40 Years of Saving Whales and Dolphins

By David Phillips, Executive Director

2022 marks the 40^th anniversary of the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute. With your support, we have achieved numerous important victories to protect whales, dolphins, and their ocean homes.

A lot of work was involved, but we have the pride of knowing we have made a huge difference for these sentient beings of the ocean.

IMMP was established in 1982, the same year that IMMP and our colleagues prevailed upon the International Whaling Commission (IWC), after many years, to finally pass a moratorium on commercial whaling. This decision had a major impact in substantially reducing whaling around the world. Japan and Norway continued whaling, while Iceland went back to whaling a few years later, but many nations, notably the Soviet Union, discontinued their massive whaling operations.

Before 1982, I was with Friends of the Earth along with our founder, David Brower. Mark J. Palmer was Director of the Whale Center, a small nonprofit. Together, we had worked at IWC meetings pushing for the moratorium. Our efforts have been carried on with the International Marine Mammal Project.

In 1987, Dave, Mark, Todd Steiner (now Director of Turtle Island), and Stan Minasian of the Marine Mammal Fund launched a campaign against the killing of dolphins by the global tuna industry. We collaborated on writing a report on the status of the tuna/dolphin issue and launched a boycott of tuna. The campaign really took off in 1988, when biologist Samuel LaBudde came back from a tuna-fishing voyage with surreptitious video of the killing of dolphins in tuna nets, the first time the public ever saw what was happening.

IMMP’s campaign reached our goal: in 1990, the three largest tuna companies in the world – StarKist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea – agreed to stop chasing and netting dolphins to catch tuna, adopting IMMP’s strict Dolphin Safe standards. These standards were subsequently enshrined in US law through the work of then-Representative Barbara Boxer and then-Senator Joe Biden.

Today, around 95% of the world tuna companies adhere to IMMP’s Dolphin Safe program and pledge to fish without chasing, netting and killing dolphins. IMMP has monitors around the world verifying that tuna is caught by our cooperating companies in a Dolphin Safe manner. The program saves the lives of an estimated 90,000 dolphins annually.

IMMP and Sam LaBudde were also key players in the 1992 approval by the United Nations of a ban on high seas gill nets, curtains of death that were killing marine mammals, sea turtles, and many other non-target species.

And of course, IMMP led the historic first successful release of a captive orca back into the wild. Keiko, the orca star of the hit movie “Free Willy” (now streaming on Netflix), was returned to his home waters of Iceland in 1998, after several years of rehabilitation in the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Keiko thrived for about five more years, first in a seaside sanctuary in the Westman (Vestmannaeyjar) Islands, then later in the North Atlantic Ocean, swimming with wild orcas and going all the way to Norway.

There are many other Keikos and Flippers languishing in captivity today, sterile environments too small and too boring for these intelligent animals. IMMP seeks to end the keeping of dolphins and whales in captivity.

Late in the 1990s, we were alerted to another danger, this time to the gray whales, by our friend, Mexico’s poet laureate Homero Arijidis, who passed along word that the Mexican government and Mitsubishi Corporation were planning to build a huge industrial salt plant in San Ignacio Lagoon in the late 1990s. There are only three breeding lagoons in Baja used by gray whales – San Ignacio Lagoon is part of the El Vizcaino Reserve and relatively unspoiled. Our campaign focused on publicizing the danger to the whales and waters of the Lagoon and marshaling grassroots pressure on the government of Mexico and Mitsubishi. In 2000, Mexico’s President announced that the salt plant proposal was dead.

In 2004, IMMP launched our Save Japan Dolphins Campaign, focusing public attention on the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, particularly the small town of Taiji, where hundreds of dolphins were driven into a small cove. Some were kept for training and sale to dolphinariums all around the world, especially in Japan and China. The rest were slaughtered for meat, but the big income came from sale of trained captive dolphins, condemned to a life of misery in small concrete tanks.

Louie Psihoyos was looking for a subject for his first video documentary and contacted us about the Taiji dolphin slaughter. IMMP worked closely with his film crew to tell the story about the dolphin drive hunts and the cruelty of captivity, producing the Oscar-winning The Cove, released in 2009. This effort bought the issue of the dolphin hunt to the world’s attention, something the Japanese worked hard to keep secret.

Thanks to IMMP’s alerting the people of Japan about the danger of eating dolphin meat due to mercury contamination, the market for dolphin meat has dropped, leading to a 60% reduction in dolphin deaths in Taiji. Unfortunately, the lucrative trade in captured dolphins has only increased, and the hunts continue. IMMP continues our work to end the dolphin hunts in Taiji and other Japanese towns as well as commercial whaling.

Along with many scientists and other conservation organizations, IMMP has been active in pushing for an end to the captures and keeping of whales and dolphins in captivity, helping grassroots folks contact public agencies to protest marine parks that hold cetaceans. We were successful in shutting down some parks holding cetaceans in inhumane conditions and blocking construction of others.

A major break in public opinion came with the release of the documentary Blackfish in 2013, which graphically documented the harm that captivity does to orcas. These magnificent marine mammals should never have been taken into small tanks for our entertainment.

In 2015, SeaWorld, now holder of nineteen orcas in their three parks (at least 43 orcas have died at SeaWorld), sought a permit to make additions to their park and orca tanks in SeaWorld San Diego, applying to the California Coastal Commission for a permit. IMMP and our allies led a successful effort to convince the commission to approve, as a condition of the permit, a ban on breeding and import of any new orcas.

At first, SeaWorld sued the commission (IMMP sought to intervene in support of the commission position), but later relented, under fire from Blackfish, IMMP, and many others. SeaWorld adopted a corporate policy of no breeding or imports of captive orcas, effectively claiming their current orcas would be the last generation in captivity. The California legislature, supported by IMMP, turned the SeaWorld pledge into law, and IMMP is working with Congress to pass legislation making breeding and importing of orcas illegal throughout the US.

Thanks to your donations, IMMP was able to successfully pressure SeaWorld into ending its captive orca program, which has caused so much misery to orcas. But that is not the end of the story. We need to retire orcas to seaside sanctuaries, where they will have a more expansive, interesting ocean environment to live the rest of their days while being fed and getting veterinary care. We also need to end the breeding and import of other dolphins, such as belugas and bottlenose dolphins, still ongoing at SeaWorld and many other facilities. There simply is no excuse for keeping marine mammals that normally swim up to 50 miles per day in open waters in small concrete tanks.

We have many more achievements, too numerous to list here. But we aren’t resting on our laurels – we have a lot of plans for 2022.

This spring, we plan to release a major report called “The Plastics Plague: Marine Mammals and Our Oceans in Peril”. The report documents the widespread harm being done to whale, dolphins and seals due to plastic pollution, entanglement in plastic nets and other plastic debris, and solutions that go beyond inadequate recycling and beach cleanups. The report lists the major companies producing plastics, plastic components, and nets and fishing lines that entangle marine mammals, sea turtles, and other marine life. We will put pressure on these companies to help solve the plastics crisis in our oceans.

Another major video documentary is due out in 2022, featuring IMMP’s David Phillips, on the global trade in orcas, focused on the efforts in Russia to close the notorious Whale Jail, housing ten orcas and 87 beluga whales destined for sale to Chinese aquariums. IMMP helped coordinate international opposition by scientists, celebrities, and many other environmental organizations, and assisted Russian activists to help convince the Russian government to release the Whale Jail whales back to their home waters, the largest such release ever attempted. In the fall of 2019, the Whale Jail was empty, and the belugas and orcas were released to swim free.

Now we are working with our Russian activist friends to end the captures of orcas, belugas, and other dolphins in Russian waters. Legislation is being considered by the Russian parliament (the Duma), and in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed the legislation.

Russia is currently the only place in the world where orca and beluga whale live captures are allowed. We hope to complete our efforts to end the live captures in 2022, with your support!

Elsewhere, we are at work with a coalition of organizations to promote improvements to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, including several amendments to address captivity issues for cetaceans. We are talking with members of Congress to carry our legislative agenda.

Our goals for 2022 continue our ongoing goals for whales and dolphins:

• Stop the slaughter of whales and dolphins,
• End captivity for these intelligent mammals,
• Stop entanglement of marine mammals in fishing gear, and
• Protect marine habitats, end pollution, and set aside marine sanctuaries.

Overall, we want to celebrate these magnificent and intelligent beings that inhabit the vast ocean. They should be free to be themselves, not our slaves for entertainment nor a source of meat or oil. They should not have to dodge ships, oil derricks and oil spills, or ocean noise from seismic testing and military sonars. They should certainly NEVER be harpooned.

You love whales and dolphins, like we do, and we know how much you care. You have supported us for years, and we are grateful.

And we promise you we will not give up. Whales and dolphins are too important to be let down.

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We hope you will consider a donation to the work of the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute. Your support has been a key to our success for 40 years. We are very grateful and thank you for your generous contributions!