What brings you to Portland?
I’m on the Free Willy Foundation board, and we’re doing what we promised to do, bring Keiko as close to freedom as his scientist caretakers will allow - maybe by the spring or summer of 2000. He’s a fighter and he wants to live; he’s doing well, his health is good and he can feed on his own. We’ve filmed wild orcas less than five miles away from him, and we’re trying to identify his family by vocalization or DNA. Every pod of whales has a different dialect, and if we can match his voiceprint and he has memories of vocalization as a baby, we can match him with his family. DNA would be much more difficult.
What’s the biggest threat to the world’s oceans today?
There’s more than one.
Dumping. Anything we dump into the ocean - heavy metals, or chemicals - is a real threat. There are places where it’s so bad that aquatic reproduction is affected. The beluga whales at the mouth of the St. Lawrence are heavily toxic and show a decline in ability to reproduce. They’re the canary in the cage, and we’re not paying attention.
Estuaries. We have to protect estuaries, mangroves, and marshlands where the majority of marine life spends some time finding protection from predators, finding food, and growing to the point where they can venture into the open sea.
Fisheries management. We’re fishing everything left and right and there’s a perception we’re providing humanity more protein from the ocean. But the stocks are being depleted at a very fast pace...It has the making of a crop failure. The fishing industry is not to blame. It’s people putting their investments to work. There’s a financial imposition due to the need to pay for a ship in six or seven years. We need to start farming and stop hunting. Like the Green movement, we need a “blue revolution” that will allow the growth of aquaculture farming.
Where are the most polluted areas?
Caspian and Aral Seas and the Mediterranean. Those seas are big lakes with no big tides or currents. We’re still looking at seas as garbage cans. There’s not much one can do about the Caspian Sea, with people still fighting all around it. But I grew up on the Mediterranean, and I’ve seen my own back yard being trashed.
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