block after block.
[00:59:58]  I rented every video monitor at the airport.
[01:00:01]  Like when you get off and you're waiting for your bags for 30 minutes, the screen had an animation I ran for free.
[01:00:07]  Don't swim with captive dolphins in Bali.
[01:00:09]  And I just hammered for years and years and years and just did press.
[01:00:15]  And eventually, we became partners with the actual government.
[01:00:18]  We have a partnership with the forestry department who manages all the dolphin issues.
[01:00:22]  And so, any dolphin issue that arises in Indonesia, they call us.
[01:00:26]  And so, years ago, I created, we call it Camp Lumba Lumba.
[01:00:33]  We actually found this national park where it turns out all of the dolphins in Indonesia are being illegally captured out of this park.
[01:00:43]  And so we built a facility there.
[01:00:45]  That's where the dolphins that will be released will go to that facility because chances are their families still live in that area.
[01:00:51]  They're resident dolphins.
[01:00:53]  Like when you see the cove in Japan, those are what's called transient dolphins.
[01:00:57]  Those dolphins are swimming along, migrating thousands of miles along the coastline of Japan.
[01:01:02]  And they happen, unfortunately, to come along the coastline near Taiji.
[01:01:08]  Certain places have resident dolphins.
[01:01:10]  Like in Miami, we have dolphins here that every time you go on your boat, you see the same dolphins.
[01:01:14]  They just live in this area, they're not ever moving.
[01:01:18]  And so there's a huge resident pod in this area.
[01:01:25]  And so we found the fisherman, we were able to identify who was actually catching them and how he was doing it.
[01:01:31]  And what was happening is the aquariums would call this village and say, We want to buy three dolphins.
[01:01:36]  So the expert fisherman guy would go out and catch three dolphins.
[01:01:40]  And then he would basically phone it in as, I accidentally caught three dolphins in my fishing net.
[01:01:46]  Can you call the aquarium to come rescue them?
[01:01:49]  Wow.
[01:01:50]  And the opponent comes and rescues them, and they never let them go.
[01:01:52]  And that's like there's about 70 dolphins in captivity in Indonesia that were all obtained that way.
[01:01:58]  And so, what I did is I built basically the first ever permanent release facility because we released dolphins in the past, but it was always like a specific dolphin in Brazil, Flipper.
[01:02:12]  He's one dolphin.
[01:02:13]  We built the facility, we let him go, the facility got torn down.
[01:02:17]  Because there are many other dolphins in captivity there, I decided to make something permanent that's been there for about 10 years.
[01:02:24]  Then recently in Bali, we just shut down a hotel called the Melka Hotel.
[01:02:30]  And it was a hotel that they basically had dolphins in the swimming pool and they built some other pools.
[01:02:35]  And the guests could swim with dolphins.
[01:02:37]  They were advertising dolphin assisted therapy.
[01:02:39]  So they were getting a lot of families from Russia with autistic kids paying huge money to swim with the dolphins.
[01:02:46]  And it got sold and the new one, and it's always been a horrible place, but it's recently went really downhill.
[01:02:53]  And so the forestry department called us and said, look, we're going to shut these guys down.
[01:02:58]  Either you guys take the dolphins or we'll move them to another facility.
[01:03:03]  We didn't, I didn't have anywhere to take them.
[01:03:04]  So I literally, we went, we confiscated two of the dolphins, we put them in a swim with place, and we rented some of their pens with the agreement that we're just going to keep them there for like two weeks.
[01:03:14]  You can't, you just feed them.
[01:03:16]  Do not let people swim with them.
[01:03:18]  These are our dolphins.
[01:03:19]  We're going to rent your pens.
[01:03:20]  And in two weeks, I built a facility up in North Bali.
[01:03:24]  And we've now moved the two dolphins that were still at the hotel and the two dolphins we had originally confiscated are now in that facility.
[01:03:32]  And that facility is going to be where all dolphins now, when they're confiscated, will go there.
[01:03:37]  And we determine there if they're candidates to be released.
[01:03:40]  The ones that can be released, we would take and fly them to our other facility that is an area where they were captured.
[01:03:46]  So that if they're released, they'll be released there.
[01:03:50]  The dolphins that can't be released, like we have one now that we're sure because he has no, most of his teeth were removed.
[01:03:58]  And he was in a pool with no filtration.
[01:03:59]  So he's almost blind.
[01:04:01]  And so he's not a candidate.
[01:04:03]  And he's been, and he's pretty old.
[01:04:05]  So he'll live out his life at our facility, retired and just living life.
[01:04:10]  He doesn't have to do anything or work for a living or, you know.
[01:04:13]  So those facilities that you have set up, those are basically in the ocean, right?
[01:04:17]  They're just kind of like blocked off from the so they can't.
[01:04:20]  The one that's really the facility is in about the deepest part is 15 feet.
[01:04:24]  And so it's actually connected to the bottom.
[01:04:26]  It's poles that go down into the sand and then has netting.
[01:04:31]  Okay.
[01:04:31]  The one that we have now that is the retirement center.
[01:04:36]  Is in 60 feet of water and it's 45 feet deep, so it doesn't touch the bottom, it hangs.
[01:04:41]  Okay, and um, the dolphins, the ones that will retire, will be there forever.
[01:04:48]  Now, have you ever seen any kind of problems with these dolphins when you do release them back into the wild, even if they are resident dolphins?
[01:04:55]  Do they ever have any sort of problems like reconnecting or psychological issues?
[01:04:59]  Because I mean, these animals are obviously incredible.
[01:05:02]  Definitely, so there's two things all dolphins in captivity, any dolphin.
[01:05:07]  Can be readapted, and that means getting it out of its concrete chlorinated box and moving it into a sea pen where it can, you know, the natural rhythms of the sea and not doing shows.
[01:05:17]  You know, we don't feed when we feed our dolphins, it's not at the exact same time every day because in real life, you're not eating every day at 4 30.
[01:05:25]  You're eating sometimes, you're missing a meal, sometimes, you're eating at 8 30.
[01:05:28]  Sometimes, so that we mix it up so it's more like real life.
[01:05:32]  And, um, so all dolphins can be moved into a situation where they're in a natural sea pen, those that.
[01:05:40]  Then we feel our showing interest in the wild could be moved to that next stage of possibly being released.
[01:05:48]  And so you're looking for different things like, you know, we've seen a dolphin before.
[01:05:53]  Like we, this one area is Argentina we worked with, or Colombia, sorry.
[01:06:02]  Stefania, we built a sea pen out in the islands where she was captured.
[01:06:06]  We moved her from the tank where she was to the sea pen.
[01:06:09]  We built this huge sea pen off of the beach.
[01:06:12]  We used the beach as one side of it.
[01:06:14]  And then built three squares.
[01:06:17]  And she went to one corner and did the same circles that she did in her look because she was in a little round pool that she lived her life in, just going in circles.
[01:06:26]  And we moved her to this massive pen, and she just went to one corner and did circles, and that was it.
[01:06:30]  And so she was not a candidate to be released because, like, it's like prison.
[01:06:34]  It's like some dudes go to prison and after 40 years walk out like nothing happened.
[01:06:39]  And there's other people that go to jail for two years and they lose it and they're not the same person ever again.
[01:06:44]  And it's so we do have a protocol for releasing dolphins.
[01:06:49]  But it's really a case by case basis.
[01:06:51]  One thing doesn't work for all of them.
[01:06:52]  It's like, right.
[01:06:54]  So you want to see things like we'll slowly start decreasing the amount of live fish we're giving them, the frozen fish that they're so dependent on.
[01:07:03]  And we'll start catching, like, we catch live fish and we put it into a pen that's hanging in their pen so they can see the live fish.
[01:07:10]  They're interested.
[01:07:10]  They know it's something because we've got it in a pen.
[01:07:13]  So it's special.
[01:07:14]  And we get them interested in it.
[01:07:16]  We'll start taking those fish and throwing them.
[01:07:17]  And hopefully you'll see the dolphins at first.
[01:07:19]  Maybe they're not eating them, but they're just having fun catching them.
[01:07:23]  And so you want to start to see that kind of stuff where some dolphins just aren't interested.
[01:07:27]  And so they're not going to be candidates.
[01:07:29]  Right.
[01:07:29]  You know, maybe if wild dolphins come near, are they curious?
[01:07:33]  Are they ignoring it?
[01:07:34]  Or are they, seems like they're sending signals out?
[01:07:37]  Like, so you're starting to look for those signs.
[01:07:40]  Okay.
[01:07:41]  And then as you get, you know, once you remove them from where we are now to like the release facility, there, we're more like observing them through a blind.
[01:07:53]  So we'll set up like, A wall of palm fronds where we can see through that they can't see us.
[01:07:58]  And so we start to break that connection with man and start to feed them where they can't see us.
[01:08:03]  And you start to just slow.
[01:08:04]  And while you're doing that, you're watching.
[01:08:05]  Are they moving forward?
[01:08:06]  Does it seem like they're digging this?
[01:08:10]  And, you know, it's obvious.
[01:08:12]  Some start eating that live fish, and boom, right away they're like, oh, yeah, I remember this.
[01:08:16]  Like, I'm all about this.
[01:08:17]  And some aren't.
[01:08:18]  Oh, yeah.
[01:08:19]  That's amazing.
[01:08:20]  And how many dolphins would you estimate that you guys release on a yearly basis or?
[01:08:26]  Not on a yearly basis because, you know, there was a period where we did a Bunch like maybe in the 90s, and then it stopped.
[01:08:32]  And then, um, like we just helped, they just did a release in South Korea, and my dad went there a couple times.
[01:08:43]  And they just basically followed his protocol, and we just talked to them all the time.
[01:08:48]  But including those, I think that was like six dolphins, I would say maybe 20 to 25 we've been involved with, one way or another.
[01:08:56]  Wow, that's amazing!
[01:08:58]  So, what's it gonna take, man?
[01:08:59]  What do you think is the next thing that's gonna really kind of kind of Dolphins make more money in captivity than any other animal.
[01:09:06]  So the threat is bigger.
[01:09:10]  The pushback from the industry is a lot bigger because there have been elephant sanctuaries for God knows how long 30 years.
[01:09:16]  Even more so than orcas, like shamu.
[01:09:19]  I mean, dolphins pull in more than that.
[01:09:20]  I include orcas.
[01:09:22]  Orca is a dolphin.

=== Massive Lawsuit Threatens Industry (08:31) ===

[01:09:23]  Orca is not a whale.
[01:09:24]  Orca is the largest member of the dolphin family.
[01:09:25]  So an orca is actually a.
[01:09:26]  Oh, really?
[01:09:28]  So when I say or dolphins, I'm talking as well.
[01:09:31]  And I think there's actually only one whale.
[01:09:35]  In the United States, in captivity, I think it's on the East Coast somewhere.
[01:09:38]  It's just one obscure species.
[01:09:41]  So basically, everything you see in captivity is a dolphin.
[01:09:45]  So I guess my question was.
[01:09:48]  But all dolphins could be readapted into a sea pen and retired with dignity.
[01:09:54]  And every animal has that except for marine mammals.
[01:09:57]  Every animal's had it for many, many years.
[01:09:59]  There's been giraffe sanctuaries and primate sanctuaries.
[01:10:02]  They're all over the world.
[01:10:03]  They're forever dog, cat, everything.
[01:10:06]  Every animal except for dolphin.
[01:10:08]  Because dolphin in the right place will make more money than any other animal.
[01:10:12]  So, what do you think it's going to take to kind of change this cultural thing that we have going on in the world?
[01:10:20]  I mean, obviously, it's a huge economic lift to companies.
[01:10:24]  Well, we'll see what happens after this virus.
[01:10:26]  I think we're going to live in a different world.
[01:10:28]  Like right now, there's not one dolphinarium open anywhere in the world.
[01:10:32]  Right now, there is not one dolphinarium open.
[01:10:34]  And how long can they hold?
[01:10:36]  You're going to see half the restaurants in your town are going to be gone.
[01:10:39]  Places you grew up eating at are going to be gone forever.
[01:10:42]  Your movie theaters probably after this, there probably won't be an AMC movie theater anymore.
[01:10:46]  Like things are going to be gone, it's going to change things a lot.
[01:10:50]  And I think half of the Dolphinariums won't make it through this easily.
[01:10:55]  Half of them won't make it.
[01:10:56]  SeaWorld stock right now is in the gutter.
[01:10:58]  Like, how many months of this can they not be open?
[01:11:03]  Is that something that you guys have talked about?
[01:11:05]  Have you guys have discussions about?
[01:11:06]  Indonesia, I've just doubled the size of my facility in the past 30 days.
[01:11:09]  I'm ready.
[01:11:10]  All right, my staff is ready.
[01:11:12]  Any place that closes, we're ready to take all their dogs.
[01:11:14]  I can take every dolphin right now in Indonesia.
[01:11:16]  We're ready to go.
[01:11:17]  So, you guys are kind of anticipating that this is going to happen to these.
[01:11:20]  Absolutely.
[01:11:22]  And we can replicate what we build in Bali.
[01:11:24]  That can be replicated in Mexico.
[01:11:26]  We're going to see places closing left and right.
[01:11:30]  Wow, man.
[01:11:31]  That is.
[01:11:32]  It's expensive to keep captive dolphins.
[01:11:33]  They eat a lot of fish every day, and you got to have a big staff.
[01:11:36]  We have a full time veterinarian.
[01:11:38]  Like most facilities don't have a full time vet, they have a guy that comes once every few months.
[01:11:41]  Like, it's not cheap to have all that.
[01:11:43]  Like, How long can they hang on?
[01:11:47]  Yeah.
[01:11:48]  No, it's very interesting how there's kind of like this weird silver lining in this whole virus thing, how it's changing.
[01:11:54]  It's turning around the environment with pollution, as far as pollution goes, water pollution, air pollution.
[01:12:00]  And then now, this with animal captivity, obviously people can't be going to zoos or aquariums.
[01:12:06]  This will change our entire relationship with animals.
[01:12:08]  That would be a benefit if it came out of it because the whole thing was started by eating animals.
[01:12:13]  And, like, you know, every animal place right now, they're not open.
[01:12:19]  And how long can they do that for?
[01:12:21]  And, Do you know, and then when it's not like the country is not going to open up like Thursday and it's back open, like it's gonna.
[01:12:31]  We're all getting used to this.
[01:12:32]  Like, you think you're gonna shake someone's hand ever again, ever again, right?
[01:12:36]  You think that's gonna change?
[01:12:37]  Like, there's things that are just done.
[01:12:39]  Like, when and if the economy, I mean, I'm gonna say when the economy does start to come back, I don't think, I mean, it's safe to say that zoos and aquariums are not gonna be the first place people go to.
[01:12:53]  No, nightclubs, movie theaters, zoos, no.
[01:12:55]  These are the last places anyone's going to.
[01:12:58]  Right, exactly.
[01:13:00]  And so, what are they going to do?
[01:13:01]  Like, you know, I totally anticipate them removing every other seat on an airplane and doubling the price of tickets.
[01:13:06]  Like, I'm anticipating that's what the air travel will get more exclusive.
[01:13:10]  But, like, can they afford to only let half the amount of people into SeaWorld and charge twice as much?
[01:13:15]  Probably no one's going to pay $200 to go to SeaWorld.
[01:13:17]  Like, you know, I just don't see that model working.
[01:13:20]  And, like, you know, it was stupid.
[01:13:23]  They had their chance.
[01:13:24]  Like, when Blackfish came out around that same time, There was also a big push against Ringling Brothers Circus and the elephants.
[01:13:35]  And so they finally threw in the towel and said, We're getting rid of the elephants.
[01:13:39]  And then a year later, after 180 years in business, they were out of business.
[01:13:43]  Like it's just a, and SeaWorld didn't see the writing on the wall.
[01:13:46]  They doubled down on animals in captivity where they should have been backing off.
[01:13:51]  Cause you go to SeaWorld, half of it is roller coasters.
[01:13:54]  And roller coasters where you wear VR goggles.
[01:13:56]  Like they have such an opportunity to do such an amazing thing.
[01:14:00]  They could have a fucking theater that holds 200 people with one guy hitting a green button and a red button to start the show.
[01:14:06]  And that's the only cost after they spend a million bucks making the VR film.
[01:14:10]  And they'll have the most unbelievable experience in the world.
[01:14:13]  Instead, they've got to have dolphins and they got dolphins.
[01:14:15]  They got us.
[01:14:16]  They got problems.
[01:14:17]  They got people protesting.
[01:14:18]  They've got controversy.
[01:14:19]  They've got overhead.
[01:14:21]  What do these people say that run these places?
[01:14:23]  What do they say?
[01:14:24]  What is their response to you?
[01:14:26]  Like, what would they say to you right now?
[01:14:27]  Things like that is corporate.
[01:14:28]  Like, of course, like, you know, The people that are working day to day with the animals are well meaning people, like they, you know, they think, Well, if I quit my job as a trainer, who's going to take as good care of the dolphin?
[01:14:40]  They all want the best care.
[01:14:41]  It's the corporate heads, you know, of course.
[01:14:43]  You look on the bottom of SeaWorld's website, it's called the SeaWorld Entertainment Corporation.
[01:14:48]  They're not an educational, they're an entertainment corporation, point blank.
[01:14:51]  And so, it's just so.
[01:14:54]  What would those corporate figures at the top of SeaWorld that basically they see you as one of their biggest enemies, they see you as the people that are trying to take them down?
[01:15:04]  Have you listened to any of them?
[01:15:06]  Have you had a discussion with any of those people?
[01:15:09]  Have you listened to them respond to movies like The Cove or respond to movies like Blackfish?
[01:15:14]  Do you know what they're like?
[01:15:15]  They denied.
[01:15:16]  In fact, there's a massive lawsuit.
[01:15:17]  They've lost all the initial hearings where, you know, the first year after Blackfish came out and their stock went to the toilet, they said it was affected by weather on certain dates or that holidays felt.
[01:15:30]  They said every excuse but Blackfish.
[01:15:33]  And now all those investors are suing.
[01:15:35]  Like that could be the end of SeaWorld if they win this lawsuit.
[01:15:38]  Because all the investors are suing that you screwed us.
[01:15:40]  You lie point blank that it was having no effect when you were internally freaking out.
[01:15:45]  Like, you know, I don't get it.
[01:15:48]  It's just, you know, it's like without the orcas, they lose.
[01:15:50]  The orcas are the draw.
[01:15:52]  We have a place here, Miami Sequarium in Miami.
[01:15:54]  They have Lolita.
[01:15:56]  The day Lolita dies and is gone, like, they're closed to that.
[01:16:00]  They're done two months later.
[01:16:01]  That is what keeps that place going.
[01:16:03]  And so.
[01:16:05]  It's just a matter of time.
[01:16:06]  Yeah, it's just money.
[01:16:08]  That's all you're saying.
[01:16:09]  Like, why?
[01:16:10]  It's just, why do they have it keep going?
[01:16:11]  It's money.
[01:16:12]  But I think they would make just as much money as a theme park that was aquatic themed.
[01:16:19]  And had used virtual reality and 3D and all the different things we have available at augmented reality, you could do something amazing.
[01:16:26]  Amazing.
[01:16:28]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:16:29]  Well, I really appreciate your time doing this, man.
[01:16:31]  I've learned a lot.
[01:16:33]  And if people want to know more, they can go check out our website.
[01:16:35]  I hope you'll put a link, Dolphin Project.
[01:16:37]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:16:38]  Tell me all your social media links and what your websites are so people can listen to them and go find them.
[01:16:42]  And I'll also link them below.
[01:16:43]  Dolphinproject.com and on Instagram.
[01:16:48]  Twitter and Twitch.
[01:16:50]  We're at dolphin underscore project.
[01:16:55]  All of our accounts on all the social media platforms are all verified.
[01:16:58]  So you'll know that it's us.
[01:17:00]  And you guys update the website almost monthly or weekly on the projects you guys are working on, where you guys are traveling.
[01:17:07]  Oh, yeah.
[01:17:07]  It's updated constantly.
[01:17:08]  And we're writing, we have a full time staff that's writing new blogs.
[01:17:12]  And I think social media posts go out every four hours, 24 hours a day.
[01:17:17]  We're very active on social media and we're live streaming all the time.
[01:17:20]  And You know, people, there's tons of stuff people can do on the website.
[01:17:24]  It just depends on their time and involvement.
[01:17:27]  But the most simplistic thing people can do is just don't buy a ticket to a dolphin show.
[01:17:33]  And as simplistic and easy as that sounds, it's all driven by supply and demand.
[01:17:39]  And if you don't buy any more tickets to dolphin shows, you don't go on cruises that have dolphins, you don't stay in a hotel that's got dolphins, they'll go out of business and they'll get the message.
[01:17:48]  That's the only way they get the message.
[01:17:51]  Corporate America, corporate, anyone.

=== Stop Buying Dolphin Show Tickets (00:48) ===

[01:17:54]  Yeah, I think it's definitely starting to.
[01:17:56]  I think the scale is starting to tip now, and people are definitely starting to realize that more and more as people like yourself and your father.
[01:18:05]  And there's lots of other people that are very vocal about it and talk about it on shows like this.
[01:18:09]  Literally 20 years ago, it would be us by ourselves in front of an aquarium.
[01:18:12]  Now we host an event called Empty the Tanks.
[01:18:16]  We're simultaneously, well, not this year, but every year previous, like simultaneously, we protest like 170 different facilities around the world at the same day, at the same time.
[01:18:27]  You know, now it's become this giant groundswell movement.
[01:18:30]  And so we just helped to guide that movement.
[01:18:33]  Now it's kind of changed our work a little bit.
[01:18:36]  That's incredible, man.
[01:18:38]  Well, thanks again.
[01:18:39]  And hopefully we can do this again in the future.
[01:18:41]  Appreciate it.
[01:18:42]  Really enjoyed it.