"This is my specialty, folks. We’re gonna start with why dolphins strand. You know all about that, don’t you Mookeeo?"
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"Yup. Huwees can find it in the first chapter of ‘The Dolphins’ View.’" Since stranding is frequently
associated with environmental hazards of some kind, I’ll talk about that first, before we get into death
walls, pollution, and other issues.
"Huwees can’t always tell why dolphins strand, but they have identified these causes: disease, red tide
algal blooms, parasite infections, injuries caused by ship strikes and entanglement in death walls."
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"They can find that in our story too, right Mookeeo? That’s when I found out what a feeoo you are."
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"Yeah, sometimes he’s a swee too!"
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"Ha, ha, now will you let me continue, Doak? Sometimes marine mammals – dolphins, whales and pinnipeds,
strand near starvation, sometimes calves lose their mothers, sometimes they’re driven ashore and
slaughtered like they do off Japan and the Faroe Islands (a province of Denmark)."
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"Better tell them what pinnipeds are."
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"OK, seals and sea lions."
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"What about otters?"
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"Yeah, right, they’re not pinnipeds, but they strand too. All of us, all marine mammals, are
exposed to similar dangers."
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"Hey dude, you gonna talk about dolphin slaughters?"
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"We already talked about that a little in our endangered dolphins pages. No need to repeat it
here. Now where was I? Oh yeah, strandings…
"Sometimes whales and dolphins, especially pilot whales, have mass strandings. Huwee scientists think
mass strandings occur more frequently after unusual weather or oceanographic events. They also think
pilot whales have mass strandings when something goes wrong with their magnetic senses. The whales just
don’t want to return to the sea.
"Then there’s pollution. You know what, Doak? You’re our pollution expert, so why don’t you talk about
pollution."
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"Cause I don’t like to. I get too pissed off."
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"Well, cool it and go with the flow."
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"You boys haven’t talked about stranding centers – how huwees rescue marine mammals that strand.
Our writer volunteers at one of them."
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"Yeah, he’s a volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. They have the
largest animal hospital in the world there."
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"That’s nice. But stranding centers don’t make up for all the damage huwees do to our
environment, do they?"
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"No, they don’t, but the genesis of our mission started at one of them, didn’t it Mookeeo?"
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"Yeah, but let’s get back to environmental hazards."
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"Dol, what happened to your fun-loving dolphinality? You’re really serious here."
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"Maybe they put a serious pill in my fish. So, let’s get into pollution."
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"OK dol, here we go! There’s gwee and yukee."
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"Hey, some of them haven’t read the book yet. Better use their huwee names."
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"OK, there’s oil, chemical and sewage spills from boats and cruise ships and from industrial
and commercial sources that enter rivers and flow into the sea. They come from wastewater
treatment plants and sewage systems too. Then there’s nonpoint sources, like drops of oil
leaking from a car onto a parking lot or street. Rain carries it to storm drains and eventually
it gets to the ocean. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy said that 23 million gallons of oil
runoff in North American waters every year. Fertilizers and pesticides drain from farms and
enter rivers. Should I tell them about the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of
the Mississippi River?"
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"You just did. How about some hana, you sexy dol?"
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"Right now?"
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"Save it for later, Doak. You’re on a roll."
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"Don’t you want some too, Mookeeo?"
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"Hey, dude! What about the dolphin now? When you bonded with that huwee dude, you lost some
of your dolphin spontaneity."
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"Yeah, I know, but save it! Let’s finish this first."
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"What’s gotten into you two. Did you switch personalities? Doak, you’re not usually this mellow."
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"Let’s move on. Doak, you haven’t talked about incinerators or toxic substances that don’t
break down, like PCBs."
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"Oh, please don’t talk about that. I don’t want to go there again."
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"I know, Nina, but we have to."
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"Then you two do it! I’m going for a swim. I don’t want to think about it."
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"That’s OK, Nina, we understand…Doak, the sooner we finish, the sooner we get Nina’s hana.
Now, you go ‘dude.’"
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Takes a deep dolphin sigh. "All right. There’s DDT and PCBs and others that were outlawed
years ago, but huwees never tested them before they used them. Problem is, their chemical
bond is so strong, it doesn’t break down. So they still damage the environment years after
they were banned."
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"OK, so tell them what damage they do."
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"They enter the food chain and contaminate sediments. Small fish absorb them from eating plankton.
They concentrate when larger fish eat small fish. Predators at the top of the food chain, like us,
orcas, and huwees absorb higher concentrations."
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"That’s right. It affects the health of all mammals, not just us, but huwees too. It also affects
their economy, especially in regions that depend on a healty coastal environment. Tell them how it
affects health, Doak."
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"They do several things, all of them bad. The worst affects are suppressing the immune system and
birth defects. Nina’s experience addresses it more effectively than I can. DDT, PCBs, and other
persistent organic pollutants build up in our blubber and liver and pass on from a mother to her
calf through the mother’s milk."
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"That’s right, but scientists did not directly blame them for the dolphin holocausts. Whoops, guess
I better tell them – there was a mass stranding of bottlenose dolphins along the East Coast of the
United States in 1986-87 that wiped half the coastal migratory population. There was also a mass
stranding, though not as severe, along the Gulf Coast in the early 90s. After several studies,
eventually they blamed it on a virus."
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"Yeah, well those scientists don’t know everything. Don’t forget those pollutants weaken our immune
system, making us more vulnerable to diseases and other things that can harm us. When they analyzed
the tissues of dead dolphins that washed ashore, they found extremely high levels of PCBs and DDT in
dolphin bodies."
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"That’s right, but the U.S. government reduced the budget for contaminant monitoring and research in
recent years and reduced personnel working on the program too."
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"You got that right. The Bush administration reduced the budget of a lot environmental programs…Say
Mookeeo, why don’t you talk about death walls? That’s our biggest problem."
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"OK. Accidental capture and entanglement in fishing gear is the biggest threat to marine mammals.
The World Wildlife Fund gathered the world’s leading cetacean experts in Annapolis, MD in 2004.
They concluded that the single greatest threat to cetaceans is bycatch. Researchers from Duke
University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland estimated that 308,000 whales, dolphins,
and porpoises die every year around the world from entanglement."
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"Thousand, did you say 308,000?"
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"Yeah, almost a thousand a day. Drift nets are still killing thousands of dolphins a year in the
Mediterranean despite a European Union ban on smaller drift nets in 2002 and a U.N. ban on
large-scale driftnets dating back to 1992."
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"Drift nets aren’t the only danger, are they Mookeeo?"
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"No. Fishing gear that threatens marine mammals, sea turtles, sea birds and noncommercial fish
that are killed unintentionally as bycatch includes gillnets, set nets, trammel nets, seines,
trawling nets and longlines. Purse seine nets are not as great a threat as they used to be,
before they started dolphin safe tuna. But gillnets are cheap and widely used and are especially
dangerous to cetaceans."
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Photo courtesy of The Marine Mammal Center archives
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"Swee! It’s natural to catch something and eat it, but throwing it away and calling it ‘bycatch’
is an assault on the web of life."
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"Bycatch is one of the crazy things huwees do that we can’t understand. All nets are difficult
for us. They’re so thin we can’t sonar them and we can’t see them until its too late. When
dolphins and porpoises are caught in fishing gear, they drown because they’re not strong enough
to break free to the surface to breathe. Larger whales can break free but sometimes they get
injured or die a slow death towing the equipment. Fishing line can coil also around the head
of marine mammals and interfere with feeding.
"Some cetaceans are on the verge of extinction because of bycatch. Huwees can learn more in our
endangered dolphins web pages."
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"Swees me off. I’ll tell them about some simple and inexpensive alterations to fishing gear
that can reduce bycatch. Attaching acoustic alarms called ‘pingers’ to fishing nets warns
cetaceans that death walls are there or annoys them into swimming away. Bycatch of harbor
porpoises in gillnets in the Gulf of Maine was so severe that huwees were considering putting
them on the Endangered Species List. In 1999, they tried several methods, closing the fishery
temporarily when the porpoises were known to be there, and placing observers on boats, but pingers
attached to gillnets were given most of the credit for reducing mortality by 77%.
"Putting weights on the top of fishing nets helps too. Like you said Mookeeo, one of the problems
with death walls is that dolphins can’t sonar them and can’t see them until it’s too late. We can
sonar the weights though, and even when they’re directly in out path, the weights allow us to swim
over the nets…Why don’t you tell them about closing the fishery?"
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"Generally, fishermen don’t like that and it can be difficult to enforce. However, when huwees
can identify patterns of bycatch, the time period, and migration of cetaceans into a fishery area,
temporary closure can be a viable mitigation option."
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"Viable mitigation option? Swee! You don’t know how much you annoy me when you talk like that.
You’re a dolphin, not a sweeing huwee policy analyst!"
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"That’s true, but what you don’t realize Doak, is that the cooperation of fishermen is essential
to any method of reducing bycatch and entanglement. Where populations are endangered, the Marine
Mammal Protection Act requires scientists, environmental groups, managers, and fishermen to work
together to find a solution."
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"Yeah, right! Everybody’s included but dolphins!"
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"Yeah, that’s why we went on our mission. Huwees can read about it in ‘The Dolphins’ View.’"
Mookeeo pops his blowhole and takes a deep dolphin sigh. "So let’s talk about the overall
health of the oceans."
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"No, let’s talk about overfishing – wiping out entire fish populations so they can’t reproduce
and sustain their population. Raping the ocean – that’s another thing huwees do that we can’t
understand."
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"At least they’re becoming aware of the problem. Last year the Pew Ocean Commission released
their report and this year the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, which was set up by a bipartisan
act of Congress is releasing their report, with similar findings."
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"You got it! So we don’t have to put it in our words. We can put it in the huwees’ own words.
In April, 2004, the report said that pollution, overfishing, and poor management have put North
America’s oceans in serious peril. There was a summary of it on Environmental News Network,
one of the daily ezines our writer gets. Also, Daniel Pauly, director of the University of British
Columbia’s Fisheries Center, said: ‘We can do a much better job of protecting fish populations, for
example, by limiting catch levels based on science and safeguarding fish nursery areas and vulnerable
sea bottom habitats from harmful fishing practices like bottom trawling.’ So Mookeeo, they know what
the problems are. Think they’ll do anything about it?"
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"I hope so. Maybe if enough people read ‘The Dolphins’ View’ they will. If they start using an
ecosystem approach, all ocean life, including dolphins and huwees, will benefit."
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"Just like you to put an optimistic note on everything. You’re such a feeoo. Anyway, I’m tired of
this stuff. I want some of Nina’s hana. I’m out of here!"
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"Hey, writer!"
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"Yes, Mookeeo."
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"I want Nina’s hana too. Why don’t you append that fish chart here? You know, the one that
shows mercury levels and whether or not they’re overfished."
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"I can list species that are overfished, but the copyright for the chart belongs to
‘Eating Well, The Magazine of Food & Health.’ They gave me permission to include their link."
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"Then, do it. And don’t put any more serious pills in my fish! I’m outta here to! See ya!"
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"Thanks, Mookeeo. Tell Nina and Doak I said thanks too."
The following fish are overfished: Atlantic Cod, Halibut, and Sole, Bluefin Tuna (other
species of tuna are abundant), Caviar, Chilean Sea Bass, Flounder, Grouper, Haddock, Marlin,
Orange Roughy, Pacific Rockfish, Red Snapper, Sharks, Shrimp (wild, foreign), Swordfish, and
Tilefish. "The Essential Eating Well Seafood Guide" can be found on our dolphin links page.
It includes information about levels of Omega-35 (the good stuff) and Mercury (the bad stuff),
as well as harvest notes, which identify whether the fish are abundant or overfished.
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