Vegetarian Star

The recent deaths of three killer whales at SeaWorld certainly do nothing to appease animal rights activists who already view the marine park as an unsafe environment for the whales and people.

In the past 4 months, there have been three deaths–a 25 year old female, a 20 year old female and a 12 year old male. The exact cause of the most recent death is still under investigation, while officials have determined that the 20 year old died from complications giving birth.

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“Given what we’ve known for generations now about the population numbers and general state of whales and other marine mammals, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to continue to allow whaling.”

—Alexandra Cousteau, environmentalist, daughter of oceanographer Philippe Cousteau and granddaughter of French explorer and filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau, on her whaling stance to This Dish Is Vegetarian in an exclusive interview.

If there’s anything we know about whales, it’s that their populations are declining everywhere.  The number of Antarctic whales, for example, is less than 10 percent of what is was before whaling began. Eastern Grey Whales were once three to five times more numerous in the Pacific Ocean than they are today. And even the minke whale, who scientists once thought were robust and sustainable with hundreds of thousands in numbers, have dropped from about 43,000 to 15,000 based on a recent count in Iceland waters.

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Bob Barker made an appearance on Mike Huckabee‘s talk show, The Huckabee Show, along with Chuck Swift, captain of the MV Bob Barker, the anti-whaling ship named after the former Price Is Right host.

Both men discuss international whaling treaties and Sea Shepherd’s work. Barker says the goal is to sink the Japanese whalers economically and claims this past year was especially successful because the whalers lost money.

Barker is big supporter of Sea Shepherd, having donated several million dollars to the cause.

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Pete Bethune

Whaling activist Pete Bethune‘s legal activities have left his family, which include two adolescent daughters, at home anxiously awaiting updates on his case, and one of his teenager girls has spoken with the press. Despite the long stay away from home, the girls say it’s almost normal for them to be away from him for long periods of time, given the nature of his career. And 13 year old Alycia Bethune would like to follow in her dad’s footsteps.

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Jack Hanna, who has been vocally supportive of SeaWorld since the incident involving a trainer being killed by a whale at the park, remains positive about the organization.

In an interview with DIS Unplugged, the zookeeper shared his thoughts on the park and animal safety.

On continuing programs at SeaWorld despite trainer deaths:
Does an accident or a death at NASCAR or Indy or even sometimes in certain sports around the world hesitate people in going? The answer’s no. Not just for that, Dawn (Brancheau), whose memorial service is this weekend, gave her life doing something – as her family said, what she loved to do. She loved to educate people. The millions of people this young woman has educated over the years is phenomenal.

On the possibility of future tragedies:
Things happen, yes. Will things happen again? Of course they will. It could be the Columbus Zoo. It could be any zoo throughout the country – the 220 zoos and aquariums. Because we work with safety of our visitor first and safety of our animals – that’s our number one goal, but could something happen? Of course it could happen.

On more government regulations for educational programs at parks like SeaWorld:
Yeah… well, I hope they don’t change anything at SeaWorld. That’s my opinion. I would think people in Washington would have other things to worry about right now. Was Dawn’s death a tragedy? Sure it was. It’s incredible, one death, anybody’s death is a tragedy. But think about other things that are tragedies: the war, the economy, job loss, I could go on and on. You’d think in Washington they’d consider working on things like that that are a little more important than trying to figure out… you know, SeaWorld does it the best there is, period.

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Bryan Adams says being sexy is the most important aspect of animal activism.

“Being sexy helps when you’re trying to do anything!” the Canadian rocker told Metro News. “Seriously, that is all PR nonsense,” Adams said of the famous annual PETA lists. “What’s important is getting people involved in helping the cause, so if that is what it takes, fine.”

His good lucks may or may not have helped him in numerous campaigns, including Japanese whale hunting and asking KFC to slaughter chickens in an approve more humane way.

But when it came to distributing postcards at his concerts that urged countries to create a sanctuary for Southern Antarctic Whales, a pretty face only went so far.

“We distributed postcards at my concerts in order to persuade countries supporting the whaling industry to vote yes to the sanctuary. We succeeded and had lots of fun doing it. But in one case, the government of a small Polynesian island wrote back pleading with us not to send anymore postcards, because they couldn’t handle the volume.”

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