Beluga Whale Campaign

Churchill River Estuary, Manitoba

August, 1992

By David Nickarz

In 1992 I was 20 years old when I took part in my first direct action campaign. I traveled to Churchill, Manitoba with four other activists to stop the capture of Beluga Whales for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. We were opposed to the use of wild animals in captivity, so we decided to do our best to stop the capture.

In August of every year the Beluga Whales would return to the calving grounds in the Churchill River estuary, on Hudson’s Bay. The whales would be close enough to the town of Churchill for people to come out in boats and attempt a capture.

We read old news reports talking about how the whale chasers would jump on the whale and ride it while it tried to get away. It was like a rodeo to them, and just as cruel.

There were also reports of whales dying because of ‘capture shock’. The stress of being violently removed from their family group and forced into captivity actually caused the whales to die.

In the St. Lawrence Seaway the Beluga whales had to deal with heavy pollution and their numbers are dropping and now are estimated to be only about 1000. In the early 20^th century the government put a bounty on the Belugas because they thought that the whales competed with the fishery. As a contrast, the Hudson’s Bay population was a healthier 25,000 and we wanted to keep it that way. The way we saw it, human kind had done enough damage to this species. It was time for reparations, not to continue to reduce their populations for our amusement.

There was no doubt in our minds that the capture needed to be stopped. We took it upon ourselves to put an end to this barbaric interference with wildlife.

Animals are not ours to

eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse in any way

A decision had to be made. I remember sitting in a meeting with the local animal rights group and arguing for a direct action campaign—getting ourselves up to where the action was and stopping the despoilers of our wildlife. I was new to this group and didn’t hold much influence. Some of them were skeptical.

Why spend all that money to get people up there and do what? Get a photo opportunity? How exactly did we intend to stop the capture—ram their boats with our own?

Being violent would look bad on camera. The media would be there to cover the confrontation, but they wouldn’t hesitate to portray us in a bad light. We didn’t intend to give them any reason to.

To get our boat to Churchill, we had to ship it by rail from Winnipeg, which would cost a few hundred dollars. Getting people to Churchill involved driving ten hours to Thompson and taking a train for the last 350 kilometers, as there were no roads. Each ticket on the train was $120.00. Accommodations, food and fuel would have to be factored into the cost too.

Our group was small and didn’t have much money. With all these expenses the campaign could cost more than two thousand dollars and we couldn’t guarantee results.

Those of us who wanted to go argued that opposing this capture required being in the place where it was happening. Being 1500 kilometers away from the action in Winnipeg wasn’t going to stop anything, no matter how much noise we made. We would be seen as armchair quarter-backs at best.

In the end the call for direct action won out and we were on our way. I was allowed to join the campaign because I could pay my own travel expenses. Five men made up the direct action team. James, Bill, Jonathon and I were from Winnipeg. [Baltimore] was with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and he hailed from Baltimore, Maryland.

Donations and offers of help started pouring in.

Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had offered us the use of an inflatable boat, but we would have to drive out to Vancouver to get it. We didn’t have the time to drive 36 hours each way to pick it up or the money to have it shipped, so we thanked him but turned him down.

I raised some money for my expenses and my good friend Laura gave me a big, wool sweater to keep me warm.

The Media

“We will take our motor boat and save the whales from a life in a concrete prison.”

How this would be achieved was beyond us, but made bold and decisive statements to the media. It all sounded great on camera and in print, but in reality we would have to make it up as we went along.

Direct action was relatively new to Manitoba and the rural North.

The media were also keen on this story because there was the possibility of violence --violence on the whales for one and the chance of violence between the capture team and the animal activists. It would be more likely that we would be the recipient of violence, as is true in most direct actions.

I gave this very little thought as we jumped in the old, beat-up van and began the long drive to Thompson. I was just interested in getting there and doing my best for the whales.

During the drive up I decided to become vegan. My van mates were all vegan and encouraged me to do the same. I had become vegetarian the year before and it made sense and was the next logical step as a compassionate consumer. From that day on I decided not to buy or consume animal products.

After a bleak 10 hours on the road we arrived in Thompson we got some bad news. [did we read this in the newspaper?] The capture team arrived early in Churchill and had already captured four whales were in the process of testing them for parasites. The whales with too many parasites wouldn’t likely survive the stress of the flight back to Chicago and their prison in the Shedd Aquarium. If this was the case then the whales would be returned to the water and new ones would be captured.

If the whales were kept, then our efforts would have been wasted. If we turned back and some of the whales weren’t kept, then we would have missed our chance to intervene.

We took a chance and continued on our way to Churchill. Our gamble payed off when two of the whales had to be released due to high levels of parasites. They would have to capture two more, and this was our chance to take action.

The last 350 km to Churchill had to be traveled by rail because there were no roads. Flying was out of the question since the fare from Winnipeg would have been $1500 per person—way beyond our means. The rail line was so badly maintained that the average speed was a meager 25 kilometers per hour—so very much slower than our drive to Thompson. We were half convinced that the railway had slowed the train down to thwart our efforts.

During the ride up a woman working on the train approached us and asked us if we were from Greenpeace—to her mind everyone who was an animal activist must be from Greenpeace—so we told her ‘no’. It was the truth.

She then said “We don’t like people coming up here and telling us what to do.”

This was our first indication of the local opposition to our action. We would encounter more.

We arrived at the Churchill train station and saw the old northern town. The population only numbered around 600. In the past, it was home to the Rocket Research Range and numbered in the thousands at its peak.

We rented a truck and looked for somewhere to fuel up. We came upon a gas station with a sign in the window saying “Animal rights actors go home”. We ignored the directive, filled up the truck and cheerfully paid for our gas while the attendant watched us cautiously. I was starting to get nervous about the potential danger of being in this town.

We got a room at the Churchill motel and hunkered down until our boat got into town. I came prepared.

“Look what I brought!” I said. I pulled a bag of trail mix out of my suitcase and proudly showed it to my roommates. Sadly, everyone else had the same idea and presented their own bag of trail mix. This town wasn’t friendly to vegans, so our diet consisted largely of trail mix for five days. I couldn’t eat it for years afterwards without cringing.

We went to the motel eatery for a meal of dry toast and fruit and encountered the big man in town. He was in charge of the captures and was host to the aquarium staff who were in town.

We were informed that the boat had arrived, but we could only retrieve it on certain days of the week. We thought we were still flying under the town’s radar after telling our train attendant that we were not from Greenpeace. We were mistaken.

Our motel room phone rang and Bill picked it up. It was Bill’s wife inquiring about how we were doing.

“How did you find out which room we were in?” asked Bill.

He listened for the response and finished his call. We all were silent, waiting for Bill’s explanation.

“She told the operator she was looking for the animal rights guys and was patched through to this motel room,” Bill said. Clearly, everyone in town knew who we were and where we were.

My anxiety level increased.

Anne, an older woman representing a wildlife conservation group was also in town to monitor the situation, but wasn’t going to try to stop the capture. It was hastily decided that we would meet and chat about the campaign at the local bar. We were approached by a blind-drunk man who staggered up to us and asked “Are you the fuckers from Greenpeace that want to fuck up the capture?”

Again with the Greenpeace thing.

We decided that the bar wasn’t the best venue for a meeting and left.

By this time I was scared shitless. I was way outside my comfort zone for the first time away from my suburban lifestyle where I was always very close to home and safety. I was very far away from home and there were people who wanted to see us hurt.

I was lobbying hard to go home on the train that we just arrived on. Our next opportunity to leave was five days later. Luckily, my colleagues talked me down and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. I had decided that I could stay up all night worrying, or I could just let it go and get a good sleep. I chose sleep.

The next day our boat arrived at the railway storage facility. We were frustrated to learn that it was closed. After many phone calls, we found out that it didn’t open until the next day, which would further delay our plan of action.

During our wait to get our boat, we donned wet suits and went to swim with the whales at Cape Merry historical park. We were excited at the prospect of swimming with the whales. After enthusiastically wading in waist-deep, a park officer called us out of the water and informed us that the tidal currents were too strong for swimming. We had come dangerously close to being swept out to sea.

When we finally got our late asses out to the next day’s capture, three of us stayed on shore at the holding tank where first two whales were kept. The other two went in the boat to intervene in the capture. We soon found out that we had missed the last two captures by just minutes. These two whales would later pass the parasite test and be kept.

Our boat pulled up to shore and our two colleagues jumped out to confront the capture team. We didn’t want endanger the whales while they were being transferred to the holding tank.

The local RCMP was there, as well as the media—cameras rolling. We also video taped the action with our own camera. The captured whales were being held in a large tank, which we later learned was used to hold whale oil from when this same spot had been used for killing whales. The newly captured whales were hoisted by crane and harness into the holding tank where so many of their kind had been slaughtered.

Our boat was hastily run onto the shore and I was asked to stand guard. The blind-drunk man from the bar was in one of the capture boats a few meters off shore. He was glaring at me. He threw a small anchor attached to a rope near by me on the shore. It landed with a metallic clank on the pebbly beach. He threw it again, this time closer to me.

I was fearful that he would hit me next, so I pulled the boat out of the water on shore and joined my colleagues.

The more experienced activists started a speak-out for the whales. This involves talking loudly about the issue for the sake of the media present and in an attempt to sway the captors. A friend would later tell me that he saw us on CNN. Our action had achieved international media coverage.

The cameras recorded as James and [Baltimore] spoke about the plight of the whales, how it would live the rest of its life in a prison—the walls of the aquarium tank would reflect the whale’s sonar. It would be like making a human live in a box of mirrors. These whales did not belong to us to exploit in this way. They deserved to live their lives in the wild, unmolested by human interference.

This helped to alleviate my fear and brought me back to why I was there-- to save the lives of these whales. If that failed--which it had--we then had to speak out and become an uncompromising advocate on their behalf.

The two, one thousand kilogram whales were being hoisted out of the water with a crane and harness. They were visibly stressed and making high-pitched squeaks and whistles. It is no surprise that they are also known as the Sea Canary.

I engaged one of the captors in a conversation about the whales. I said that it was cruel to take the whales out of their habitat and imprison them in a cement tank. I said it would be like taking one of us and putting us in a box. The whale captor responded by telling me that, “If I were to put you in a box, I wouldn’t give you any air to breathe.”

We were reduced to watching the whales get put into the holding tank. They were then put in special crates and trucked to an airplane for their final destination to Chicago.

We had nothing better to do but follow the trucks and watch from the airport fence as they loaded them on the planes. We watched in silence from behind the fence. After all the bluster and proclamations of action we had failed these whales. They were now destined to live their diminished lives out in a prison. Tourists would gawk at them and pay $12 for the chance.

We left Churchill feeling like failures. We had made grand pronouncements about stopping the capture and we barely made it to the show. We had simply watched the last two whales get taken and put in crates like so much inanimate cargo.

We caught the next train to Thompson and drove the long ride back to Winnipeg. The night we arrived our friends had cooked us a meal and welcomed us like heroes. It was good to be home and appreciated the hot meal that was not trail mix, but we didn’t feel like heroes.

Our depression was deepened when only days after the whales had arrived in Chicago, a veterinarian had given the whales an overdose of antibiotics and killed two of them. We were heartbroken. Our failure had now involved two deaths and we felt directly responsible.

I learned a very hard lesson about activism. We proclaim to save lives and protect those who cannot defend themselves. It’s all well and good to talk about something, but to actually achieve it is much more work. I had to ask myself a serious question at that dark moment. Did I want to continue to be an activist, knowing that I might feel this shitty again? Did I really want to take responsibility for lives that most certainly would be lost? Could I handle the psychological devastation that comes with fighting a losing battle?

---------------------

Shortly after the whales were killed, a federal government committee on marine wildlife had recommended a policy that no more Belugas be captured for export. One of the reasons for the policy change was the efforts of animal welfare groups opposing the captures.

Since the late 1960’s there had been whales captured in Churchill every few years.

In 1998 the Montreal Biodome Aquarium wanted two Belugas for their aquarium. This time the town of Churchill rallied against the captures. The whale watching companies were no longer intimidated by the big man in town who was in charge of the capture team--he had moved away. Even the mayor of Churchill was opposed to the capture based upon the potential negative effects on the whale watching industry.

We readied ourselves to take action all over again, but to our delight, our efforts were not needed. The Biodome avoided the controversy and chose to get their Belugas from Russian waters. It was a partial victory, but there was one more place in our world that whales were left to live their lives without fear of human exploitation.

Our actions helped to stop Beluga Whale captures since 1992! Our proximate failure had become a long term success. We had generated enough media attention on the issue and had swayed government policy. The local community had overcome intimidation and become advocates for the whales.

In 1999 I had the chance to stop in Chicago and visit the Shedd Aquarium. I wanted to see those whales again, face-to-face. I watched the two remaining whales through the glass while they swam around what was most likely their final home.

Standing among the gawking, noisy tourists I quietly apologized to the whales.

Egyptian Revolution

The revolution in Egypt has been capturing my attention lately. It’s new and exciting to think of what can happen for the people of a country who have lived under a US-backed dictator for 30 years.

The protests have been quite well attended and fairly peaceful--at least from the side of the anti-government people. The police and hired thugs have no problem maiming and killing people to further their aims. I have mixed feelings of hope and confusion about this.

The hope is that the less violent side wins and helps form a new government that reflects the needs of the people first. This would lead to more peaceful relations with the surrounding countries. That’s the hope.

My confusion arises from how you can let someone like Mubarak breathe the same air as you knowing he tortured and killed your loved ones. He’s doing it right now to some of the protesters that were arrested two weeks ago. Given the chance he would have everyone in Tahrir square put to death.

The million plus protest on Tuesday, February 1 could have marched to Mubarak’s home and made his wish of dying on Egyptian soil come true.

I guess we’ll see if my hope or confusion prevails.

Ask a Sea Shepherd Crew Member

Part II - Animal Planet

By David Nickarz

Tenth Engineer

This is the second instalment of my article on what it’s like being a Sea Shepherd crew member. I’ve spent twelve years volunteering for the Sea Shepherds. I’ve been on 8 campaigns in total, four of which have been Antarctic Campaigns. The first Antarctic Campaign had someone filming on board, but since we didn’t find the whaling fleet, nothing came of it. The second one I joined was the 2006-07 campaign Operation Leviathan where we had two confrontations with the whalers. There was a documentary film team on board that campaign which produced the film At the Edge of the World. It is the most accurate and beautiful depiction of our campaigns I have ever seen. I highly recommend seeing it.

I was on board for both Operation Musashi (2008-09) and Operation Waltzing Matilda (2009-10), both of which had Animal Planet film teams on board. This corresponds to Whale Wars season 2 and 3. This blog entry was inspired by the following question in the comments section of the first blog entry. (see archives).

“I'd like to know if you've noticed any change in atmosphere onboard since Animal Planet film crews started coming along. Is it intrusive at all?”

I think the second part of the question can be answered easily. Yes, it was intrusive. It’s not that we haven’t had any other media on board—every campaign involves some form of filming. Animal Planet sends about 8-10 crew on board who film every aspect of ship life. They set up cameras and microphones in key places around the ship including the bridge, mess and deck. You can assume everything you say or do in these common areas is going to be recorded.

It’s not like we aren’t warned about this ahead of time. I want to be clear about this up front. You have a choice as a crew member—stay or go. It’s really that simple. We are told before the campaign starts about Animal Planet and their work.

They have a job to do. Their job is to film the campaign for their parent company and make money through advertising. We accept this arrangement because our organisation gets the exposure of being on a popular and award winning reality TV show. More importantly the whaling issue gets out to millions of people around the world. This has helped to put pressure on the government of Japan and the corporations that are involved in poaching whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

Many of the crew come from activist backgrounds. I can speak for a few of them when I say we are not used to having our actions portrayed as they are on what is referred to as ‘reality TV’. After the first season of Whale Wars, one of the high ranking crew members was not impressed with how the show portrayed our ship and crew. He expected it to be more of a documentary film.

I could go on and on about ‘reality TV’ but I won’t. If you’ve seen it, you know what it’s about.

I had a bit of a “do-you-know-who-I-am?” moment the first time I was asked a question by the AP crew on Operation Musashi. There was an inane argument about modifying the bridge wing bulk head to allow for easier filming of the deck crew. There were strong opinions about it from everyone partly because the question was asked by the producer along with a cameraman recording the answer. When it got to me I was pissed off. I said it was a non-issue and cut the interview short.

I don’t know what I expected. I was a veteran crew member with years of experience and I (wrongly) assumed that I would be treated differently. Maybe I had visions of long conversations about my previous exploits on past campaigns, with the appropriate music in the background and everyone hanging on my every word.

Like I said, it was a “do-you-know-who-I-am?” moment.

Animal Planet filmed the action on board and interviewed the crew about it afterwards. The deck crew got most of the attention since they drove the small boats into battle with the whalers. The bridge crew were the next most TV-worthy. The galley and engine room were the least filmed. They would come down to the engine room (usually off-limits to everyone but engine room crew) only when there was a mechanical or electrical problem. Then we would have the added burden of fixing the problem in front of cameras.

As you may have seen from the show, some of the crew were filmed in their cabin as they are waking up. That’s pretty intrusive.

Atmosphere

Unlike campaigns in the past where there was media on board, the difference is the fact that you know this is all going to be on TV in a few months. Every mistake, misspoken word and argument will be out there for millions of people to see. You try to be on your best behaviour, but things happen that you can’t take back.

I think my only appearances on the show was when I was commenting on the ice scraping against the hull at the first few episodes of season 2. We were stuck in the ice with the Steve Irwin, which did not have an ice class hull. There was the very real possibility of having a hull breach and the ship sinking. One of my scenes was me speaking calmly about the predicament. The other one was me exclaiming “Who the fuck is driving this thing?” as I went to check for damage.

I wish I had chosen my words more carefully.

Even though it felt like it was too intense at times, I understand the role of AP on board. Over the last three years they are the reason why we have reached so many people. Our campaigns are stronger because of the donations and volunteer work of thousands of people who would not have known about us if they had not watched us on TV.

Everyone understands what it means to have them on board. Individually, some of the Animal Planet crew were quite a chore.

To be continued…