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1 The featured interspecies story for June
Cougar Attack "...I was feeling sick, left the wilderness camp to spend the afternoon sleeping in our whale research boat. Awaking refreshed, I was rowing back to shore when I heard the first scream..."
2 Interspecies News
Interspecies' year-long collaboration with ICERC Japan and Native Instruments is a sound installation called THE WHALESINGER. During the month of August The Whalesinger is installed in the NGO pavilion at the Japan EXPO. The instrument showcases the sounds and the image of many marine animals including several whales, dolphins, fish, seals, and invertebrates. A visitor clicks the image of the animals in combination with other images to create techno beats, and also receive a text message explaining the endangered status of that species. Playing constantly as a background drone is the sound of gentle waves breaking on a shore. This musical instrument is designed as an interactive prototype for museum exhibits as well as a new kind of teaching tool within the biological and geographic sciences.
During the last week of August, Interspecies' Jim Nollman will be a featured performer at the NGO pavilion, improvizing music created from underwater sounds on several digital instruments, and presenting Interspecies' Belly of the Whale Project.
- Interspecies long time friend and advisor, animal behavioralist Marc Bekoff has just been featured in Time magazine, in a breakthrough article explaining his critical discovery of altruism and empathy among animals. Read about it here.
- Interspecies board member and celebrated activist for the rights of wild animals, Ben White, is suffering from a terminal cancer. We recommend everyone take a moment to read this profile of Ben's incredible career that recently appeared in the Seattle newspaper, to honor the inspiring work of this man.
3 Bad news on the whale front
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(Thanks to Dan Morath) 583 whales have been killed in Norway this past spring and summer - and the Norwegian Raw Fish organisation (the Fishermen’s organisation) now expects an increase in the demand from the customers for whale meat. They have sold more whale meat to the suppliers so far, than they did all together last year. One of Norway’s largest low price chain-stores, RIMI, is selling different new whale meat products. So far they have been selling this products in the north of Norway, but according to the representativ from Norwegian Raw Fish organisation, they will expand this to other areas of the country.
As a concequence of the Norwegian government’s white paper/policy on management of marine mammals, a group consisting of among others; a representative from the ministry of Fishery and coastal affairs, whale hunters and whale meat buyers, are now working on a report about “How much whale meat can be sold in Norway?” They have set a goal to market the meat from 1000 whales each year, approximately 1500 tons of whale meat.
Dan's Conclusion: The report is due to 1st of November. Furthermore, I have gotten signals that the quotas are going to be set in November/December. I asked my contact in the group if he thought there is a market for this amount of whale meat, and he said yes. The Norwegian government wants an increase in the whaling quotas, and so this group will do everything to “find the market”.
4 Recommended Links for June
- E magazine has an article this month about the unethical cross-breeding of captured animals, such as the half-whale/ half dolphin that was recently hybridized by Honolulu's Sea Life Park. This magazine has been around as a printed edition for many years. It's online edition is an excellent source of current information and trends within the world of environmental activism.
- Dolphin researcher, George Elston, has bequeathed to Interspecies.com a neurophone system. Invented by Patrick Flannigan in conjunction with Apple Computer Labs and John Lilly, the audio system of hydrophone, processor, and special headphones essentially permits a human being to hear high frequency sounds (up to 100 khz). The Neurophone utilizes technology similar to the new generation of hearing aids that permit totally deaf people to hear by stimulating the otic nerve directly. We will test the Neurophone on an expedition to the central BC coast in October, to work with Pacific white-sided dolphins.
5 The Passing of Ben White
Ben White was one of the most effective animal protectors of our time. His genius was tactical, possessing a unique ability to simplify complex issues to cast a spotlight onto public consciousness. His bottom line was to uncover the brutality that always seems to arise whenever humans (Ben referred to them as the usual gang of greedy males) feel a need to kill, eliminate, bulldoze, cut, and market the other beings that inhabit this planet with us. He is probably best known for inventing and leading the "turtles", at the celebrated WTO debacle in Seattle. Another campaign of his, getting jailed and then leading a very public hunger strike, showed the world the violent methods that US Oceanariums employ to capture dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. It directly resulted in an end to the capture of dolphins in US waters.
Ben White had been a member of the board of directors of Interspecies.com for the past 3 years. Perhaps because of our own focus on art for nature, I viewed him primarily as a master of polemical theater. This description always brought a smile to his face, because he once confided to me that he served as a clown for animals. If so, it was a dangerous, world-shaking kind of clowning. To me, his work was in the spirit of Abby Hoffman, Walt Whitman, Emma Goldman.
Ben was my friend. Although we both traveled a lot, He and I did our best to have lunch together 2 times a month for the past 4 or 5 years. I got to experience his intellectual curiosity, his love of literature, his keen interest in tree morphology, his studies to build a home for himself and his children utilizing Japanese and indigenous forms. We both attended the International Whale Commission's meeting in Japan three summers ago. Afterward I led him to a remote hot springs village deep in the mountains. For two days we got to walk the streets wearing our bathrobes and carrying our towels back and forth from our little bamboo Inn to the famous healing waters, where we shared the bath mostly with old people we soon learned were survivors of the Hiroshima bomb. The memory of Ben smiling broadly, dressed in his woolen Hapi jacket over a Ukata bathrobe, and pointing at the ceramic penises for sale in every store, is the vision I carry of Ben White.
Ben died last Saturday of cancer. For the past two weeks I'd visited his bedside four times to play an Indian raga, and watch him slowly recede before my eyes. The last time, Friday night, he was breathing at such a slow rate, I couldn't imagine his body getting any oxygen. It was difficult to play that evening. Trying to figure out how to introduce exotic sound into that silent room took all of my musical experience and strength. Yet despite the fact that everyone present knew that death was already living in the room, Ben managed a weak smile midway through the performance. I like to think of it as a sign from Ben the intrepid geographer, Ben the canny ambassador, offering a hint that the other side is as interesting as the life he was already exiting.
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