This is the latest in a series of articles about animal rights, justice, and liberation. Both animal and human rights are principled on the idea that all beings have inherent value, and they should be able to live natural lives free of oppression, servitude, and fear. The constructs of abuse and exploitation we see used on humans are rooted in those we see used on animals. Animal justice is the moral baseline because of the sheer scale of abuse (it is estimated humans slaughter between eighty and ninety billion land animals each year), and because animals are unable to function politically, leaving them marginalised and without agency. They are our most vulnerable.
Marine Parade
If you drive south from central London, pretty much in a straight line, and you do that for sixty-four miles, you’ll end up in Brighton, one of England’s better known seaside towns. Sandwiched between the beach and the orderly lines of terraced houses is the aptly named Marine Parade. The noun marine is believed to have been used by the English from around the early 1400s, and is rooted in the Latin marinus, meaning of the sea.
Situated at the western end of Marine Parade and running parallel with the sea is a long, low-level structure. Outside are thick walls and metal vents, but few windows. It has a utilitarian feeling to it – the type of building architects are prone to call ‘nowhere places’. Serving merely as transit spots, these emotionally robbed spaces operate as would-be tombs, where life is temporarily suspended.
Construction of the Marine Parade structure began in 1869 and took three years to finish. It was designed by Victorian engineer, Eugenius Birch, who twenty-five years earlier oversaw the development of the Delhi-to-Calcutta section of the East Indian Railway line. Far from benefiting the local population, we now know the real purpose of the rail network was to support Britain’s looting of India’s resources. Birch was a product of his environment – he was of an empire that extended across lands and seas, and dominion over everything therein seemed natural and obvious. On August 10th 1872, the Marine Parade construction was completed and the Mayor of Brighton, John Cordy-Burrows, christened Birch’s building the Brighton Aquarium. Despite several name changes, it would go on to become the world’s oldest continually operating aquarium.
The Soap Commercial
Things were in short supply by the end of World War II, including soap. Rations were introduced and manufacturers competed for sales. While some brands promised a cleaner wash, Imperial Leather promised a longer lasting soap, but the message needed pizzazz. Between 1948 and 1958 Imperial Leather ran a series of advertising campaigns based on nature themes such as orchids (1948), tropical fish (1950), butterflies (1951), gardens (1953), and cactuses (1955).
It was during this period a baby female turtle, or hatchling, was reportedly taken from the wild and transported to England to feature in a soap commercial. The commercial wasn’t archived but in addition to Imperial Leather’s fixation with nature, we know turtle oil soap, containing extracts and serums, was popular at the time due to claims it could rejuvenate human skin and delay aging.
Incarcerated for Eight Decades
The hatchling’s advertising career was short lived. After being named Lulu, she was moved to London Zoo where she spent the first thirty years of her life confined to a small tank. In the wild, Lulu would have emerged from her nest, swam offshore, where she would have lived for several years in a pelagic habitat. On reaching adolescence Lulu would have left the open ocean and travelled to foraging grounds in shallow coastal waters, where she would have matured to adulthood and spent the remainder of her life. Every two to five years, Lulu would have travelled to her nesting beach, the same beach where she was hatched, to reproduce. Instead, she was now trapped in a synthetic pool unable to swim more than a few feet.
Lulu was subsequently moved to Blackpool Tower Aquarium sometime in the mid 1970s and to Brighton Sea World in January 2003, where she remains today. Lulu is assumed to be in her mid-eighties and lives a caged existence in a nowhere place she can’t escape from.
Kidnapped and Enslaved at Five Years Old
It was a Thursday. December 11th 1969. Drive three hours north-west out of Vancouver, along Sunshine Coast Highway (BC 101) and you arrive at Pender Harbour, a collection of bays and coves that provide fifty miles of shoreline. If you were an orca, this was a dangerous neighbourhood, and that Thursday was no exception.
The morning started noisily with several boats taking to the water. There was the frenzy of excitement, men shouting, vessels jostling as they approached a pod of orcas. In the chaos that ensued, the orcas were charged and rammed. Twelve were violently torn from their mothers and corralled into the harbour area. They were trapped. Six calves were captured and subsequently sold into captivity. Six were released.
The orcas sold into captivity were Calypso, female aged seven (died December 1970 Marineland Antibes, France), Patches, female aged one (died August 1971 Marineland of the Pacific, California), Kenny, male aged four (died May 1972 Marineland of the Pacific, California), Nepo, male aged two (died July 1980 Marine World Africa, California), Yaka, female aged one (died October 1997 Marine World Africa, California) and Corky, female aged four. According to PETA, the leading animal rights organization, Corky is now the longest held captive orca in the world, having spent fifty-one of her fifty-five years incarcerated and enslaved.
Births and Deaths
Corky was shipped to Marineland of the Pacific, California. Although female orcas become sexually mature between six and ten years of age, females in the wild don’t start mating until they are around fourteen. Despite this, Corky was bred with her cousin, Orky II, and she became pregnant in 1976, aged eleven. On February 28th 1977, Corky gave birth to the first ever captive-born orca, a male who lived just fifteen days. She was bred a further five times with her cousin. None of her offspring survived beyond forty-seven days. Corky was transferred to SeaWorld San Diego in 1987, where she was bred a seventh time. She miscarried and her dead calf was found at the bottom of the tank.
Corky remains at SeaWorld. She is confined to a small pool and has developed cataracts. Her teeth are ground down from excessive biting of walls and bars, a sign of chronic psychological stress. Like many other orcas she either swims repeatedly in circles or lays still for hours at a time. It is clear she is acutely anxious.
“I am running twenty miles. There are going to be about thirty of us, and it’s 157 miles in total, and I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. That’s the distance one wild orca could swim in a single day.”
I am speaking with Lisa from PETA. She is based in southern California and has been championing Corky’s release for the last couple of decades. On Friday December 6th Lisa and thirty others will be running from PETA’s offices in Los Angeles to the Mission Beach Boardwalk, five minutes from SeaWorld and Corky. The run will take around thirty hours and they plan to arrive on Saturday 7th at 1:30pm for a rally calling for Corky’s release from captivity.
“Think of how much Corky is denied in those small tanks. I mean she is showing signs of stress in a number of ways. She has no choice but to swim in circles because it’s just a very small tank and she can’t dive. What a lot of people don’t know is that not only do orcas swim in a straight line for miles and miles, but they dive deep every day and they’re denied that in captivity. They will dive hundreds of feet. In some cases, it’s not only to hunt or play, but it’s also to protect their skin from the sun. You see a lot of captive orcas with skin diseases.”
Lisa and I talk about orcas’ social structures – how they comprise of a lead female and her sons and daughters, and their offspring. All live and travel together as a pod, and how Corky has been denied that for over five decades. How pods can number as many as fifteen to twenty members, all with extremely strong social bonds. Individuals seldom separate from the group for more than a few hours at a time. We know orcas have an evolved and complex culture with behavioural cues and communication patterns. We know they can be playful and have greeting ceremonies. Orcas are socially-orientated community mammals – except when they are enslaved by humans.
Lisa has witnessed the brutality of Corky’s existence over the years – the inbreeding with Orky II, the loss of seven calves, the confinement, isolation and loneliness. I ask Lisa how she processes watching such an injustice.
“I’m sitting here talking to you about her and she’s sitting there swimming in circles and living a miserable life. If I didn’t do this work, I would know what was going on and find it deeply depressing that I wasn’t helping.”
Lisa continues: “It’s like learn what you can, and then do everything you can to end it because they [enslaved animals] rely on us totally. They have no ability to speak in a language to their captors that makes a difference.”
The Call of the Southern Ocean
One person who can speak the captor’s language is Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and more recently, the Paul Watson Foundation. Paul is a man on a mission and has been for most of his adult life.
In an interview Paul summarised his philosophy: “We are part of the earth, not lord and master over it. We have to respect the interrelationships with all other species.”
In 2005, equipped with a couple of boats and a crew of volunteers, Paul set sail for the Southern Ocean to stop illegal Japanese whaling. International law prohibits commercial whaling in the area, and Paul and his volunteers intervened. They saved eighty whales from being killed. Honing their skills, they saved a further 500 during the 2006/7 hunting season. Paul and his crew remained in the chilly southern waters until the Japanese whaling fleet finally withdrew in 2018. It was a resounding victory for defenders of animal rights, and validation of the use of direct action.
Paul should have been thanked for enforcing marine law – instead, he was arrested in July of this year on a dubious alert notice issued by Japan and executed by Greenland, a territory of Denmark. The arrest centres on historic claims of interference with Japan’s whaling fleet, the fleet that was operating illegally.
Paul’s next court hearing is on Monday December 2nd, when Japan will seek his extradition. Coincidently, Monday is his seventy-fourth birthday. It appears the nets of oppression so readily used in our seas and oceans are now reaching onto our shores, ensnaring those who dare speak in a language the captors understand.
©2024 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
