Knowledge

Introduction

Contestations over knowledge by different actors underpins the complexities of nature-society relationships. In this final blogpost, I address the role of knowledge regarding cetacean captivity in society’s drive for cetacean protection.

Cetacean Captivity – for Science, Conservation, Protection and Funds

Cetacean captivity sites commodify nature and normalize human superiority. However, media representations promoting cetacean freedom such as Blackfish (2013) and Free Willy (1993) – which was ironically portrayed by a captive orca – have ingrained new use values for cetaceans in the Anthropocene (Neo and Ngiam, 2014). Today, cetaceans are regarded by scientists and urban dwellers as high value (emotional, economic and scientific) commodities to be protected at all cost from harmful unnatural captivity as shown in the video below.

Despite overwhelming global resistance to captivity, concerns over global “ecological crisis”, cetacean preservation, and funding “conservation research” legitimizes such actions. Wild cetaceans are thus constructed as vulnerable and needing captivity.

While dangers of hydrocarbons are obvious, waste – mostly plastics – from urban centres find its way into oceans and pose real hazards to cetacean life. Oceanic gyres congregate large amounts of plastic into garbage patches that coincides with cetacean migratory routes which eventually get ingested by them.

Image 1: Left: Distribution of gyres and garbage patches (CityLab, 2016). Top Right: Plastics found in the stomach of a minke whale, which might have mistaken the debris as food. (Mail Online, 2008). Bottom Right: Plastic bag entangling a dolphin (EIA International, n.d.).

Food security concerns in urban centres have also implicated cetaceans, like dolphins, in supertrawler gillnets (Lewison et al, 2004). Unsustainable urban consumption patterns of seafood and plastic, and its resulting flotilla waste (mercury and dioxins included), solidifies the argument for captivity.

Image 2: Hector Dolphins caught within gillnets because of industrial fishing aimed at meeting demands of urban populations. (Hectordolphin.com, n.d.).

Hence, contamination of “pristine” nature becomes a key argument that proponents of captivity have employed to buttress their claims for safety and science within tanks given the dangers of the wild (Neo and Ngiam, 2014). Therefore, human activities that infringe into, and circulate debris in oceans reduces the possibility of in situ captivity – intertwining “natural” ocean ecosystems with urban activities.

Forgotten cetaceans – those that dwell outside normative concepts of “whales and dolphins”

Also seen in the video, captivity is afforded to popular tameable cetaceans, like orcas and bottlenose, due to economic rewards. In comparison, Irrawaddy dolphins are much more vulnerable and can go extinct should hydropower plans, constitutive of urban energy security agendas, concretize their freshwater riverine home in the Mekong (IUCN, n.d.). However, governments and captivity centres pay little attention to scientific knowledge produced to protect the Irrawaddy.

Image 3: Governments in favour of “green” hydropower dam construction (Grundy-Warr, GE4232 Lecture Slides, 2016).

Often, knowledge that contributes to “sustainability” and economic growth is valued over conservation science. Thus, biasness in global captivity sites reinforces productions of (specific) popular knowledges – revolving around normative ideas of interactive cetaceans – that possess valuable economic value. This condemns popular cetaceans to unnatural spaces that alter their natures (Neo and Ngiam, 2014) and similarly, condemning unpopular cetaceans to ever-increasing degradation of marine spaces. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Conclusion – what does it mean for cetaceans?

To conclude, human-cetacean relationships globally is predominantly focused on commoditization. Cetaceans are merely numbers to the IUCN, Icelandic whale watching companies, Greenpeace, marine captive sites and urban humans (Brakes and Bass, 2011). Cetacean knowledges are produced with the intent of capitalising on these numbers – to increase tourism sales, reduce fatalities, conserve numbers and so on.

Despite urban emotions, cultures and knowledges that recognize and revere cetaceans as “humanlike”, humans still perceive cetaceans to be outside their sphere of existence. If cetaceans were humans, protection efforts would not revolve around commoditization ideas of eco-tourism or marine parks, as it would be “inhumane”. Newell’s assertion that capitalism “is taken as a background ‘given’” (2014: 5) enforces that cetaceans are merely components of the global neoliberal economy. Human-cetacean relationships in the past three blogposts are (re)produced by capitalism. To rely on capitalism as a framework in resolving issues merely shifts environmental devastation elsewhere. Getting to the crux of such global environmental problems means revolutionizing current systems supporting our daily lives.

[571 Words]

References

Brakes, P. and Bass, C. (2011). From Conservation to Protection: Charting a New Conservation Ethic for Cetaceans. In: P. Brakes and M. Simmonds, ed., Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions, 1st ed. London: Earthscan, pp.179-187.

CityLab. (2016). Watch How Five Great Garbage Patches Float Around the World. [online] Available at: http://www.citylab.com/weather/2016/07/ocean-garbage-patches-animation-model-noaa/493007/ [Accessed 30 Oct. 2016].

EIA International. (2015). Stemming the tide of plastic bags choking the world's oceans – EIA International. [online] Available at: https://eia-international.org/stemming-the-tide-of-plastic-bags-choking-the-worlds-oceans [Accessed 29 Oct. 2016].

Hector's and Maui's Dolphin SOS. (n.d.). Harmful Fishing Methods. [online] Available at: http://www.hectorsdolphins.com/harmful-fishing-methods.html [Accessed 30 Oct. 2016].

Iucnredlist.org. (n.d.). Orcaella brevirostris (Irrawaddy Dolphin, Snubfin Dolphin). [online] Available at: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/15419/0 [Accessed 29 Oct. 2016].

Lewison, R., Crowder, L., Read, A. and Freeman, S. (2004). Understanding impacts of fisheries bycatch on marine megafauna. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 19(11), pp.598-604.

Mail Online. (2008). Banish the bags: The amazing picture of 2lb of plastic poison found in whale's stomach. [online] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-519832/Banish-bags-The-amazing-picture-2lb-plastic-poison-whales-stomach.html [Accessed 29 Oct. 2016].

Neo, H. and Ngiam, J. (2014). Contesting captive cetaceans: (il)legal spaces and the nature of dolphins in urban Singapore. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(3), pp.235-254.

Newell, P. (2011). The elephant in the room: Capitalism and global environmental change. Global Environmental Change, 21(1), pp.4-6.

World Wildlife Fund. (n.d.). Irrawaddy Dolphin | Species | WWF. [online] Available at: http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/irrawaddy-dolphin [Accessed 29 Oct. 2016].

YouTube. (2014). Fate of orcas in captivity at SeaWorld and other marine parks. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-dEC3p4xDw&list=WL&index=8 [Accessed 30 Oct. 2016].