Feb. 9, 2018 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:17:35
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Legit, legit. | ||
| I don't sit on wallets. | ||
| I don't play with wallets. | ||
| Fuck no. | ||
| You ready? | ||
| I wasn't sure you got up to move cameras around. | ||
| Phil, show me. | ||
| It's a mini fanny pack. | ||
| It's very small. | ||
| It's like you can carry cash and a small phone. | ||
| You can't carry a modern phone. | ||
| That's like pre-modern phones. | ||
| The six fits in there. | ||
| The six plus would be a problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe. | |
| Bang against your dick. | ||
| I've got to tighten her up. | ||
| So what's going on, man? | ||
| So for everybody who hasn't seen you on the podcast before, let's give them a brief synopsis. | ||
| You were a trainer at one time at Marine Land, and you're known as the Walrus Whisperer. | ||
| That's your handle on Twitter. | ||
| Which I didn't select. | ||
| You didn't? | ||
| No. | ||
| How'd you get it? | ||
| I was on a TV show called Wipeout, and it was grassroots as hell in Canada. | ||
| So basically what they do is they fly you out to Argentina, they sort of rent the course, and then instead of it being, you know, wipeout whatever country, this time it's Canada. | ||
| So it was really grassrootsy, and so they told us, if you guys can help advertise, so get on your Twitters, get on your this, get on your that. | ||
| They called me Walrus Whisperer. | ||
| It just made sense to put it. | ||
| Otherwise... | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| I don't particularly love it. | ||
| So it was like for a show. | ||
| It was for a show. | ||
| But let's explain, you worked for Marineland, you got fired, you were taking care of this walrus, and it became like a big cause because a lot of people were concerned about the animal safety there, and since then they've been sighted. | ||
| Like, what has happened with Marineland? | ||
| Okay, so I'll give you a quick rundown. | ||
| I worked at Marineland. | ||
| I was a killer whale trainer. | ||
| I was the guy jumping off the killer whales, doing the flips off dolphins, everything else. | ||
| I wasn't fired. | ||
| I quit amidst some duress, a difficult period where, and I'll elaborate, basically a water disinfection unit broke down and the resolve wasn't so much to fix it, it was to pump it with more and more chlorine. | ||
| Basically, the way water is disinfected at Marineland, they use an ozone generator, so they use ozone in conjunction with the chlorine, sort of mitigate the chlorine use. | ||
| They elected instead, or rather the sole controlling mind elected to put off actually fixing it, and let's just, at night, they're pumping it with chlorine. | ||
| Well, you can just imagine the effects. | ||
| And I'm not talking about a little bit of chlorine. | ||
| So this was a tough time. | ||
| So I actually quit. | ||
| I actually quit on this. | ||
| Wait a minute, imagine the effects. | ||
| So it hurt the animals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| We talked about this on the earlier shows, that people want to go back in time a few years to when you first appeared on the show. | ||
| There was like some serious issues, health issues with dolphins, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Their skin's peeling off. | ||
| They've got ulcers. | ||
| I mean, the sea lions are losing fur and patches, bleeding out. | ||
| I mean, in this case, at least one animal died, and things started getting real bad. | ||
| And, of course, my walrus in all of this is there. | ||
| And she's in the water as well, so this only compounds the issue. | ||
| And the thing about the walrus is it's, and I use the word a lot, it's anomalous, my relationship with it. | ||
| She thinks I'm her mom. | ||
| It was like a scientific thing that happened. | ||
| Her brain circuitry opens. | ||
| I imprint on her, so my smell, everything I look like. | ||
| Because you were dancing when she was a baby. | ||
| Well, she was actually two years old when it happened. | ||
| That's what makes it kind of... | ||
| That's not a baby? | ||
| That's not a baby, no. | ||
| How old is that in the walrus world? | ||
| Like, is it dog years? | ||
| No, she's still young. | ||
| Do you know how to have dog years? | ||
| She's babyish, yeah. | ||
| Two years is not... | ||
| But she's fairly young, and you were her caretaker, so she imprinted that you were her parent. | ||
| Well, it was sort of a traumatic thing that happened. | ||
| We were drawing blood from them because back then, you know, they're not trained to accept the pain of drawing blood. | ||
| And so she wasn't conditioned for this. | ||
| They were young. | ||
| We had to get blood. | ||
| So we were actually doing a job on another walrus and she was sort of loose running out. | ||
| And we were wrestling her down. | ||
| And Smushy come over and she's climbing, hectic and crazy. | ||
| And, you know, she's still... | ||
| Almost 300 pounds at that point. | ||
| You gotta move her. | ||
| If she's climbing all over you, it's a big obstruction. | ||
| So I sort of put my hands in front of her face, and that's when it happened. | ||
| I'm telling you, it was like a magical moment. | ||
| All of a sudden, something happened. | ||
| And she just looked at me. | ||
| Her eyes changed. | ||
| I changed. | ||
| I was now a different person. | ||
| I'm now her mom. | ||
| She was following me. | ||
| So I walked down away from the scene. | ||
| She was following me. | ||
| And from that moment on, she never stopped. | ||
| And that just sort of became the basis of our relationship, is that I sort of raised her. | ||
| So dude, you put the touch on her. | ||
| They put the touch on her, yeah, with these two hands right here, right in front of her face. | ||
| And is that a normal thing with animals? | ||
| Like I said, it almost never happens. | ||
| You hear of animals imprinting on humans a lot of times. | ||
| Not usually at her age. | ||
| That was a bit advanced for that to happen. | ||
| Usually it happens when they're very young, right? | ||
| If it's going to happen, yeah. | ||
| But it does happen when people raise bears and a lot of weird animals that you wouldn't ordinarily think is pets. | ||
| But I don't know if it would be an actual imprint. | ||
| Like, the imprint is different. | ||
| There's one thing of familiarizing an animal with someone. | ||
| How do you differentiate? | ||
| Well, it's just, it's natural. | ||
| Oh, she's protective of me. | ||
| She will not leave my side. | ||
| I mean, I could walk to the edge of the earth with her and she'll be beside me. | ||
| You can't do that with her. | ||
| And is she still in Marineland right now? | ||
| Yes, I haven't seen any updated photos in some time, so I can't be absolutely sure, but yeah, I'm fairly sure. | ||
| But she's hidden. | ||
| They do not bring her on display. | ||
| She's not on display. | ||
| You're not going to find her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| They hide the pinnipeds, basically, seals, sea lions, and walruses. | ||
| In her case, she doesn't perform anymore. | ||
| When she comes out, she's not reliable. | ||
| You can't get her to do anything. | ||
| All she does is goes out on stage and she looks for me, frantically. | ||
| So she's not reliable. | ||
| So they bring her out between shows occasionally so she can see the sun, and that's it. | ||
| And so, you know, I've got to have people in there with video cameras ready. | ||
| I mean, it's tough, but we get the videos. | ||
| I get the information I need. | ||
| So, what's going on with you and them now? | ||
| Because there's been a series of lawsuits, and this is one of the reasons why you wanted to come in here and talk, right? | ||
| So they sued me, of course, frivolously. | ||
| They sued me with plotting to steal a walrus is their allegation. | ||
| This was in 2000. This is actually five-year anniversary comes up on Valentine's Day. | ||
| Plotting to steal a walrus. | ||
| Did you try to get her out of there? | ||
| No. | ||
| If I tried to get her out of there, I'd have her today. | ||
| No, I wouldn't. | ||
| I have nowhere to put a walrus. | ||
| Well, that's not true. | ||
| I do have a river in the front yard. | ||
| But I have no interest in releasing her into the Niagara River and then watch her go over the falls. | ||
| I have no interest in that. | ||
| So no, nothing like that. | ||
| I don't have a beachfront Arctic home to carry her to. | ||
| But yeah, so they started suing the shit out of anyone who spoke. | ||
| Anyone who spoke on the record was getting sued. | ||
| So it wasn't just me. | ||
| It was a number of people. | ||
| And, yeah, so we just elected to try to fight as long as we could, try to sustain this legal battle because, you know, in lawsuits, you've got to reveal a lot of information in a lawsuit. | ||
| It's not fun. | ||
| Like this, I mean, Relance had everything from my phone to like, I mean, not physically, but I've given them everything. | ||
| What do you mean by everything like your phone? | ||
| You mean phone records? | ||
| All communications, I have everything, yeah. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| So if they sue you for trying to take a walrus that you didn't actually try to take, they can get access to your phone records? | ||
| They can ruin your life. | ||
| Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. | ||
| They can get access to your phone. | ||
| Why would they have access to your phone records? | ||
| I have a legal obligation of giving them anything that is relevant to their claim. | ||
| So be it communications, be it photographs. | ||
| Yeah, but what does that mean? | ||
| Does that mean they can read all your text messages, read all your emails, read all... | ||
| They got it all, yeah. | ||
| They know who you've called. | ||
| To try to build their case. | ||
| Everything, yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And I have zero from them after five years. | ||
| Because they're using the system as a means to simply abuse me, and acting the fool, as Marineland's legal team does exceptionally well, proves very effective in abusing a guy like me, whereas a corporation with endless amounts of money just sue the shit out of me. | ||
| So they're basically just suing you to punish you and to try to keep other people from doing the same thing and talking out about them. | ||
| They've sued media. | ||
| They've sued an 18-year-old kid from California who didn't... | ||
| It was a yet-to-be-released project movie he made, almost like a cartoon. | ||
| It was in the key of Marineland's... | ||
| Canada's last remaining orca, Kiska. | ||
| And... | ||
| Marineland caught wind of that and they sued him for a million bucks. | ||
| Of course, I assume that's settled now. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's no way of knowing because I haven't heard anything of it. | ||
| And what was their lawsuit based on? | ||
| They, at least in what I, I think I just scanned the documents, but they alleged that, I can't remember. | ||
| How does that work when they sue someone from California? | ||
| Does he have to go to Canada? | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I don't know, actually. | ||
| And that's what was so confusing about it. | ||
| I was like, now you're suing Americans and stuff? | ||
| Like, I don't know if that works. | ||
| They sued another writer, in fact, as well, an American writer. | ||
| They don't give a shit. | ||
| They'll just sue you. | ||
| Didn't they get fined recently? | ||
| Didn't something happen along those lines? | ||
| Yeah, they got charged with 11 counts of animal cruelty a little over a year ago. | ||
| I was in court, of course. | ||
| Marineland sues OSPCA for $21 million, alleges agency wanted to destroy the theme park. | ||
| So that's where we're going. | ||
| So basically, down the road, over the course of... | ||
| Okay, I gotta get into this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So the charges, they have 11 charges of animal cruelty. | ||
| First, they were five or six, and then an additional five or six. | ||
| Now there's a total of 11 charges for animal cruelty that Marineland has to go to the criminal court to defend against. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They drag it on, as always. | ||
| I'm in court every freaking day, you can bet your ass. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Even one time, it was a confidential meeting. | ||
| In fact, it was not for public. | ||
| Me and a local writer knock on the door, sort of walk in, and the lawyers are looking at us like, the fuck are you doing here, bro? | ||
| We're like, hey, can we sit in on this? | ||
| But anyways... | ||
| Hold on, I don't know what you just said. | ||
| During the negotiations between the crown and the OSPCA for the crown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The crown? | |
| Yeah, the crown. | ||
| That's the one who would be laying the charges. | ||
| The animal cruelty charges. | ||
| So you get charged. | ||
| What is the crown? | ||
| The crown is the justice. | ||
| He's essentially the judge. | ||
| So you're before the judge. | ||
| It's Canadian talk. | ||
| We don't know what the fuck that means. | ||
| The crown. | ||
| He doesn't wear one. | ||
| So it's like crown land. | ||
| I know crown land is public land. | ||
| Yeah, so I imagine that's probably in some capacity why it's called Crown. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not a legal expert. | ||
| But nonetheless, so they're in there negotiating. | ||
| And basically, the way animal cruelty charges are pursued is they have to meet two thresholds. | ||
| Number one, you have to have a reasonable chance of conviction. | ||
| Number two, it has to be in the public's interest to pursue. | ||
| A series of the first charges were immediately dropped because, and this is just driving me crazy for years that this has been going on and it continues. | ||
| But if I, for instance, if I make a complaint to the OSPC and I provide a photo of an animal, which of course I did, that is clearly damaged and fucked up. | ||
| If they don't physically have evidence of who it is that's actually harming the animal, there's no cruelty. | ||
| They can't do anything. | ||
| So in that case, they dropped a lot of the charges against Marine Land because the evidence didn't actually point to anyone specifically. | ||
| It was just evidence of damaged animals. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So they threw a bunch out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But then there was a bunch that they did have a good chance at a conviction. | ||
| And this is where Marineland promised the Crown that this was going to be a very expensive process, a long and drawn-out process, and the Crown agreed that it didn't exceed the threshold of being in the public's interest in spending a lot of public dollars pursuing these charges, and so they dropped the rest of them. | ||
| Marineland turns around and sues the OSPCA for $21 million, claiming that It was malicious prosecution. | ||
| Of course, they didn't name me specifically, but I'm always the unnamed Marineland employee in that. | ||
| And they allege that I threatened to defund them. | ||
| They think I'm this Kaiser Soze-like character, which I don't mind playing up a little bit. | ||
| But they think I'm pulling strings all over the place and that I half exist, half don't. | ||
| I think there's employees there that think that I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| So they get brought up on 11 charges of animal cruelty. | ||
| The charges get dropped and they turn around and sue the government. | ||
| 21 million dollars. | ||
| The same government that let them off for years. | ||
| The OSPCA has been complicit in allowing marine land to operate as they have unimpeded for 50 years. | ||
| They've had a good relationship. | ||
| Marine land in fact donated the land of which the Niagara Falls Humane Society is built on, which is where the OSPCA operates on it. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| There was a plaque on the wall until, you know, after 2012 when we sort of spoke out that honored Marineland's owner John Holer for his generosity. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, you sort of get red-pilled. | ||
| Is that red pill? | ||
| Is that the right pill? | ||
| Pretty quickly when you... | ||
| Yes, that's the wake-up pill. | ||
| So that was my wait-what moment? | ||
| Holy fuck. | ||
| Things started to change pretty fast for me once I'd realized the depth of which Marineland was sort of in with all levels of government, really. | ||
| All levels of government. | ||
| And so they continued to sort of allow for them to do these things. | ||
| But they're suing the government. | ||
| Yeah, interestingly. | ||
| So they can't possibly be in bed with the government and suing them. | ||
| Or the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquarium, which used to accredit all the zoos in Canada, or still does, they accredit them, so they try to say, oh, this is a good zoo, it's accredited. | ||
| Marineland, I believe, also threatened them, because they were not going to renew their agreement this year. | ||
| And so Marineland claimed to have... | ||
| Left them, and they said, you know, we're in a phase of development right now. | ||
| We're going to just leave this Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquarium. | ||
| It's absolute bullshit. | ||
| They were not... | ||
| So, yeah, Marine Lines basically has... | ||
| They're out of friends. | ||
| That's for sure, finally. | ||
| But it took a lot of eating shit to finally get to that point. | ||
| But the real issue, in your mind, is the way they treat the animals, the way they run their business. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Is that accurate? | ||
| I would say that I've expanded now into just arguing that those animals should not be, A, in marine land's possession, B, altogether. | ||
| The whales in pools is done. | ||
| It should be done. | ||
| It's done. | ||
| It should be done. | ||
| And I think after Blackfish, I mean, before you came on, or when you came on, it was before Blackfish had been released, and then once people saw what actually happens to these super intelligent animals when you lock them up in swimming pools, They're starting to realize it and see world's attendance is down and people are down on the whole idea, especially killer whales. | ||
| I mean, God, they're just these giant majestic animals. | ||
| It seems so fucked up to put them in these tanks. | ||
| And to separate them from families. | ||
| I mean, the emotional distress they go through. | ||
| I'm a firm believer that emotionally we don't even have the slightest sense of how complex they can be. | ||
| Right, because they don't have an ability to express themselves to us, other than eating us occasionally, which killer whales only do in captivity. | ||
| Yeah, there's no records of killer whale attacks in the wild on humans. | ||
| Yeah, they fuck people up in captivity, though. | ||
| They're like, enough! | ||
| Oh, I've been in the pool with a pissed-off killer whale. | ||
| Have you? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I jumped in one time. | ||
| I mean, I was a stubborn dude. | ||
| I was a bit of a cowboy as a young guy, too, like an adrenaline junkie. | ||
| I like to have fun. | ||
| I like to jump off the killer whale. | ||
| I like to throw me up high. | ||
| I was having a show with her. | ||
| Does she throw you with her tail? | ||
| No, on the end of her rostrum, right on the end of her nose. | ||
| It's called a rocket ride. | ||
| You get on the front of the whale... | ||
| As such at the top of the water and then she starts to pump her tail and then you dive down with her. | ||
| She'll follow you everywhere you go. | ||
| And then it's like flying a plane, man. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| And then you just arc up and then she just takes it to the moon and she's screaming underwater when she's having a good time or rather when she's expressing herself that she's going to toss you. | ||
| This particular time when I probably shouldn't have gone in the water. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Well, she was pissed. | ||
| I could see it in her eyes. | ||
| How could you tell that she's pissed? | ||
| You know the animals lick it. | ||
| I mean, that's the whole basis of being a trainer is to get to know the animals, know their behavior, know everything about them. | ||
| You spend a lot of time with them. | ||
| What are the indications? | ||
| So in this case, I was... | ||
| So the way the shows work, I mean, they don't exist anymore, but back in the day was you worked the animal initially to get a sense of their demeanor. | ||
| So you got them jump in, you got them run around, you get engaged, you know, you get a good sense of how they are. | ||
| On that particular day... | ||
| She just wasn't responding real quick. | ||
| Her eyes were a little big. | ||
| She wasn't focused on me. | ||
| She's looking elsewhere. | ||
| She's sort of drifting off a bit. | ||
| I just didn't really have her attention, but I think, I don't know what, maybe I had my dad in the crowd or something. | ||
| I wanted to jump off her. | ||
| So I look at the senior trainer at the time. | ||
| She's like, I don't know, dude, like you're going to jump in. | ||
| I'm like, fuck it. | ||
| I'm jumping in. | ||
| I go to jump in. | ||
| I get to the edge of the pool. | ||
| She's standing directly below me. | ||
| I dive over her. | ||
| She lunges at me and she snaps. | ||
| And I see it from below me. | ||
| Like I see under her. | ||
| She's jumped up and snapped at me. | ||
| So now I've... | ||
| Snapped at you like tried to bite you? | ||
| Yeah, she tried to grab me. | ||
| But I feel like if she really wanted to bite you, she would just bite you. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| So was it a warning bite or was it a bite-bite? | ||
| Definitely a warning bite, otherwise I wouldn't be here today. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| It's not like she would miss. | ||
| No, she's not going to miss. | ||
| And so what happens? | ||
| It gets further. | ||
| So now I'm in the water, and I'm now at the top of the water and staring down at her. | ||
| She's now inverted upside down, and she's swimming. | ||
| And she's circling the pool. | ||
| Upside down? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| When she gets frustrated, they start doing these things. | ||
| She's upside down, and she's swimming in circles. | ||
| And I'm looking at her going, holy shit. | ||
| If I take off out of the pool, that's going to trigger some response out of her that I don't necessarily want to know. | ||
| So I'm saying... | ||
| Why would that happen? | ||
| I think that if she doesn't want you out of the pool, you're not getting out. | ||
| If you're getting out of the pool, it's going to be her decision. | ||
| If I start trying to race out, she knows I'm trying to get out. | ||
| If she doesn't want me out, she's keeping me in it. | ||
| I don't want to know where that's going. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So you knew that you had to stay in there then? | ||
| I'm without choice. | ||
| That's the best course of action at this point, because I'm not going to win a race out of that pool. | ||
| And so now I'm upright. | ||
| She comes to the surface, and I see her dorsal fin, and she's coming pretty quickly at me. | ||
| And I put my hands up like this. | ||
| I'll never forget it. | ||
| She arcs her tail down, arcs her back up, like stops dead at me. | ||
| I remember this big wake happened. | ||
| I put my hands on her rostrum, and I just sort of tap her, try to calm her. | ||
| And then I put my feet on her pecs. | ||
| She takes me to the stage. | ||
| She dunks down. | ||
| And then she picks me up, puts me on the stage. | ||
| I sort of back away like, wow, thank you. | ||
| Thank you for like... | ||
| Being nice to me. | ||
| I had a friend's dad one time there, and he's one of these guys. | ||
| I took him on a tour, and I'm like, okay, just don't touch the big male sea lions. | ||
| I mean, they got big teeth. | ||
| They want to rip your arm off. | ||
| They can't. | ||
| They're not... | ||
| Typically aggressive, but just don't touch him. | ||
| And he's in there like this. | ||
| I'm like, oh, dude. | ||
| I take him out to show the killer whale. | ||
| I could see that, and this is another time, of course, but I could see that she's losing patience, and she did the same thing. | ||
| As soon as we turned our backs, I said to him, I go, you know what? | ||
| Maybe we should just step away. | ||
| As soon as he turned his back to go, she lunged, same thing, and tried to grab. | ||
| It's crazy, man. | ||
| And I was just like, holy shit, man. | ||
| So they don't have killer whale shows there anymore? | ||
| Well, that particular killer whale, Kiska, she's the only one left in Canada. | ||
| There's no more in Canada. | ||
| There's not ever going to be. | ||
| Marieland's never going to get another one. | ||
| She's been sort of unresponsive for a long time. | ||
| She's on a lot of medication. | ||
| Medication? | ||
| Tons of medication. | ||
| Like what kind of medication do you put a killer whale on? | ||
| Well, she's got different... | ||
| I mean, you gauge the blood and you start putting them on antibiotics. | ||
| You get them on... | ||
| How do you take blood from a killer whale? | ||
| You flip them over and they've got a... | ||
| In their tail, there's a series of large veins. | ||
| You just roll them over. | ||
| And they let you? | ||
| Yeah, everything is trained in that they're going to provide it voluntarily. | ||
| And it takes a long time to train these things, but you train them to... | ||
| And you just prick it. | ||
| You just literally grab this little needle, you put it in the vein. | ||
| They don't get pissed at you? | ||
| They get pissed if you miss and you keep trying. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Fuck. | |
| Yeah, I've seen... | ||
| It happens. | ||
| But they let you take their blood. | ||
| If they're healthy and responsive, yeah, of course. | ||
| If they're not, there's nothing that's going to get them to the edge of the pool. | ||
| So you take their blood, and then what do they find? | ||
| They send it to the lab. | ||
| You want to look at cortisol levels, how the stress is. | ||
| You want to look at white blood count, see if they're fighting any infections. | ||
| You know, there's always... | ||
| You know, in her case, there's always something. | ||
| A lot of the animals are, in fact, on Valium. | ||
| A lot of different psychotic... | ||
|
unidentified
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What? | |
| Yeah, tons. | ||
| What? | ||
| That is like rampant use in the aquariums. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Valium? | ||
| Yeah, Marienland accused me of stealing Valium, in fact, in the lawsuit as well, which is absolutely not true. | ||
| Is this used everywhere? | ||
| Or is it just Marienland? | ||
| No, not just Marienland. | ||
| SeaWorld's everywhere. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| They put, like, dolphins? | ||
| Dolphins are on Valium all the time, sure. | ||
| When I left Marineland, I had the agreement. | ||
| Again, I left fairly amicably, considering the situation, but I wanted to play my cards, right? | ||
| And Marineland's owner called me back in specifically to help a dolphin, and it was to feed her, of course. | ||
| I wish that wasn't the Daily Mail. | ||
| What's the other one? | ||
| The dodo? | ||
| Is the dodo a good one? | ||
| Buzzfeed. | ||
| Let's go with Buzzfeed. | ||
| SeaWorld puts its whales on Valium-like drug, documents say. | ||
| Jesus fucking Christ. | ||
| Those documents are from a lawsuit between Marineland and SeaWorld, where SeaWorld sued Marineland. | ||
| SeaWorld sued Marineland. | ||
| Yeah, all the benzodiazepines. | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Trainers give their orcas, also known as killer whales, a psychoactive drug, benzodiazepine... | ||
| According to the sworn affidavit filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice in dispute between the Park Company and the rival company, Marineland, over the transport of a prize killer whale. | ||
| Icaica. | ||
| Icaica. | ||
| Icaica is, if you watch Blackfish, you've got Tilikum. | ||
| That's the one that killed people. | ||
| That's Tilikum's son. | ||
| We had his son. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| We had him, he was... | ||
| In captivity, right? | ||
| In captivity, in a pool, by himself, for the most part. | ||
| But I mean, he was raised in captivity. | ||
| Born in captivity, yep. | ||
| Yeah, which is even more fucked up. | ||
| And he was turning aggressive. | ||
| And... | ||
| SeaWorld was like, they were having none of it. | ||
| They wanted that killer whale back and I don't blame them. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I'm sued for millions because I'm alleging that Marineland is mistreating their animals. | ||
| SeaWorld sues Marineland because they're mistreating, they're not taking appropriate care of the killer whale and actually win the lawsuit. | ||
| They would not put any barriers around the pool. | ||
| Marineland had a large pool. | ||
| Imagine this. | ||
| Unimpeded ability to touch a killer whale if you wanted to reach. | ||
| It's not a safe idea. | ||
| This is absurd, in fact, especially when you're dealing with a large, boisterous male orca. | ||
| So SeaWorld wanted barriers around it so that people can't get close. | ||
| Well, the owner of Marineland, you can't tell him what to do. | ||
| He's not going to do nothing. | ||
| Anyone tells him what to do. | ||
| So suddenly we're dealing with the fact that this animal started to lunge at the public. | ||
| Now, this is an animal that if it gets a hold of someone, It's over. | ||
| They're just going to toy with them for a bit. | ||
| We're going to hear a lot of screaming, but the screaming will end. | ||
| You're not getting anyone out of that killer whale's mouth. | ||
| Forget it. | ||
| And this is what SeaWorld was dealing with. | ||
| They're just like, shit. | ||
| They had enough bad press, even back then. | ||
| If ICA could kill someone or hurt someone or anything, or dies in Marine Land's character, it's going to look bad on SeaWorld. | ||
| So SeaWorld's like, get them the fuck out. | ||
| Now, when Tilikum killed people, he killed how many people? | ||
| One person in Canada? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Three. | |
| Three or four, actually. | ||
| In Victoria, Canada, the first one, Then he went to... | ||
| I think it's absolutely hilarious that they kept training him and kept doing things with him. | ||
| Like, eh, no big deal. | ||
| If that was a pit bull, forget about it, it'd be done. | ||
| But it's a killer whale. | ||
| Or almost any animal. | ||
| Imagine if they had a lion. | ||
| They were training lions and the lion killed someone. | ||
| They'd be like, that's a wrap. | ||
| Well, actually that's not true. | ||
| There was that one grizzly bear that was a trained grizzly bear for films. | ||
| It was in, what's that movie? | ||
| Something 40? | ||
| Some football movie with a big bear? | ||
| Anyway, the bear killed a guy's brother or cousin. | ||
| The guy was just standing there. | ||
| It's a horrible video. | ||
| You can watch the video. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| The guy just standing there and the bear just decides to tear the guy's throat apart. | ||
| Just reaches up, bites him, rips his throat open. | ||
| The guy runs off grabbing his neck. | ||
| He's dead within minutes. | ||
| The joys of working with animals, man. | ||
| Well, that bear they kept alive and they started training him again. | ||
| And there's some really weird footage of the guy training the bear again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was the one from the Will Ferrell movie. | |
| The semi-pro? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Semi-pro. | ||
| That's the dog. | ||
| Or the... | ||
| The dog. | ||
| That's the bear. | ||
| That bear fucking killed somebody. | ||
| Look, this guy's smacking this bear around. | ||
| Look at Will. | ||
| That bear eventually killed somebody. | ||
| Just got tired of people. | ||
| It takes nothing for him. | ||
| Oh, so easy for him. | ||
| Yeah, just decided to fuck him up. | ||
| But now, when Tillicum was doing all this, he was on Valium? | ||
| Oh, I can't say for sure that that was the case. | ||
| I don't want to be sued anymore. | ||
| When did they start putting killer whales on Valium? | ||
| So in oceanariums or aquariums and shit, Valium is often used as an appetite stimulant. | ||
| So when your animal is off, they don't eat. | ||
| If they're not responding to buckets of food, you're fucked. | ||
| You're having to drop the water to get access to them because they're not interested no more. | ||
| They're not your friends anymore. | ||
| If you don't have a bucket of food, forget about it. | ||
| And so, to sort of, often enough to sort of trigger that appetite, you'll pump them with the Valium. | ||
| How do they give them Valium if they don't want to eat? | ||
| Stuff it right in the floor. | ||
| Well, you get liquid Valium, you can inject as well. | ||
| Oh, the injections. | ||
| I mean, that's a process. | ||
| The things that I've seen and done that were normal to me, and normal to anyone who's working there, is insane. | ||
| Like what? | ||
| We used to drop, we used to call this Beluga Rodeo. | ||
| And at Marineland, Marineland is notorious for having, like, we have, I say we, over 50, I put their push in 60 belugas at this point. | ||
| And this is why it's so important to start changing these fucking laws, because this is absurd. | ||
| And it creates a whole world of problems, of course, socially for these animals. | ||
| Babies get killed by males. | ||
| It's, it's, yeah, it's gross. | ||
| It's bad. | ||
| It's not manageable. | ||
| Nonetheless, what we would do is... | ||
| We would drop the water in one of the pools so you'd have, I mean, anywhere between 10 and 15 belugas flat on their stomach. | ||
| There's a grate at the bottom of the pool. | ||
| They can't move. | ||
| They can't move. | ||
| If they want to move, they can. | ||
| But they're flopping around. | ||
| But it means they're going to get fucked up bad. | ||
| Like scratched up by the ground? | ||
| So if you've got maybe a little bit of water... | ||
| We've tried different things to try to mitigate how damaged up they got. | ||
| There was one time... | ||
| I mean, they get carved up. | ||
| We used to call it... | ||
| I mean, it's morbid, but we used to joke around. | ||
| We used to call it the Caesar water because it was blood red by the time we were done with these procedures. | ||
| I'm telling you, Joe, it would make you sick. | ||
| The water was thick of blood. | ||
| And so, one time, there was a beluga named Peanut, and she started to panic. | ||
| And what she did was she repeatedly slammed her tail in a panic. | ||
| She started to bounce around like a fucking basketball. | ||
| She was getting air three feet in the air. | ||
| She's probably a 3,000-pound whale, 2,000-pound whale or something, so you're not going to stop that. | ||
| But we tried, of course, we'd jump on her. | ||
| Chunks of her tail, I'm not joking, chunks of her tail flying off, flying off. | ||
| If anyone goes to Marineland, go ask about Peanut and go take a look at her tail. | ||
| There's nothing left of it. | ||
| She's got like a nub that's sort of like jagged on the bottom. | ||
| She was fucked up after that. | ||
| Again, lots of meds, lots of recovery, but it was foul, man. | ||
| So is this benzodiazepine, is this a... | ||
| A recent thing that they started doing? | ||
| No, I wouldn't say so. | ||
| I can't vouch for any time before 2000 when I started, but for sure once we were there. | ||
| So when you go to SeaWorld and you see those killer whales and dolphins doing shows, they're just pilled up out of their fucking minds. | ||
| It's merely a semblance of their wild counterparts. | ||
| You're not going there and seeing a dynamic animal no more. | ||
| You're seeing a depressed, drugged, confused, probably frustrated animal. | ||
| And again, what those animals go through, It's difficult for people to give a shit about anything if it doesn't affect them personally. | ||
| If you see an animal going through this, you feel it. | ||
| You start to appreciate how fucked up that is. | ||
| I feel weird even calling them animals. | ||
| I feel like killer whales and dolphins in particular are so fucking intelligent. | ||
| It's hard to call them animals. | ||
| I mean, obviously humans are animals as well, but... | ||
| They are their own thing. | ||
| I mean, those marine mammals are their own thing. | ||
| They have their own world, and they dominate in it. | ||
| Yeah, and in their world, man, it's a fucking amazing world. | ||
| They're one of the only animals that we know of that has a really complex language, and we can't even decipher it. | ||
| And then just last week, Marineland in France is talking about Wiki. | ||
| It's a killer whale that just picked up... | ||
| She mimics human voice, so they've got her saying like, hello, hi, and these different things. | ||
| It sort of sounds like she's mimicking. | ||
| What if she started saying a bunch of racial shit? | ||
| Racial slurs? | ||
| Well then, let's get her! | ||
| Canada banned capture of dolphins and whales. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yesterday, yeah. | |
| Yeah, but the capture is already illegal in the United States, right? | ||
| Well, you have to go through the... | ||
| But you can get them from Canada, and Canada gets them from being captured. | ||
| Canada can get them from anywhere. | ||
| So basically, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans... | ||
| Very strategically talked about this sweeping overhaul of their thing, whatever it is. | ||
| The word's eluding me. | ||
| They did this, I believe, to mitigate. | ||
| Justin Trudeau went off about the Kinder Morgan pipeline. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| It's a big pipeline that they're going to You know, run this oil in BC and there's a lot of protests. | ||
| He ran on the campaign that he wouldn't do this. | ||
| Justin Trudeau talks about saving the world all the time and cleaning up the environment. | ||
| So they've made this announcement. | ||
| Now that's a good piece of legislation. | ||
| It doesn't ban the breeding. | ||
| It doesn't address a lot of the things that we're actually addressing with Bill S203, which is the one that I spoke to two years ago, that Marineland has managed to get this guy. | ||
| This senator to keep playing, again, acting the fool, doing all these creative ways to kill this bill. | ||
| And that's where we're at now. | ||
| I mean, I expect sometime next week to get an announcement. | ||
| This bill should have been passed and brought into the House a long time ago. | ||
| And, you know, not the case. | ||
| Still stalled and everything. | ||
| And again, it's all lobbying. | ||
| Illegal lobbying, which may or may not Turned into some problems for Senator Don Platt. | ||
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but for a while, some of the parks in the United States would get them from some of the parks in Canada, which would get them from Russians and Chinese who would capture them in the wild. | ||
| So the parks in the United States would say that they don't capture whales. | ||
| So what they would do is Marineland would capture a boatload of wild ones, and then once... | ||
| They would do it personally? | ||
| Well, they would pay some Russians to capture the whales. | ||
| Is it Russians that they always use? | ||
| Goddamn Russians. | ||
| They're cheating at the Olympics. | ||
| They're stealing whales. | ||
| So they bring the whales in wild. | ||
| Those whales have, for instance, they sire a calf. | ||
| That calf is now deemed captive-born, and now it can be shipped to the States. | ||
| And so what Marineland was doing was just breeding like crazy and then sending them to SeaWorld. | ||
| I mean, that's how we got the killer whale to begin with, how we got Ikaika. | ||
| It was a big trade with belugas. | ||
| And so that's what we're trying to put an end to because all these loopholes, you know, Marine Land really capitalized on this, but they went a long time lobbying the government for years. | ||
| I mean, they've been around for 50 plus years. | ||
| They've done all the right moves a businessman would do if he wants to keep a thriving business without too many hands sort of keeping him from doing anything. | ||
| It's just so disturbing that we're willing to just accept this because we don't know what they're saying. | ||
| You know, we know that they have a really complex language. | ||
| We can't decipher it, though, because it's so alien in terms of, like, the sounds that they make. | ||
| It's not something you put into a box, but it's not like any other animal. | ||
| Between dolphins and killer whales, and whales. | ||
| In general. | ||
| They make sounds with a range of complexity that's just unrivaled in nature outside of humans. | ||
| And their auditory system is so complex. | ||
| When you put them in a concrete pool, just imagine what... | ||
| I mean, I put my ears under the water and it's loud. | ||
| The filters are going. | ||
| You've got different sounds. | ||
| Water being pushed in from this pipe and that pipe. | ||
| People screaming. | ||
| People screaming. | ||
| Music. | ||
| Louder, louder, louder. | ||
| Shooting popcorn in the audience. | ||
| Yeah, burgers. | ||
| Bad fucking... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Goddamn. | ||
| I mean, I look at them almost like they're kind of... | ||
| I mean, they're definitely not human, but they're kind of people. | ||
| They're like a water people. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| If you put yourself in the mindset of looking at an animal and try to change your perception of them a little bit rather than sort of disassociating, and you look at them, you can actually see that they're like, oh, it's like they're people, man. | ||
| That's just a different meat suit. | ||
| And when you deal with killer whales and stuff, Well, they evolved in a different environment, but they evolved to be incredibly social, highly dynamic populations. | ||
| They live in these very intimate groups. | ||
| They stay together for life. | ||
| A male killer whale will never leave its mother's side over its lifetime. | ||
| It'll stay within about a body's length, its entire life. | ||
| Unless the pod starts beating on it, then it'll just stay on the outside of the pod for a while. | ||
| At least they have that luxury of escape, whereas in captivity, males get the shit kicked out of them. | ||
| They're big puppy dogs. | ||
| Big male orcas. | ||
| I mean, yeah, okay, they're murderous and they're killing people, but they're actually big puppy dogs. | ||
| I've always felt so bad for Candy. | ||
| We had this big male, beautiful big bull male. | ||
| He was just, he was rocked. | ||
| His existence having been pulled from his mother, and this really largely explains why Tilikum went off. | ||
| You ruin their lives. | ||
| That's over. | ||
| I mean, their whole... | ||
| The reason they live... | ||
| And they remember, too. | ||
| They remember their mother. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| It's just, why do we allow this? | ||
| It seems to me like... | ||
| Like, almost a form of slavery. | ||
| I mean, I don't want to diminish the horrors of human slavery, because in human slavery, at least there's no question whatsoever that that's a human. | ||
| And there's communication. | ||
| Yeah, so it's as awful as it gets. | ||
| But goddamn, put the ignorance aside, the slavery of killer whales is like really close. | ||
| It's really close. | ||
| The only way to get them to work... | ||
| Effectively and efficiently is to keep them hungry. | ||
| Drug them and keep them hungry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| Yeah, it's brutal, man. | ||
| How is it still legal? | ||
| I mean, isn't SeaWorld... | ||
| Aren't they expanding? | ||
| Didn't they just make a bigger pool for the killer whales? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, well, we're so nice to our killer whales, we gave them a bigger cage. | |
| Yeah, so what they've done is they've tried to repackage the show as... | ||
| We're not doing the big dynamic show, but they really still are. | ||
| They're like, we're just showing natural behaviors, which is... | ||
| Bitch, we want natural behavior. | ||
| Let them go fuck up a whale. | ||
| Yeah, no shit. | ||
| They put a backdrop of a couple trees and some shit. | ||
| Like, all right, new show. | ||
| Hey, SeaWorld, there's a lot of crazy shit going on. | ||
| I mean, in California, SeaWorld promised to stop banning. | ||
| Rather, they promised to stop breeding the killer whales. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But these fucking promises, do not believe for a moment that they're like some type of responsible corporate citizens that's going to hold on to this thing. | ||
| It's bullshit. | ||
| They're an entity. | ||
| Entity, a business entity. | ||
| They're trying to make money. | ||
| And so what California did was they went out and banned it. | ||
| So in California, you can't breed orcas, import-export issues, all that. | ||
| But in Florida, so again, SeaWorld makes the promise, they had an Orca Protection Act that they were looking to do exactly like California. | ||
| They were going to make it concrete, pass the law, that way SeaWorld can't just backpedal on it down the road, which everyone suspects they will. | ||
| SeaWorld is lobbying like fucking crazy and just last week successfully defeated the bill again. | ||
| They're putting a lot of effort- SeaWorld is trying to defeat a bill that- No, they successfully defeated. | ||
| Multiple times, including just last week. | ||
| That allows them, or the bill would keep them from breeding these animals in captivity. | ||
| So they're fighting against that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Successfully fighting. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| They're doing it in Florida. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| While they're pretending in California they don't want to breed them. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| In California, they actually passed the law. | ||
| The state itself passed the law. | ||
| In Florida, it was defeated repeatedly, and now one last time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck, man. | |
| So they're trying. | ||
| They're trying to breed animals in captivity, and if they do breed them in Florida, they'll be able to ship them to California. | ||
| To China. | ||
| So that's where the demand is right now. | ||
| And in fact, SeaWorld was just bought by a large Chinese corporation. | ||
| They just named one of the guys to the SeaWorld board. | ||
| And so what people... | ||
| I mean, it's safe to assume that this is exactly what's happening, is SeaWorld is planning their exit strategy, and they're going to start sending their orcas to China. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Where that's a booming industry right now, in fact. | ||
| Killer Well Captivity is like... | ||
| And it's all coming out of Russia, right? | ||
| Still, but... | ||
| And so they're still capturing them in the wild. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| In China, it's a burgeoning, booming industry. | ||
| Man, 44 ocean theme parks in China right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| They're building up like crazy. | ||
| How many of them are in the United States? | ||
| How many aquariums? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I can't say for sure. | ||
| I was actually surprised to read there's like 300-something dolphins in captivity in the States. | ||
| I think that was the number I saw. | ||
| I didn't realize it was that big. | ||
| I had no idea that there was that many in captivity in the States. | ||
| It just seems to be such an archaic thing. | ||
| I can't imagine that the United States wants to keep doing that. | ||
| The fact that SeaWorld is trying to keep doing that in Florida and that they've successfully lobbied to allow them to keep breeding these animals in captivity. | ||
| But you can't... | ||
| Once you have them in captivity for a long time, say if SeaWorld wanted to release them, they can't really release them. | ||
| There's nowhere to release them, and that's what's being worked on now. | ||
| There's a project called the Whale Sanctuary Project, and I suspect there'll be a fairly large announcement soon. | ||
| I believe they'll be looking at a location in... | ||
| In Canada. | ||
| And they're going to build this thing. | ||
| There will be a place for them. | ||
| Which is a great place to do it because... | ||
| So how would they do that? | ||
| Well, you go coastal, of course. | ||
| I mean, you've got to be in the ocean. | ||
| You've got to pen off an area. | ||
| I mean, there's lots of things to consider. | ||
| You've got to make sure there's a lot of water changes. | ||
| A lot of different things because you can't keep the animal in something that's going to stagnate. | ||
| Keep them in it. | ||
| So it's going to be some sort of a cage? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Assume a fence of sorts around. | ||
| Maybe like a fjord. | ||
| It wouldn't be a fjord if it's in Canada. | ||
| But they can jump. | ||
| I imagine that they'll make certain that that's not going to be the case, but... | ||
| Well, they can. | ||
| I've seen dolphins jump out of the pool. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I got rushed in one morning to... | ||
| I called in because a dolphin jumped out of the pool. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| I mean, that's a wake-up call when you get there and you see this thing flopping around and you're like, Jesus Christ. | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| Well, you get the sling together. | ||
| First off, we have these different slings and things that move these dolphins. | ||
| So I was alone. | ||
| How much does a dolphin weigh? | ||
| Yeah, like 500 pounds, 600 pounds in this case. | ||
| She was a decent-sized female. | ||
| So I went and grabbed a kid out in a ticket booth or some shit because it was too early in the morning. | ||
| I had no staff there. | ||
| Rush him in. | ||
| I'm like, dude, I got two guys. | ||
| I'm like, we got to get this dolphin in. | ||
| These guys, I mean, if you've never done that before, your jaw's on the floor. | ||
| I fucking had these two steel poles on my shoulders, dolphin in the sling, lifting her up. | ||
| I swear to you, man, my back went backwards like this. | ||
| It was the heaviest thing I'd ever carried, but we got her back in. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| But yeah, jumped out of the pool. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| In fact, there was a time in the summer, I remember, where one of our dolphins was teetering on the edge. | ||
| What she would do is, you know, they're always spy hopping like this, looking over the edge at the crowd. | ||
| Explain that to people that are just listening. | ||
| So imagine there's like a short wall, something that, you know, they can look over. | ||
| So they're sort of spy hopping. | ||
| They're spying up to look. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| One of our dolphins learned that she can actually jump up on the ledge and balance. | ||
| Now, that's like an eight-foot drop to the concrete on the other side of this pool. | ||
| She's up there posing. | ||
| I'm hearing the crowd. | ||
| I'm backstage. | ||
| I hear the crowd going crazy. | ||
| I'm like, what is this? | ||
| I go out there. | ||
| She's having fun doing this. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| That's the dolphin that jumped out. | ||
| So what we did was I said, we got to take her out of this pool. | ||
| We took her out, put her in the back pool where no one would see her, of course. | ||
| And that's the next day she actually jumped. | ||
| So she'd be dead today if we hadn't moved her. | ||
| Then, of course, all Marieland did was put up more obstruction things to keep him in the pool. | ||
| Now, when you find her outside of the pool, how long had she been outside for? | ||
| She was still wet, so it wasn't so bad. | ||
| But one dolphin, we found her that she got stuck on the stage overnight. | ||
| And when we got there, her skin had become so dry that it was starting to crack. | ||
| It was kind of fucked up. | ||
| She actually has this permanent scar from... | ||
| Having dried up, yeah, and a chunk come out. | ||
| I don't know what, she was probably thrashing around. | ||
| Are you talking to her when you find her? | ||
| Do you try to comfort her? | ||
| I mean, yeah, sure. | ||
| Hugging her and everything else. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Does she calm down when she realizes people are trying to help her? | ||
| Like, are they aware of what's going on? | ||
| Or is she in a panic? | ||
| They always fight. | ||
| They always fight. | ||
| I mean, this particular dolphin was a fighter. | ||
| Every time we ever tried to put her in a sling and move her... | ||
| I mean, one time... | ||
| I can go back in memories and I can remember my thoughts during these times. | ||
| And we had her in a sling hovering over the pool. | ||
| And the way the sling is, is you've got two holes in the sling where the pecs go in, right? | ||
| The pectoral fins. | ||
| And then one where the genital slit is, so if they shit, it doesn't wind up stuck in the sling. | ||
| But... | ||
| And then you've got a crane atop. | ||
| So now you've got this thing lifted over the pool. | ||
| Well, she's fighting like crazy, and we can see that there's a tear in the sling. | ||
| As she's fighting, fighting, fighting, we get her, the crane just gets her over the pool, the sling rips, she's plunked into the pool. | ||
| Holy shit, man. | ||
| And we've slinged out like 15,000 pound or 10,000 pound killer whales over like 30, 40 feet in the air. | ||
| Imagine one of those fucking drops. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| So that was sort of a wake-up call. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Archaic procedures, man. | ||
| Moving these things, especially at a place like Marineland. | ||
| Marineland, when you step through the doors, and hopefully you don't, but if you do, it's like you've gone back to the 70s. | ||
| Has any of this hurt their business? | ||
| Attendance is abysmal over there. | ||
| They're crushed. | ||
| I watch the sun set over Marineland from my front yard. | ||
| It's a beautiful sight. | ||
| I drive by, of course, just about every day. | ||
| Their attendance is rocked. | ||
| And Niagara Falls, which is where Marineland is, is booming. | ||
| The tourism is through the roof. | ||
| It's shoulder to shoulder over there. | ||
| And Marineland is seeing none of it. | ||
| And you think it's because people know about the conditions there? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I've got a lot of support in the local community. | ||
| People know exactly what's going on. | ||
| Tourists, it's a little more difficult. | ||
| And Niagara Falls welcomes millions of them. | ||
| So you're going to get a fraction of that. | ||
| But it is a fraction. | ||
| Marineland is not benefiting from the booming tourism. | ||
| They're on their way out. | ||
| They're on a clock, for sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| I'd be shocked to hear them opening in 2019. I'm not going to make that prediction, but I would be shocked. | ||
| It's that bad. | ||
| But to be fair, there's no investors at Marine Land. | ||
| It's one sole controlling mine owner who started with nothing. | ||
| He started with $2,000, built this thing. | ||
| He is indebted to nobody. | ||
| He's cash rich, of course, and he's got a lot of fuck you money and not a lot of time, so he's out to fuck shit up. | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised to... | ||
| Not a lot of time in life, you mean. | ||
| He's like 84 years old now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so... | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised to think that he's rationalized in his mind to just fucking sewer this thing, like destroy all our lives for having spoken out, but just tank the park in the process. | ||
| Fuck it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He's very defiant. | ||
| He's a very paranoid and defiant man. | ||
| And so, you know, at 84 years old, what else does he have left to accomplish, I guess? | ||
| So you were saying they had 50 beluga whales? | ||
| 50 plus, maybe even 60 at this point. | ||
| Beluga whales are huge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What does a big one weigh? | ||
| I don't know if we've ever actually weighed our big males. | ||
| If you had a guess. | ||
| Like 4,000 pounds, maybe five. | ||
| You got 50 of those? | ||
| 50 of them, yeah. | ||
| That's insane! | ||
| Try catching one. | ||
| Oh, I don't want to try. | ||
| I used to get tasked with, here's your scuba gear, here's a net the size of a football field, go catch that beluga whale. | ||
| So me and my buddies would be like, okay, here we go. | ||
| It really would be amazing to be able to capture the things we've done on video. | ||
| Can you recognize the difference in intelligence between killer whales, dolphins, beluga whales? | ||
| Absolutely, yeah. | ||
| Dolphins and killer whales are remarkably similar. | ||
| Just cunning smart. | ||
| You turn your back and they're pickpocketing you. | ||
| And they're brats, and I love brats. | ||
| They just are bratty animals. | ||
| They're having fun. | ||
| Well, they're fucking with you. | ||
| They like to make things difficult. | ||
| If they know how to frustrate you, they're going to exercise that. | ||
| So it's always a mental game. | ||
| Especially when you're dealing with animals, training with animals. | ||
| Beluga whales are really timid. | ||
| They call them the canaries of the sea because they're kind of skittish. | ||
| So I don't know if that's a reflection of their intelligence necessarily. | ||
| But I would call them maybe a hint more dum-dum than the next one. | ||
| But they're more scared shitless of you than not. | ||
| You know, belugas. | ||
| They don't really want it. | ||
| But they're not as smart as dolphins. | ||
| I wouldn't say so. | ||
| But they're intelligent in some way. | ||
| In some way intelligent. | ||
| They're sort of sitting ducks out there, belugas. | ||
| I just mean like in the whale world. | ||
| Do whales respond to verbal commands? | ||
| Yeah, so in the case of pinnipeds, absolutely. | ||
| What's a pinniped? | ||
| Yeah, walruses, seals, sea lions. | ||
| They respond to verbal commands. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| Whales, we... | ||
| I couldn't say for sure in my experience that that was the case. | ||
| However, in the case of just that announcement last week of that animal mimicking the human sounds, it means she hears them. | ||
| So if the animal can hear you, you can definitely create a cue of sorts to trigger a behavior. | ||
| So it's possible that they could know some of our language. | ||
| I don't know that they could recognize some commands. | ||
| Yeah, I wonder. | ||
| We know that they have dialects, but we don't know anything that they're saying, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| And that's what's interesting. | ||
| I mean, I sort of beat myself up wondering if, in fact, they're using a language that is to be interpreted as words... | ||
| Sentences versus sounds that mean things. | ||
| I guess maybe that's the same thing. | ||
| But I know what you're saying. | ||
| It's not something that's necessarily decipherable. | ||
| You know when a dog's pissed because they growl. | ||
| A growl is different than a bark. | ||
| But barks aren't necessarily words. | ||
| And if they are, maybe they're fuck you. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I was listening to this thing about monkeys. | ||
| I think it was Steven Pinker's book. | ||
| Where they were talking about, it was an audiobook, they were talking about how monkeys have differentiated the sound that they make if there is a tiger versus the sound they make if there's an eagle. | ||
| Anytime I'm walking around and I hear a squirrel in a tree making a certain sound, I know there's a cat in the vicinity. | ||
| It's probably one of mine. | ||
| But they have a language, like a very crude language, but what they've done is taken the sound of an eagle, and they play it near monkeys, and the monkeys look up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course, yeah. | |
| And they play the sound of a monkey trying to alert the fact that there's a tiger in the area, and the monkeys run up trees. | ||
| Yeah, and start looking down. | ||
| Yeah, it's really interesting because like they have a few sounds that they can repeat and they know for a fact that these Monkeys know what they're talking about and monkeys even play jokes. | ||
| That's a language on each other They play jokes on each other like if one monkey wanted a banana He would say hey man is a fucking eagle here and the monkey would run up the tree and he would get the banana Like they would they lie to each other It's pretty fascinating makes doing fucked up things to them that much worse, right? | ||
| You mean monkeys I mean, we know that they're intelligent, but they got a little tiny, little tiny brain, little tiny ass head, little tiny brain, you know, but... | ||
| That's all they need. | ||
| Orca's brain, they're giant. | ||
| These are huge, enormous brains. | ||
| Dolphin's brains are... | ||
| Dolphin brains are way bigger than ours. | ||
| You want to hear a fucked up story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I think you do. | ||
| I had to dig up a dead killer whale to extract a portion of its brain that we missed during a necropsy. | ||
| You had to dig it up? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the ground? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was in the ground? | ||
| He had been buried for like 10 days, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| Oh, dude. | ||
| How'd he die? | ||
| I can't remember how Kandu died exactly, but he died pretty young. | ||
| I can't remember exactly what the final... | ||
| We never got that information as trainers. | ||
| You sort of were always told, oh, it's always meningitis. | ||
| Oh, he died of meningitis. | ||
| Or they would say, oh, twisted intestine or something. | ||
| They always came up with things that you just... | ||
| It kept you asking questions rather than feeling like anything was ever conclusive in that regard. | ||
| But in this particular case, the vet had pulled me aside and said, Okay, I gotta ask you something fucked up. | ||
| Can you go get two people? | ||
| Suit them up. | ||
| We gotta go get a piece of the brain we missed out of Kandu. | ||
| I'm just like, ugh. | ||
| I can't possibly impose upon someone to do that. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| How deep had it been buried? | ||
| Like, it was about six to eight feet. | ||
| He was... | ||
| And you can just do that in the yard? | ||
| They allow you to just bury it in the yard? | ||
| Marineland has mass graves in the back. | ||
| In the exact place that they're claiming development now, which I've got some overhead shots. | ||
| They've actually been paving roads pretty close to it. | ||
| To where the bodies are buried. | ||
| And how many different things do you think are buried back there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thousands. | |
| What? | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| I mean, just in deer alone, forget about it. | ||
| I mean, Marineland breeds more deer. | ||
| Why do they breed deer? | ||
| He's got a whole park of animals, different animals. | ||
| That's where the animal cruelty charges stem from, was actually not marine mammals, because there's no laws protecting them. | ||
| So, you know, they continue to live in a void of protection, but the deers, the bears... | ||
| There's no laws in Canada? | ||
| In Canada, yeah. | ||
| Yet. | ||
| It's coming, man. | ||
| I know I've been talking about this for five years. | ||
| We're almost there, but I'm up against the fucking wall. | ||
| How long ago did you first come on here? | ||
| 2013 was my first time here. | ||
| Yeah, so that would have been four years ago. | ||
| So they have thousands of graves in the back? | ||
| Thousands of animals in large graves. | ||
| So there's a big hole, for instance. | ||
| There's a big hole for the deer. | ||
| They're all going in there. | ||
| The big deer, the bear, the bison. | ||
| Why don't they just eat them? | ||
| He used to. | ||
| Back in Christmas, back in the day, when the owner used to host Christmas parties, he'd go back and slaughter a bison and then feed burgers and make food out of it and stuff. | ||
| They used to do that. | ||
| They don't do it no more. | ||
| They actually used to be called Marineland something and game farm. | ||
| And by being a farm or classified as a farm, he was actually able to kill and produce food. | ||
| So that's something I've been told that happened. | ||
| Now, why do they kill deer back there? | ||
| They're just going to throw them into a hole. | ||
| Well, I mean, a lot of them die because they're gross. | ||
| First off, when you've got 500 deer in a pen that's disgusting, they're not all going to get to eat. | ||
| Some of them are going to get injured. | ||
| These things happen. | ||
| So, at night, what would happen is... | ||
| Someone, let's say, would drive around in his truck, you know, put the gun out the window and just go on these shooting sprees, wiping out these animals. | ||
| In the morning, the land animal care guys would show up and they'd be like, okay, go pick up the bodies of these poor kids. | ||
| So would he do it for a goof? | ||
| Or would he do it because he's trying to thin the population because there's too many of them? | ||
| Oh, no, there wouldn't be anything like that. | ||
| Well, in one case, once the investigation came out in 2012, which revealed, of course, abuse with land animals as well, They went on a calling spree if you will where they got rid of some of the uglier sort of less healthy animals It's funny because Marineland actually breeds the more beautiful deer off-site. | ||
| The more beautiful animals that they have are not on display. | ||
| They're actually back there breeding out of display. | ||
| That's where the two dogs... | ||
| I don't know if you recall when the owner shot those two labs. | ||
| Beautiful little Labrador dogs went running up and down the fence across from Marineland's owner's house, which is where the off-site pen is, where he breeds the animals. | ||
| And that's where he decided... | ||
| I'm not calling anyone to come get these animals. | ||
| Fuck, dude, this story is so heartbreaking. | ||
| He just pulls out a shotgun, kills one. | ||
| The other one cowers, because there was a witness. | ||
| Of course, the witness never identified themselves. | ||
| They didn't want to be sued. | ||
| And then he shoots the other one. | ||
| And then he tells a land animal care supervisor, he says, take the collars off the dogs, go bury them in the pit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was... | |
| I was there that day. | ||
| I heard the gunshots. | ||
| I was there when the vet got the phone call. | ||
| She's like, oh my god, okay. | ||
| She hangs up. | ||
| She looks at me. | ||
| She goes, John just killed two dogs. | ||
| I'm like, what the fuck, man? | ||
| Dogs that you can go, hey... | ||
| Go back home. | ||
| Puppies, dude. | ||
| They were beautiful dogs. | ||
| There was a video that's since been taken down on the Toronto Star website. | ||
| A lot of the videos are gone. | ||
| A lot of things are happening now on account of these lawsuits and further down the road that we've gone where things are starting to disappear. | ||
| There was a very powerful historical website about Marineland and some of the owners' history. | ||
| And, you know, these things are gone now. | ||
| They're gone. | ||
| I mean, I can't allege as to why or what agreements or if there are agreements. | ||
| I can't go down that road to suggest. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But a lot of these resources that were very powerful are gone and disappearing now. | ||
| So Marineland has this giant yard, right? | ||
| How many acres are you talking about where there's thousands of animals buried? | ||
| I mean, the park is massive. | ||
| There's probably three times undeveloped land versus what's developed there, and it's a big park. | ||
| It's sort of barren. | ||
| There's not a lot of things. | ||
| There's rides, and you've got to walk a mile between them. | ||
| But nonetheless, The owner, what he liked to do was sort of acquire a lot of land over his lifetime. | ||
| That was his thing. | ||
| He owns half of Niagara Falls. | ||
| I gotta watch where the hell I step because at any given point, if I'm on their land, I'm getting charged with trespassing, whether I like it or not. | ||
| In fact, the city of Niagara Falls leased land to Marineland to keep protesters off of their site, which is absolute bullshit. | ||
| And if anyone's listening from city council, I hope you do. | ||
| You gotta fix that because that's some horse shit right there, man. | ||
| You guys have been... | ||
| Pandering to marine land for too long. | ||
| I mean, to keep us from being able to protest, that's horseshit. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Why do you think that is? | ||
| Because they just don't want to get sued? | ||
| There was a time when Marineland and owner were called like the king of Niagara. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| Marineland was atop the hill. | ||
| The falls came second to Marineland. | ||
| At least Marineland played this idea that people came to Niagara Falls, they would see the falls, they'd look at them for 10 minutes, and then they would have no reason to stay. | ||
| They were saying they're bringing all this business because people are now going to hotels, going to restaurants, and then going to Marineland the next day. | ||
| And when did this change? | ||
| When did Marineland go to shit? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 2012. So right when you left. | ||
| So before then, it was this thriving thing and just nobody knew about the conditions? | ||
| That's what it was? | ||
| People were ignorant, of course. | ||
| People wouldn't have known. | ||
| Who's going to talk? | ||
| It's not new for Marineland's owner or Marineland, the corporation, to sue people for speaking out. | ||
| They did it before. | ||
| And successfully, not in the sense that there was any judgment, but successfully in that the people that spoke had to pay a horrible price and, you know, essentially got silenced. | ||
| So no one wants to speak out against that. | ||
| No, I don't blame them. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I mean, I'm eating it now. | ||
| It's been five years. | ||
| Five years of every day waking up wondering if this is the fucking one where you're done, you know? | ||
| So you've been embroiled in these lawsuits for five years now. | ||
| Five years. | ||
| They sued me on Valentine's Day of 2013, yeah. | ||
| And nothing's been resolved. | ||
| The only way that there could be a resolve at this point is if I were to sign a document, and I'm assuming at this point, because Marieland sent nothing in terms of any type of agreement, but down the road, their objective is to shut me up. | ||
| They want to wipe out the last 20 years of my life. | ||
| They don't want me to open my mouth about anything, of course, in the last five years, and then the 12 prior, when I sort of revealed everything that was going on. | ||
| They're trying to shut me up. | ||
| They want an injunction, a permanent injunction. | ||
| I assume they would. | ||
| To keep me from being able to go to the park. | ||
| Well, this becomes very conflicting for me because they have my walrus sort of hostage there. | ||
| And I do dream of a day of being reunited with her. | ||
| And I imagine that would have to take place on Marineland property someday. | ||
| So it's really, I'm not prepared to sign anything. | ||
| In fact, I told my lawyer just last week, it's a non-starter and I'll remind Marineland now. | ||
| Non-starter. | ||
| They'll never shut me up. | ||
| I'm not signing it. | ||
| I'll have to eat shit forever, but I'm not going to sign it. | ||
| So where do you anticipate this all going? | ||
| I mean, you've been in a prolonged legal battle for five years now. | ||
| Where do you anticipate this going? | ||
| And so in April, so the last time I was here two years ago, I solicited some help, resources to be able to pursue marine lands owner in that I want him to be examined in court, much like I have. | ||
| In the same capacity that I had to forfeit all of my communications, I want the same for the corporation, and I want to examine Marineland's owner as representative. | ||
| This proved very difficult. | ||
| It took... | ||
| I mean, we got the order only just last April to examine him. | ||
| We won the order. | ||
| And since then, we've tried multiple times to schedule. | ||
| Now, we're almost at a year now of trying to schedule this man to come in for examinations, and he's not shown up a couple times now. | ||
| And so, at some point, if Marineland doesn't want the facts out there, and that's what I'm pursuing, I want the facts out there, they're going to have to settle. | ||
| And so, how that ends with me, I don't know. | ||
| I'm not looking for money. | ||
| I could give a shit about trying to get rich in this thing. | ||
| Are you trying to sue them for money, though? | ||
| I'm suing them, yeah, but it's- How much? | ||
| Well, numbers don't matter, but it's like a million and a half or something. | ||
| They defame the shit out of me, let's be honest. | ||
| It's pretty absurd. | ||
| But again... | ||
| So would the million and a half be- I'll never get it. | ||
| I'll never see it. | ||
| But would it be predicated on you would have to shut your mouth? | ||
| If it wasn't something that went, if it wasn't a judgment that the judge made, for instance, if we went to trial, the judge makes their decision then. | ||
| If we settle beforehand, it's because everyone wants to wash their hands and walk away. | ||
| Marine Land's not going to wash their hands of me unless, I feel, unless I've got them properly cornered. | ||
| The only way they want to get me is, well, of course they want to ruin me, right? | ||
| How could you properly corner them? | ||
| What would be... | ||
| Well, if Marineland's owners missed a couple examinations now, how many until I can go in and actually file a motion to have the entire statement of claim dismissed? | ||
| Well, the fact is, pretty soon. | ||
| So my objective is to go and get this lawsuit thrown out, at which point I've got the counterclaim for them to work with. | ||
| They're not suing me no more. | ||
| Now who's got the upper hand? | ||
| That's my dream, of course. | ||
| That's your dream. | ||
| But if... | ||
| If that doesn't happen, I mean, it seems like five years is a long time to be in a prolonged legal battle. | ||
| At what point in time does it become so absurd that the court throws it out? | ||
| So it just happened now. | ||
| It's actually a new rule that as of February 2018, any lawsuit that hasn't been scheduled for trial was administratively dismissed. | ||
| It's a new law. | ||
| That doesn't affect mine, unfortunately, because we actually fought to get a case management judge on my case because, like I said, Greenland's acting the fool. | ||
| I can't seem to get in front of a judge. | ||
| Everything's joking around. | ||
| So we went and won that. | ||
| Again, it took a long time. | ||
| You know, the crazy thing about these lawsuits, and I see now, of course, in 2012 I was a lot more naive, but all of the wins that I get in court cost me. | ||
| So, for instance, I defend a motion against Marineland. | ||
| It costs me $7,500. | ||
| The judge says, okay, Phil wins this round. | ||
| Let's give him some money back on a partial indemnity. | ||
| He gets $3,500 back. | ||
| Still just costs me $4,000. | ||
| Marineland's owner misses an examination, as an example. | ||
| I've got to get what's called a certificate of non-attendance. | ||
| I've got to send a lawyer. | ||
| $1,200. | ||
| So, it's... | ||
| And how is all this funded now? | ||
| Oh, I have a public GoFundMe, of course. | ||
| I've had several... | ||
| And how do people, if they want to donate, because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are like, fuck this, man. | ||
| I've got to help this guy. | ||
| SaveSmooshy.com. | ||
| I've got my documentary on there, which I'd like to touch on a little bit. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Have you had a chance to look at it, watch it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Okay, well, if you manage to. | ||
| It's pretty... | ||
| It's good. | ||
| These kids from Ryerson University did it. | ||
| The Brave Kids. | ||
| And how I know it's a very effective documentary is that... | ||
| Marineland didn't sue them. | ||
| They know the danger of this documentary. | ||
| They know how powerful it is, and they didn't sue them. | ||
| And that's how I know that this is powerful. | ||
| So they decided that it's so good they have to leave it alone and just ignore it because if they sue them, then it'll put attention to it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And so they made a small statement saying, oh, this is Phil just doing what Phil does. | ||
| And it's funny because the Ryerson students turn around to me, they go, but that's not true. | ||
| Like, we came to you. | ||
| They actually wanted to do a five-minute personal profile of me. | ||
| They said, look, we want to just do a quick interview with him. | ||
| I'm like, sure. | ||
| That morning, I don't know, they caught me on the right day. | ||
| I just, you know, we spoke for hours and then they sort of got back and said, you know, we want to do like maybe something more with this. | ||
| I'm like, you guys do whatever the hell you want. | ||
| I mean, I'm an open book. | ||
| I give everything away. | ||
| You want something? | ||
| Here, go. | ||
| Go nuts with it. | ||
| And so they did. | ||
| And they did something great. | ||
| It's really good. | ||
| Yeah, so definitely please check that out. | ||
| Dude, every time I talk to you, I'm happy to talk to you. | ||
| You're a great guy. | ||
| I always get fucking hugely depressed. | ||
| I'm always just like, what? | ||
| Fuck! | ||
| And now the Valium? | ||
| Dude, if I had to get into my own personal well-being, I mean, you get compromised when things like this happen. | ||
| You do. | ||
| You just do. | ||
| I imagine. | ||
| It's a half a decade of stress. | ||
| That's a big portion of mine. | ||
| I'm turning 40 in a month. | ||
| So from 35 to 40, it's all been stress and lawsuits. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| And not just that. | ||
| They're sending goons to my house. | ||
| I mean, they sent the police to my house. | ||
| I mean, it really is relentless. | ||
| It's absurd, the things they do. | ||
| There was a comedian. | ||
| I don't want to mention his name because he deleted the tweet and he told me, oh, Twitter deleted it. | ||
| This is bullshit. | ||
| I don't want to give him any attention, but PETA had tweeted something. | ||
| And so he quoted that tweet and said, it's time to burn this place. | ||
| It's a comedian. | ||
| Very funny. | ||
| I click retweet. | ||
| I got the police cyber crimes unit on my front door the next day because the lawyer sent them because I... Inciting violence? | ||
| I incited violence for the followers, so now Marine Line was worried that the buildings were going to be burnt down. | ||
| Well, I would never say to do that. | ||
| Me neither. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| Or I would never tell anyone to fly a drone over it either. | ||
| Opportunity for million-view YouTube hits. | ||
| Yeah, don't do it. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| Man, it's just... | ||
| You know that they're on the wrong side of history, and not just Marineland, but all these places. | ||
| All these places. | ||
| There's going to come a time in the future where people look back at this kind of captivity of these hyper-intelligent social animals stolen from their families. | ||
| It's a terrible, terrible... | ||
| Statement about human beings. | ||
| The thing I love about, I guess what you would call my campaign is that I have support from hunters. | ||
| I have support from vegans. | ||
| I am across the spectrum. | ||
| At one point I had a far right, well, a person who's perceived as a far right internet personality tweet my documentary and then Rosie O'Donnell tweets it and she's as left as it gets. | ||
| And so I'm looking at this. | ||
| Rosie O'Donnell, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Oh, dude, I got a Rosie story. | ||
| It's kind of a heartbreaker actually, but... | ||
| When I went to New York, and again, Joe, thank you so much. | ||
| When you spoil me with those UFC tickets, dude, it's always the most timely thing and so appreciated because it's just like this trip. | ||
| It's exactly what I need at the time to sort of keep myself sane. | ||
| Need a little break and have some fun. | ||
| And so I was going to New York City. | ||
| I remember I sent you a message. | ||
| I'm like, dude, and you're like, bro, enjoy. | ||
| I'm like, ugh. | ||
| And so Rosie sees the documentary. | ||
| And someone says to me, hey, Rosie just tweeted your documentary. | ||
| I'm like, oh, cool. | ||
| So I go to her Twitter, and yeah, sure as shit. | ||
| So I follow her. | ||
| She follows me back. | ||
| She's just sending me messages like, dude, it's really powerful. | ||
| And then she goes to elaborate, like, I want to know more about you. | ||
| I want to call you tomorrow. | ||
| I'm like, okay, cool. | ||
| Sure as shit, the next day the phone rings. | ||
| I'm talking to Rosie. | ||
| I'm like, this is crazy. | ||
| Again, I'm 40. I know who Rosie is. | ||
| I don't know these days if kids know who Rosie is. | ||
| Anyway, Rosie O'Donnell is like, I don't know, she was a heavy in my day at least. | ||
| She's like, you know, powerhouse. | ||
| And she's expressing all this interest. | ||
| Like, you know, I've done documentaries. | ||
| I've released them on HBO. You know, I've done all these things. | ||
| I'm going to L.A. tomorrow, and I'm going to call you back on Friday, but I'm meeting with this Emmy Award Producing producer and we're gonna get this thing out there and then she starts to say and this is where my heart starts to ache is that you know you always sort of hope that there's gonna be a hero that I mean especially in the last five years it's gonna be like you know what enough's enough let's let's do this and especially in the case of with my walrus she starts saying I think we can get the walrus like we can get some pressure get a TV network pressure so let's get that walrus I'm just like dude you're pulling on my fucking heartstrings now I you know and | ||
| then I went to New York. | ||
| I'd hoped to have lunch with Rosie on that particular trip. | ||
| I was going for two reasons, actually. | ||
| Also was hoping to do some ayahuasca. | ||
| I'm looking to get a reset. | ||
| I need some... | ||
| I'm going to do that sooner than later. | ||
| But that was the intention of going to New York. | ||
| And since then, it's just been radio silence from Rosie, unfortunately. | ||
| And I accept that in that... | ||
| She has a complicated world and whatnot. | ||
| But man, she pulled on my heartstrings. | ||
| She might have wanted to do it and couldn't. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm not going to fault her. | ||
| I see how crazy sort of her life and sort of things that go on. | ||
| And I'm totally... | ||
| She's had a lot of family issues and all sorts of other stuff too, but yeah, that's a bummer. | ||
| It's just a bummer is what it is. | ||
| I think also people get involved with you and hear the stories and then they get scared of being sued themselves. | ||
| All the time. | ||
| Yeah, you should see it. | ||
| I mean, I just, even last week I contacted someone that, I mean, the media now, and mind you, it's a very different landscape now from 2012. 2012 media was against me. | ||
| Corporate media was in, Greenland had them in their back pocket. | ||
| That was before Blackfish. | ||
| 2013, 2014, 2015. Media's mine. | ||
| 2016, 17, 18. Now the media's just... | ||
| Who knows what the fuck they're doing, man? | ||
| Like, it's all over the map. | ||
| So, it's hard to get any sort of... | ||
| And, again, Marineland will sue them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| It's also an issue of after things have been going on for so long and nothing's happened, people start going, well, what can I do? | ||
| You know, a lot of people actually think Marine Land's done. | ||
| They're just like, oh, dude, congrats, Marine Land's dead, right? | ||
| I'm like, no, man, it's still happening. | ||
| It's still being sued. | ||
| It's all happening. | ||
| It's just less current on account that it's five years, but that's exactly their... | ||
| That's what they're doing. | ||
| That's their objective. | ||
| Well, I think also... | ||
| Marine Land fatigue. | ||
| People are tired of fucking hearing about it. | ||
| I'm tired of tweeting it, you know? | ||
| Well, I think also the 11 different counts of animal abuse, you know, they probably fought like, oh, this is it. | ||
| I know I thought that that was it. | ||
| And then they turn around and sue the OSPCA, which, I mean... | ||
| Man, it's all dark, man. | ||
| It's really dark. | ||
| And the fact that there's so many people involved helping... | ||
| It feels dark. | ||
| You know, it feels like a total violation of my life. | ||
| Like... | ||
| Whatever, I'm up for it. | ||
| I'm here to fight, but it feels gross. | ||
| You're at every turn being fucked up, and all you can do, all I can do, and a lot of times I'm not allowed to even speak of it. | ||
| I mean, I may have even compromised things in this... | ||
| I mean, I always compromise things when I speak, but that's what choices I have left. | ||
| How have you compromised things here today by... | ||
| Telling true stories. | ||
| I'll find out tomorrow or Monday when I get a whole deluge of fucking legal threats. | ||
| I've been threatened with more lawsuits. | ||
| Marineland's lawyers have in fact threatened Other whistleblowers, lawyers. | ||
| So they're ready to sue lawyers. | ||
| I mean, you want to talk about gumming up a system, it's over at that point. | ||
| If a lawyer sues another lawyer, you're looking at 15, 20 fucking years. | ||
| Wasn't there changes in the laws in Canada, like how you can sue people? | ||
| There was anti-slap legislation that was enacted years ago. | ||
| I spoke at Queen's Park about it. | ||
| This was something that you were hopeful about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, of course. | |
| Of course. | ||
| And SLAP stands for? | ||
| Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. | ||
| So I speak out against what's happening at Marineland. | ||
| Marineland, the cash rich corporation, sues the shit out of me. | ||
| In a strategic way to try to silence you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so Ontario passed legislation to make that illegal. | ||
| However, at the time... | ||
| Ontario's premier was suing the leader of the opposition. | ||
| She took out the retro clause, so it was no longer retroactive to any lawsuits that are already in the system. | ||
| So now I'm actually fighting against a lawsuit that is illegal, and if it were to be applied to my lawsuit, had it been, Marine Light would be up against some punitive damages like crazy, just by fault of launching a malicious lawsuit. | ||
| But because it's not retro, I sit back and I just continue to eat it. | ||
| And then other people are actually... | ||
| I see it in the paper once in a while. | ||
| It's like, oh, this corporation tried to sue this girl. | ||
| They owe her half a million dollars for... | ||
| Well, maybe not half a million, but they owe her some money for having lost the suit. | ||
| And I'm just like, oh, dude. | ||
| My dreams. | ||
| Goddamn, man. | ||
| I feel for you. | ||
| I don't, man. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| To be fair, it's also... | ||
| I call it a sort of curse and blessing. | ||
| I mean, look, I'm here, man. | ||
| In what world would I be here? | ||
| I started out as a fan of the show. | ||
| I started listening to you saying things like, be the hero of your fucking movie or whatever that quote was. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| And so I get the idea. | ||
| I eat shit, but shit starts to taste delicious when you see the damage you're doing as well. | ||
| What are you doing for money now? | ||
| So I started a summer business some years ago. | ||
| I've got an Airbnb, which was the best idea I'd ever had. | ||
| I'm so happy and blessed with this thing because... | ||
| People come down and I host them now. | ||
| It's the thing I like to do the most. | ||
| I got a beautiful home on the water. | ||
| It's like, you know, I got a nice dock. | ||
| Converted one of the apartments into an Airbnb in honor of my cat that we spoke of, in fact, two years ago, Eugene. | ||
| So it's called The Eugene. | ||
| And so, you know, that's a means to sort of help me. | ||
| Occasionally, I work for Canada Post as a mailman, which I sort of love in that It challenges me every day. | ||
| I wake up in minus 20 degrees wind howling blowing snow like crazy I gotta go spend like six to eight hours walking in this shit. | ||
| It sucks, but That's a challenge, and you've got to wake up and rise to it, right? | ||
| I mean, you could just as well stay in bed all day, but that's not going to help me. | ||
| Yeah, that's a weird thing about mail delivery. | ||
| In a lot of places, it's still walking around. | ||
| Oh, I do it. | ||
| It's brutal, but I love it. | ||
| I'm walking 20k a day. | ||
| Dude, I lost a lot of weight. | ||
| I'm feeling good. | ||
| It helps me. | ||
| It really does. | ||
| I need my body moving. | ||
| I know one speed. | ||
| Fast. | ||
| You know, I'm 40. I'm slowing a little bit, but not that much, surprisingly. | ||
| Hopefully my run lasts for a while, but... | ||
| It helps me. | ||
| The voice in my head goes from, dude, everything's abysmal and fucked, to, dude, you got this, man. | ||
| Stick with it. | ||
| You got this. | ||
| You know, you listen to music, you're getting powerful, you're feeling good. | ||
| It's just right for me. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| In a perfect world, where would you like all this to end? | ||
| I want the walrus. | ||
| Sounds crazy. | ||
| My dream is I'm going to free whales. | ||
| There's going to be a sanctuary. | ||
| I'm going to free marine lands whales. | ||
| I'm going to have a hand in this. | ||
| That's going to happen. | ||
| You really think that's going to happen? | ||
| You think they're going to enact legislation that makes them release those animals? | ||
| I think so, yes. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| What makes you so hopeful? | ||
| Well, S203, Marineland's tried to kill this bill for years now. | ||
| They've not been able to. | ||
| And this time next week, this sucker should go. | ||
| That whale sanctuary project, they're going to build a whale sanctuary. | ||
| There's going to be a place for whales. | ||
| If it's in Canada and all the exportation laws are that Marineland can't get rid of their whales, there will only be one place for whales if that business elects to evolve or if there's any type of ownership changes. | ||
| I see this being a real reality. | ||
| Explain to me how this sanctuary would work. | ||
| Well, you'd have an environment where it's penned off in the ocean, and there'd be various different pens for various different procedures, if you will. | ||
| But the idea is that if they can't be wholly released, Then you've got a place where they have a sense, a semblance of freedom, if you will. | ||
| But it'll be in human care. | ||
| There'll be more of like, for instance, a viewing platform where people will be able to view the whales versus... | ||
| How big of an area are we talking about? | ||
| Massive, yeah. | ||
| I can't say the square footage. | ||
| I don't know because nothing's finalized yet. | ||
| We're still under development. | ||
| Would they develop a bay or something? | ||
| You would want to ideally get a bay that has good water change over, that works if you can find that. | ||
| I mean, the East Coast is looking really good these days. | ||
| Is there a model that they've drawn up? | ||
| Not quite. | ||
| Oh, there's models. | ||
| Yeah, no, absolutely. | ||
| Can we look at something like this online? | ||
| If you look up the Whale Sanctuary Project, I'm sure you'll find tons of different things. | ||
| I just don't know how they're keeping the orcas in those things. | ||
| If you put a fence up, they're not going to go anywhere. | ||
| They wouldn't jump the fence? | ||
| There's something about jumping out. | ||
| I mean, when the wild captures happen... | ||
| What do we got here? | ||
| There's the whale sanctuary. | ||
| We're building a model sanctuary where captive whales and dolphins can be rehabilitated and live permanently in their natural environment. | ||
| So it's a step. | ||
| So this is a step between this and then the wild. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Now, are they going to free them and then release fish in there for them to eat? | ||
| I imagine there'll be all of them. | ||
| So that would be nice, too, to allow them to actually hunt and kill the fish, which I'm sure that's what they want to do. | ||
| The fact that they can feel the natural rhythms of the sea. | ||
| I mean, they're in tune with the sea. | ||
| They're in their environment. | ||
| A pool's no place for them. | ||
| Look at what it says here. | ||
| Four years, median survival time in years for wild-caught orcas at a marine park. | ||
| Four years. | ||
| 1,100 square yards of space in a large display tank in a typical high-end marine tank. | ||
| 314,600 is the minimum number of square yards for the first whale sanctuary project, Seaside Sanctuary. | ||
| So this is... | ||
| 314,600 square yards. | ||
| So it would be a massive place. | ||
| 105 is the number of captive orcas and belugas in North America. | ||
| So that includes Marineland? | ||
| So Marineland has half the belugas in North America? | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And they fly under the radar because no one wants to talk about them, right? | ||
| 24-7, round-the-clock care for the whales at the sanctuary. | ||
| That sounds beautiful. | ||
| Marineland's threatened to sue a lot of these people. | ||
| Somebody fucking... | ||
| I am, dude. | ||
| Me, not somebody. | ||
| We need more than just you, it seems like. | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| People listening, please. | ||
| Get involved. | ||
| This is a great step, though. | ||
| I love this idea of this step. | ||
| You know, like, have something that's like a bridge between captive and the wild. | ||
| Also, it would allow their atrophied dorsal fins to reinvigorate. | ||
| They could start diving deep again. | ||
| I mean, I don't know how deep necessarily, but... | ||
| Well, at least a little bit and get... | ||
| You could train these animals to physically take them for walks, if you will. | ||
| I guess you'd call them swims, where you would be able to leave and have them just follow a boat and go for some exercise. | ||
| You could totally... | ||
| I mean, the things that this is going to present, the opportunities for these animals is brilliant and amazing. | ||
| And the board is comprised of all your wild animal brilliant scientists. | ||
| I mean, this is the project. | ||
| This is the future. | ||
| So that is the way to do it, right? | ||
| Because I've always said when you go to a place like SeaWorld or whatever, and you look at all those Dolphins and killer whales, how would you get them free? | ||
| There would have to be some intermediary step. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's exciting times, man. | ||
| I hope they do that, man. | ||
| It's coming. | ||
| I hope they do that. | ||
| Because I feel like if there was a place where you could go and people could feed the killer whales, like release some fish or something like that and be there to watch, that would be way more exciting than watching them in a swimming pool. | ||
| You watch a fucking killer whale fart in the wild versus do a backflip in the captivity and you're watching that fart in awe and this thing is just music and bullshit. | ||
| I pulled over yesterday morning. | ||
| I was in Malibu real early in the morning, and I pulled over and watched some dolphins. | ||
| Aw, dude! | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| I was told, I was speaking with someone, they're like, dude, they're here, they're in Malibu, go see them. | ||
| Yeah, they're here right now. | ||
| I was on the PCH, and I was driving, and in the corner of my eye I saw something in the water, and then I saw the tail, the fins going over it, and a few of them together. | ||
| And I pulled over and I'm like, fuck, man, that's amazing. | ||
| Like, I don't want to live in Malibu because I'm scared of tsunamis. | ||
| But if you were there, like right there, like looking out your fucking bedroom window and checking that out first thing in the morning, dolphins in your yard. | ||
| Yeah, and they're just wild, man, having a good old time. | ||
| They just feel different. | ||
| You know, you see them in marine land, or I've never seen them in marine land, but you see them in any sort of captive area, and you just get this weird feeling like, yeah, they're cool to look at, but man. | ||
| They're just not, they're just not, you know there's something missing there. | ||
| Yeah, it's like the difference between seeing a cow in a pen versus a buffalo in the wild. | ||
| This is where hunters, I say they're really, this is where I get a lot of support from hunters because no hunters, I mean, all you got to do is grab a pigeon. | ||
| Just go on the corner of the street, grab a pigeon if you can grab it, put it in a cage and watch how depressed you are in a half hour watching it. | ||
| I mean, it's horrible. | ||
| So even, that's what I love about it. | ||
| The hunters are just like, no man, you got this thing right, like fuck it. | ||
| Well, people have this erroneous idea that hunters hate animals. | ||
| No, I'm not on that. | ||
| Because they kill them. | ||
| They love wild animals. | ||
| They love things to be wild, you know? | ||
| It's just a very depressing aspect of human nature that we've chosen to go down this route and that we did it a long time ago. | ||
| I really, truly believe that if there was no dolphin and orca captivity ever, previously, before, it would not be possible to do today. | ||
| Impossible. | ||
| People would freak out. | ||
| At least in America and Canada. | ||
| Kids are repulsive. | ||
| I mean, this is where... | ||
| And they should be. | ||
| I go speak to schools and every kid... | ||
| And the beautiful thing, and I mean, it sounds horrible, but the kids that go to Marine Land get singled out pretty bad by the other kids. | ||
| So it's not a good time to bring your kids to a place like Marine Land unless you have your kids picked up. | ||
| Well, what about China? | ||
| How is it so cool in China? | ||
| They just don't get it over there? | ||
| They just don't know? | ||
| They have a different culture? | ||
| Yeah, it's fairly new. | ||
| For sure cultural, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I just know that that's... | ||
| That'll be there for a while yet. | ||
| The paradigm shift hasn't taken there yet. | ||
| It'll be a while. | ||
| So, savesmooshy.com for anybody who wants to go, and that's where your GoFundMe is. | ||
| That's where they can watch the documentary. | ||
| Documentary, please do, yeah. | ||
| And listen, man, I hope in some way this helps you. | ||
| Always does. | ||
| I'm super appreciative, Joe. | ||
| I hope in some way it gets people to donate and to pay attention and to be aware. | ||
| And please, folks, watch Blackfish. | ||
| Just go watch that. | ||
| If it doesn't make you crack up, if it doesn't make you cry, if it doesn't make you really sad that people are capable of doing that, it's just wrong. | ||
| It's not what we should be doing as a species, as a race, as a civilization. | ||
| It's just the wrong thing to do. | ||
| And one day it will be looked upon very, very poorly. | ||
| The timing of people putting their eyes on me now has never been better. | ||
| Things are going to happen. | ||
| Follow me on Twitter. | ||
| I'm going to be tweeting a lot of major developments in the coming months. | ||
| The timing of this particular podcast couldn't have been better. | ||
| And again, I'm super indebted to you forever. | ||
| I'm so appreciative. | ||
| I'm appreciative of you too, my brother. | ||
| Thanks, man. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, folks. | ||
| We'll be back next week. | ||
| Enjoy your life. |
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