Working to protect captive and wild cetaceans by influencing legislators and public opinion via media and action. Targeting key government agencies: National Marine Fisheries Service and the Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service and the out-dated regulations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Animal Welfare Act exposes the weaknesses of each. A comprehensive overhaul of both MMPA and AWA needs to be accomplished in accordance with current science and public opinion.
The calliope music plays every time the SeaWorld
Public Relations machine gears up.
Recently, they were picked to the bone by dolphin
advocate pirañas in their latest Twitter campaign, part of a $10 million dollar
attempt to rebrand to Tell the Awesome Truth, which apparently they feel they
cannot do on three existing websites. They spent more time deleting
comments then actually fielding any questions. While SeaWorld slumbered,
advocates scooped the hashtag: "#askseaworld Sea World Are your tanks filled
with orca tears?'
Hey, SW Might we suggest
#WeReallyandTrulyHaveNoFrreakingIdeaAboutSocialMedia #askseaworld
The orca slavers - the industry that
decimated the population in the NorthWest, as documented by
"Blackfish" has now helped open a beluga store* in Russia with the
Georgia Aquarium upfront, still trying to import a depleted beluga
species to the U.S., another population easily decimated as
"Whitefish" become the hot trend. The case is built around
"well, they are already captive, so we can give these 18 a better home",
when they brokered the abduction with a 500k down payment, and SW purportedly
kicked in a cool mil. Headed for a second go-round, two G-agencies, the Farmer
in the Dell, and Old Mother Hubbard, Etal are included in the action after
Georgia Aquarium was first denied the import by NOAA.
They grasp at straws, releasing the video of John
Hargrove and their brand of mash. They call into question his
"character", as he releases his book and experience as an ex-SeaWorld
trainer. Yes, please, please don't use the N-word or drink and dial. But take notes politicians and man up. He comes clean here, the irony being that SW
can't and character is just a word they made up.
Back to the orca slavers, the men who stole
juveniles from their families and rightful home and sunk the dead with rocks in
their bellies. Once captive, they deprive them of food with their
"world-class" operant conditioning methods while their greedy
corporate mouths swallow piles of money off their backs, breed them too early
and replenish their Frankenorca for a lifetime in captivity.
These are
the men and women who are now being sued by consumers in a class action suit,
who say had they known better, would not have bought a ticket, or a membership
for the past three years in three states.
They have to have fruit jars full of balls to even
whisper the word "character".
Now, they speed up their overseas ops. SW
China, SW South Korea, SW Thailand, and anyplace else pets are food and animal
welfare is mostly absent and damage control will be unnecessary.
They aren't going away, they're moving.
But wait.....the music, the circus tents, here come
the clowns now. Ohhhh. Never mind, it's just the SW PR team.
---Michele Bollo, Founder MotherSea
DOLPHIN RESEARCH CENTER VIDEO MOLLY’S ABUSIVE TUBE-FEEDING
RUSS RECTOR WITH MOTHERSEA
Molly, the Dolphin Research Center’s “Grand Dame”, estimated to be between 48-53 years old has lived many horrible lives, including the traveling circus. Since being taken into captivity in 1968, she was first held prisoner as pet in the swimming pool of a wealthy bachelor. She has had many brushes with death, and was chosen to be released to her ocean home decades ago from Sugarloaf with five other dolphins had the proper steps had been taken. But that freedom vanished into thin air.
Molly stopped eating and "experienced handlers”, including COO Armando Rodriquez delivered several abusive tube-feedings while manhandling Molly in a way unrecognized by standard methods. COO Rodriquez broke several ribs in the process.
Clearly, appropriate and accepted standards for tube feeding are being violated on one of the oldest dolphins in captivity, who has served her time under horrendous circumstances and deserves the very best care.
Pictures certainly tell the story. Please see the complaint on this blog to APHIS regarding the handling of Molly during tube feeding at Dolphn Research Center. This facility has been in business for decades, certainly SHOULD know better, and did not apply standard husbandry techniques to the oldest dolphin in captivity, potentially bringing harm to Molly and did in fact, break several ribs of one of the "experienced" handlers, during the technique. http://youtu.be/DuZWl-nr5i0
Please see other posts on this blog for APHIS complaint and how you can help look over their shoulder, Twitter action, and OSHA appeal.
Molly, the ‘Grand Dame’ of captive dolphins, continues to beat odds in the Keys
BY CAMMY CLARK
CCLARK@MIAMIHERALD.COM
11/08/2014 7:00 AM
11/12/2014 11:26 AM
GRASSY KEY ---
Molly, the Dolphin Research Center’s “Grand Dame,” was a pet for a wealthy bachelor, starred in movies and on TV, traveled the country to perform at fairs and marine parks and lived life on the lam after a brazen escape.
She also was trained to search for buried sunken treasure for Mel Fisher and to carry camera equipment to look for the Loch Ness Monster.
So when Molly stopped eating last month, it caused concern the end could be near for one of the country’s most-storied dolphins.
That fear was short-lived. Despite Molly’s advanced age for a bottled-nosed dolphin, at an estimated 48 to 53 years, she was not ready to go.
“Molly is a survivor, and she continues to beat the odds,” said Rick Trout, who spent a decade caring for Molly and training her to do tricks for the wealthy before fighting to have her retired to a dolphin sanctuary.
Molly began eating on her own after several days of tube feedings and other veterinary care and is “doing well,” said Mary Stella, spokeswoman for the Dolphin Research Center in the Middle Keys.
It wasn’t the first brush with death for Molly, whose life has been surrounded by controversy since 1968. That’s when a dolphin hunter captured her in waters off the Gulf Coast of Florida.
“If only she could talk,” said Stephen McCulloch, another of Molly’s former trainers and her one-time part owner.
She likely got some of her independence from being born in the wild, sometime in the 1960s. It was a time when Flipper was popular; dolphins were big draws for country fairs; public attitudes about the capture and treatment of animals were much different; and there was no Marine Mammal Protection Act. It also was trendy to have dolphins as pets.
Capt. Eugene Hamilton, a prolific dolphin hunter of the time, originally captured Molly 46 years ago for a playboy bachelor in Punta Gorda to keep in his saltwater pool to impress his girlfriend, according to newspaper accounts and McCulloch.
Within a year or so, Molly was near death. She was severely emaciated and dehydrated, with infections and ulcers. Former Navy SEAL Frank O’Connor, who worked on the Navy’s marine mammal program, was asked to help. He relocated Molly to Key Largo, at Porpoise Pens (now called Dolphins Plus), owned by another dolphin hunter, Jerry Mitchell.
O’Connor nursed Molly back to health and then trained her to do tricks she would perform at country fairs and marine parks.
In 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act was put in place. Because Molly was a “Pre-Act” animal, most of the law’s protections did not apply to her. For the next decade, Molly’s multiple owners had her transported by planes and vans to performances around the country and in Puerto Rico.
At the Brunswick Fair in Georgia, Molly performed with Susie, the last surviving Flipper dolphin. During the return flight home, Molly badly injured her side while being loaded onto the plane without a stretcher. She still has the scars to prove it.
That led to Molly being sold to trainer Rusty Nielsen, who ran his own company of performing dolphins. Nielsen paired Molly with a young dolphin named Ginger and took them both to Puerto Rico.
“There was a catastrophic failure with the pump of the pool, and Molly is hurt during the emergency evacuation,” McCulloch said. Molly recovered once more and was relocated to the family-owned Theatre of the Sea in Islamorada. During a couple of summers, she and Ginger performed at Sterling Forest Park in New York. That pairing ended when Ginger died.
McCulloch became a part-owner of Molly and teamed her with Salty the Sea Lion for shows at Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In order to jump through hoops, Molly, who is 9 feet long, was trained to use every square inch of the 12-foot-deep pool.
In 1978, Molly got new dolphin partners, Lady and Sprite, and the trio performed in Massachusetts and Iowa.
Back at Theatre of the Sea, McCulloch trained Molly and Sprite to wear high-speed cameras and ultra-fast strobe lights to look for the Loch Ness Monster.
“It was going to be a money maker for the team, being financed by a guy out of Massachusetts and going big time with the National Enquirer involved,” Trout said.
But the search never took place because Sprite died at the aquarium in Hull, Massachusetts, where they prepared to make the trip to the cold waters in Scotland.
Molly was taken back to Theatre of the Sea, where McCulloch trained her to search for gold and silver to assist Fisher with his hunt for the Spanish shipwreck the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. But a tragedy in the Fisher family put a stop to that quest, McCulloch said.
Instead, Molly was taken to Virginia Key to make a movie called Key Tortuga, about a dolphin that looked for sunken treasure. She also would perform in commercials for Conoco oil and Sapporo beer.
At this point, Nielsen was deep in debt and ready to sell Molly and Lady. The buyer was the Ocean Reef Club, where they would entertain the wealthy residents from a lagoon the size of a football field near a restaurant and bar — and also receive quality care.
In 1988, the club added two more dolphins, Bogie and Bacall, captured from the Indian River. Four years later came the fateful day when a lemon shark got through a hole in the net that blocked off the lagoon and terrified the dolphins, leading to the great escape by all but Bogie.
While they were on the lam for nearly three weeks, activists got involved demanding the dolphins remain free. But the dolphins, used to being fed regularly, were soon spotted looking for handouts at a bait shop at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. “It was their show times at Ocean Reef,” Trout said.
They ended up in a lagoon off the 18th hole of the Key Biscayne golf course.
Three weeks later, the dolphins all survived a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew. But they became ensnared in Ocean Reef’s legal battle with the federal government. Captive dolphins were not allowed at places that were not open to the public, and Ocean Reef residents had no desire to lose their privacy.
The dolphins ended up being sent in 1994 to the newly created Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, a converted family motel in the Lower Keys where a dolphin named Sugar lived as a pet for 20 years.
It was the first facility dedicated to preparing captive dolphins who were young and healthy enough for release back into the wild. Bogie and Bacall were eligible. It also was created to provide a retirement home for those dolphins who were deemed not releasable. Molly fit that bill, with 25 years of her life spent in captivity at the time. Lady never made it to the sanctuary, dying of a chronic liver problem before the move.
The sanctuary turned into a fiasco, as activists fought each other over whether or not to play by the rules of the federal government. It was closed down when two Navy dolphins were released without proper permits.
Activist Russ Rector of Fort Lauderdale said that’s when Molly’s retirement ended. In 1996, she was transported 30 miles north on U.S.1 to the Dolphin Research Center. “She went back to prison to do stupid pet tricks,” he said.
Not so, said Stella of the Dolphin Research Center. “This is her forever home and she’s very happy.”
To this day, Molly remains symbolic of the debate over whether dolphins belong in captivity at all. Rector has declared that the medical care Molly received at the Dolphin Research Center bordered on being “almost abusive for a geriatric lady.”
“Watch the video and you can see it does not meet accepted industry standards,” he said, providing footage taken by his “field operatives” in early October that showed Molly getting tube feedings at the research center.
“I was pretty much horrified when I saw it,” said Trout, who used to work at the center when it was called Flipper’s Sea School.
On Oct. 22, Rector filed a formal complaint about her treatment with the Animal Care section of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees the Animal Welfare Act.
Stella said the center, a nonprofit facility that hugs the Gulf and houses nearly 30 dolphins and sea lions, had no comment.
McCulloch said he visited Molly during her illness and that he witnessed her receiving “exceptional care,” and added that was also the case a few years ago when Molly made a remarkable recovery from renal failure.
Molly, who’s known for hoarding colorful scarves, has not been involved in any formal research at the center, but she has been one of the center’s biggest “educators” to other dolphins, the trainers and the public that comes to the center, Stella said.
“I think in the early days there was a lot of exploitation by nefarious types,” said McCulloch, who has also studied dolphins in the wild. “The shows now are more educational than entertaining and help people focus on our shared environment.”
Molly has outlived almost all other dolphins captured in the wild and placed in captivity before the 1972 Marine Mammal Welfare Act. In May, a dolphin named Nellie who was born in captivity died at Marineland in St. Augustine at age 61. She is believed to have been the oldest documented dolphin to live in captivity.
As Molly recently swam around her small lagoon, Stella said: “Nobody knows how much longer she has, but she might just outlive us all.”
APHIS COMPLAINT ON DRC "MOLLY INCIDENT" BY RUSS RECTOR
TWITTER ACTION PLAN
Get the word out to journalists, media, legislators and former trainers. It's easy and effective.
Reps. Huffman and Schiffman introduced a bill and requested the USDA update its current regulations regarding known scientific data on captive orca. That letter sent to the USDA by these legislators has been completely ignored. One of the requests, to have USDA uphold their own intent to update The Animal Welfare Act, has virtually laid fallow for two decades. APHIS, under the authority of the USDA does not address a situation, no matter how heinous, unless it is spelled out in the AWA. The AWA language is archaic and not nearly specific enough. Therefore, finding clear evidence of APHIS neglect and known AWA infractions, via Russ' complaint is critical in building a case against an overburdened, underfunded, unwilling and irresponsible agency to even regulate per their own guidelines. The bill would also allocate $1,000,000 to study the effects of captivity on orca.
CONTACT: Nicolette Petervary, VMDAnimal Care SpecialistUSDA APHIS Animal Care, 920 Main Campus Drive, Suite 200 Raleigh, NC 27606 Telephone: 919-855-7100 Fax: 919-855-7123 Email: nicolette.petervary@aphis.usda.gov Please read the complaint below
regarding Dolphin Research Center, a non-profit organization that is clearly
not in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act. VIDEO OF TUBE FEEDING: http://youtu.be/DuZWl-nr5i0 The portion in bold is all you need submit by
any method above, simply cut and paste.You can also fax a document directly from your computer using http://faxzero.com Be sure to include your contact information. We want them to respond. ________________________________ Nicolette Petervary, VMDAnimal Care Specialist USDA APHIS Animal Care, 920 Main Campus Drive, Suite 200 Raleigh, NC 27606
RE: DOLPHIN RESEARCH CENTER AC15-054 As a concerned citizen, please investigate Russ Rector’s complaint to you DATED OCT 22, 2014 thoroughly and provide an opportunity for the dolphins to be treated in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act. It appears the Dolphin Research Center facility is
substandard, the handlers clearly are not well-trained, even in standard
husbandry techniques, and both Rainbow and Molly are suffering.I request your followup regarding this complaint. Signed, ----------------------------------------------- Please read the original complaint by Russ Rector. Your message above provides profile to his complaint. Russ Rector was once a dolphin trainer and has spent the last thirty plus years waging a battle against captivity.
OCT 22, 2014 Nicolette PetervaryUSDA/APHIS/ AC 920 Main
Campus Drive Suite 200 Raleigh, NC 27606-5210 Dear Nicolette, The following complaint
concerns the Dolphin Research Center at 58901 Overseas Highway, Grassy
Key, FL 33050-6019. At the end of late-summer
2014, I was contacted by a concerned citizen that had
visited the Dolphin Research Center and while there saw a dolphin
name Rainbow,who appeared to be
in distress. They sent me a still picture which is attached to the complaint filed
by Russ Rector, showing the animal in very shallow dirty water
with his pectoral fins resting on the bottom and his eyes closed. It was
clear this animal was experiencing some sort of difficulty and because of that
the people at DRC covered his head and melon with zinc oxide to protect from
sunburn and cracking skin because he was not submerging.Because of the condition
of Rainbow, we arranged to have another of my field operatives
visit DRC and videotape the facility. While there, video of Molly was
taken showing them capturing her for some type of medical procedure and
then tubefeeding her some type of liquid which appears to be water and
Maalox. These videotapes were shot over a period of a few days starting October
5 and running through October 8. In these videotapes they capture Molly
and injure her rostrum using techniques that are not accepted
industry standards in handling these animals. The videotape shows clearly
the inexperience of the people involved from DRC. These videos were
submitted to you by Russ Rector as well. The techniques of capture
and the subsequent tubing of Molly raise many questions about
the veterinary care and practices at DRC. The techniques
involved could almost be construed as animal abuse. The techniques
are so far below the accepted industry standards that one must ask why this was
done in the manner it was done. The video shows clearly that Molly
and the people at DRC were put in harm’s way unnecessarily by these
unaccepted medical practices. Please review the
videos that were submitted by Mr. Rector of Molly and Rainbow please
notice the water quality and the growth all over the back fence which
definitely impedes water flow into an already compromised area.
It is my understanding that years ago there were cleaning scheduled almost
weekly to keep that fence clean as not to impede the water flow,
it seems that DRC is getting lazy in keeping the
fences adequately cleaned. After speaking with other
ex-dolphin trainers and showing them the videotape we have come up with the
following set of questions that need to be answered:1) Everywhere At DRC
hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent making safe,
comfortable, stable floating and underwater platforms for paying public. Why is
there no such safety feature available to access, control and treat
sick or injured dolphins?2) Handlers were
forced to expose themselves and Molly to injury in the so-called med pen. Why
has it not been upgraded to industry standards in over 35 years? 3) Why are the
handlers in neck deep water instead of industry standard knee deep to
ensure their safety and ease of control of 300-400# dolphin?4) Why are the pole
ends not padded? This is risking dental, eye, and nose injuries
or broken faces for both handlers and Molly. 5) Why are the
handlers obviously not experienced in techniques and strength
levels necessary to restrain a dolphin with Molly's 50 years of
experience? Were they being schooled on the job? Tubing Molly's
wildly swinging head without towel raps over top and lower jaw (another
industry standard made difficult by working in neck deep water) created more
injury potential to both Molly and handlers.6) For a dolphin as
trainable as Molly, why she is not trained to take a tube to eliminate the need
for the entire unnecessary abusive physical and mental trauma that
was visited on a very geriatric dolphin? Please view the
videos focusing on all violations of the AWA and
also concerning accepted industry standards when handling animals for any
type of medical procedures and ignoring Rainbow who clearly is having some type
of medical problem and is not being treated properly.Please investigate this
thoroughly and keep me apprised of all actions taken. Please review the
videos that were submitted by Russ Rector, a member of our organization
and provide a thorough investigation into this. Respectfully,Russ Rector 824 S. W. 14th St. Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315
