Naomi Rose, 44, is a marine mammal scientist with the Humane Society of the United States, specializing in dolphins.
What is your role in dolphin protection?
I've been working with HSUS since 1993. At that time, we decided to confront the conventional wisdom of the display of whales and dolphins. When you look beneath the veneer of public display, there's a lot of stuff that the public is not really aware of. We're trying very hard to educate the public.
Compared to the public display industry - use Sea World as the representative of that - we don't have as much reach, as much money, as much influence on Capitol Hill. We're fighting a rear-guard action. I feel like we're making some progress. We've managed to indicate to more and more people that at least there are two sides to the story.
It seems as if one of the big problems is putting dolphins into captivity so people can swim with them.
There are several layers to this. Some of my colleagues would like to think it's black and white. There are some aspects of it that are worse than others.
I don't think there's a lot of debate that capture from the wild is a bad thing. The science is really building on that. Dolphins are very susceptible to capture stress - it can manifest as heart attacks and catatonia. They can just die. It's called "capture myopathy." It depends on the method of capture.
The thing about dolphins is they seem to be susceptible to it no matter what the method. Some have more tolerance for it. Others are just nervous Nellies. It's pretty much agreed in the scientific literature that capture is not in the best interest of the animal.
Is that changing the way tourist businesses use dolphins?
Capture is happening less in some parts of the world. It's happening more in other parts of the world, unfortunately. There's a lot of money in dolphins. An individual dolphin, especially once it's been trained, can get as much as $100,000. There's a huge incentive to do something even when it's harmful to the animals. A single orca can be worth $2 or $3 million. They're like drugs. It's not chump change.
This is a business, a very lucrative one, and the dolphins really are commodities. Considering that most people want to swim with dolphins because they love them, I wonder how many really think about the hard financial aspect of this.
What about dolphins who are used to captivity?
Once they're in captivity and acclimated to it, that's where the real debate begins. Knowing dolphins in the wild as I do, I don't think the captive environment is in their best interest. Some adapt pretty well. They seem "happy." When you interact with a very curious, alert dolphin, you'll be like "What's the problem?" Others might be aggressive - there's been a lot of people bitten and smacked around. They're big, they maintain their own social hierarchy through biting, and many of them are covered in small scars.
Then there's the trade, the fact that once a dolphin is in captivity, it might be shipped off to a country like China, where standards are very poor, laws are nonexistent, and corruption is rife. It's happened - several dolphins from the U.S. have gone to China. God knows what's happened to them. I think it's wrong on an ethical level, but also bad for them to take them from their home and put them in a box.
Does it harm dolphins if you swim with them in the wild?
There are two kinds of open-water swims. There's the kind where you're swimming with captive dolphins who have been trained to follow boats. They are heavily habituated to the trainers, to the boats, to food. They're not really free, they're not rehabilitated, they don't know the area, so they basically just go back to their pens.
When you actually go and swim with wild dolphins, you're potentially harassing wild groups of animals. They are very tolerant of human beings, and they are by nature curious. However, it's not unknown for wild dolphins to assert their need for privacy. People have been attacked, and in one case there was a death.
I also think that there are some situations where you're reliably going to find dolphins because they're resting - you're basically going into their bedrooms and waking them up from a nap. There's research that is showing that too many boats or too much engine noise alone can harass them and add to that level of stress.
When people ask me about doing this, the only thing I can say is "go to where you know there are dolphins. Go swimming from the beach, not from a boat. If you encounter a dolphin, that's wonderful." In my opinion that's the only time you're not invading, and if they choose to approach you, that's great.
What about just watching dolphins, not swimming?
There are places where dolphin-watching from boats is very popular, and if it's done with some consideration, in a country where laws mandate that kind of behavior, you can watch dolphins responsibly.
And what you see can be just amazing! Look at it from the dolphins' point of view. Isn't it nice that you can watch them playing outside? You don't have to go in their house. The water is their house.
What are some guidelines that an ethical dolphin-watching tour should follow?
- Keep a 100-meter approach distance
- Don't approach the pod head-on or from behind - give them a chance to leave if they want to.
- Don't cut off mothers from calves.
- Don't drive through the middle of the pod.
- Don't change engine speed abruptly.
- Enter and leave the area slowly.
- Getting in the water with them is always pretty much counterindicated.
What about dolphins born in captivity?
If they were captive-born, you can argue that that's all they've ever known, but there's not been a lot of research on this, and I think they suffer persistent stress because they're confined. They're designed to be completely free, like birds are. The biggest enclosure in the world is just a tiny fraction of the sea range of an average dolphin.
Maybe it would be a good thing to take care of the animals that are in captivity right now, and just let it fade away as a practice. There are probably some wildlife species that take well to captivity, but dolphins are not designed to just hang around, which is all they do in captivity. I'm being a bit species-ist, but for biological reasons.
How did you get into studying dolphins?
I was a kid and I was really into Jacques Cousteau specials, and he did a dolphin special when I was about 13. I just loved watching them swim, and I decided that everything I did from then on would be about studying dolphins. I just stuck with it. I ended up studying killer whales (orcas) in the wild for my dissertation, and that's when I really realized there was something wrong with captivity. I would study orcas in the wild, and then I had some friends who worked for a public display facility and I would see the orcas there, and that's when I realized that there was something wrong there.
I think there's a point where we sort of have to decide how much our own personal satisfaction takes primacy over the welfare of the animals we claim to love so much. Maybe it's best for the animals and for me, if the only way I experience them is in books and great wildlife documentaries and so forth. I realize it's easy for me to say that, but there's always going to be more people in the world, and at some point we can't all see dolphins in the wild.
What is so special about dolphins?
Sometimes they do welcome you in. You sometimes see a solitary dolphin who leaves a pod and starts appearing on beaches, swimming around and approaching people voluntarily. Mostly it's bottlenose dolphins, but other species do it too. They always get a name. The one death involved a solitary sociable dolphin, and two young men abused the privilege by pouring beer down his blowhole. The dolphin was just saying "leave me alone," but he smashed his rostrum into one man's chest and the man died.
That's a pretty unique characteristic of dolphins. These are incredibly special animals, and there's a legitimate mystery and magic to them. When they voluntarily approach you, great, but when you push it, is that really love or is it selfishness? In the end, it really is an ethical decision.
