(PA) Dolphin capture

[Guest guest]

PANAMA NEWS

 

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_13/issue_09/news_special.html

 

Fundacion Humanitas's Celma Moncada, charged with criminal

defamation, fights accusers with high-profile support

 

Ocean Embassy files charge, dolphin capture foes won't back down

 

by Eric Jackson

Volume 13, Number 9

May 6 - 19, 2007

 

Ocean Embassy Panama has charged one of the principal critics of its

plans to capture dolphins in Panama, Dr. Celma Moncada of the animal

welfare group Fundacion Humanitas, with criminal defamation (calumnia

e injuria). It seems, however, that Moncada, rather than being cowed,

is visibly agitated and striking back.

 

The defamation complaint against Moncada is most unusual in that the

falsehood that it alleges is not about some verifiable matter of

historic fact, but about what is presently intended about something

projected for the future. She and the Fundacion Humanitas claim that

Ocean Embassy seeks to capture dolphins in Panamanian waters for

export to facilities abroad, and Ocean Embassy says that's a lie.

 

In response, Moncada has filed an unusual criminal complaint of her

own with prosecutors, alleging that the company is committing fraud

and conducting a deceptive publicity campaign as defined under this

country's generally ignored consumer protection laws. " They say

they're investing $400 million, and they're not, " she told The Panama

News en route to the Defensoria del Pueblo after filing her complaint.

 

Ocean Embassy has consistently used a broad brush to paint its

critics as a collection of wild extremists, but that's a hard sell

when it comes to the two organizations that are at the heart of the

opposition to its plans, the Fundacion Humanitas and the Fundacion

San Francisco de Asis. The latter is the Catholic animal welfare

organization, which takes its inspiration from the legendary friend

of animals, St. Francis of Assisi. The Fundacion Humanitas also

honors the saint on his special day, usually in a ceremony in a local

park in which a priest sprinkles holy water on the pet dogs, cats,

boa constrictors, parrots and even more unusual animals that people

bring. They conduct an annual fundraiser in which people dress their

dogs in a silly costumes competition. They conduct educational

activities in schools, teaching kids about how to care for different

pets and advocating a sense of ethics in dealings with animals.

 

A petite blonde conservatively dressed for dealings in public

offices, Dr. Moncada didn't look like the stereotype of a terrorist

leader as she went about her business that day. But before a

representative of the nation's ombudswoman she spoke rapidly and

angrily about what she characterized as a deceptive campaign against

herself, her organization and Panama's dolphins.

 

Backing up Moncada at the prosecutor's office and later the

Defensoria del Pueblo was someone arguably closer to the profile that

Ocean Embassy would like to project, the Earth Island Institute's

Richard O'Barry, who was once the most famous dolphin trainer of them

all but has since dedicated most of his adult life to opposing the

capture of marine mammals and their display at theme parks and

aquariums. About the criminal defamation charge against Moncada, he

said that the Ocean Embassy promoters " did the same thing against me

in the Solomon Islands that they're doing to Celma. " To O'Barry, " she's

a national hero. All she's trying to do is keep Panamanian wildlife

in the wild, where it belongs. "

 

Ric O'Barry was the dolphin trainer for the Flipper movie and

television series of the 60s, in which five different dolphins played

the title role. He made a lot of money doing that, and working for

the Miami Seaquarium capturing and training dolphins, but as he

prospered his misgivings grew.

 

In Dolphins With Jobs, an online guidebook for activists, O'Barry

explained his disillusion with the whole concept of what happens to

dolphins at the theme parks:

 

" When we see them at a dolphin show, what do we see? I'll tell you

what I see. I see a dolphin eager to please and ready to do whatever

the trainer wants him to. And why? Because he's hungry. Yes, dolphins

perform tricks because that's when they're fed. One of the first

things a trainer learns about dolphins is that they do not perform

immediately unless they're hungry. This is why dolphins are fed

during the show. You see the trainer blow a whistle and toss them a

fish every time they do something right. And they know what they're

supposed to do because they've been trained to expect a fish when

they get it right. In fact they often start the show themselves when

they get hungry. The trainers call their training method 'positive

reward.' From the dolphins' perspective, however, it's food

deprivation. If the dolphins get it wrong and the whistle is not

blown, that means they won't be getting any fish reward.

 

" If you understand the life of captive dolphins, you also begin to

see the dolphin show with all its clowning around in another way.

It's not clever anymore. It's abusive. When we understand that the

dolphins are doing this because it's their only way of staying alive,

we see it clearly for what it is: dominance. We're making dolphins do

silly things, they would never do in nature, because we're amused by

dominating helpless members of another species. The worst part is

that it teaches children that it's okay to mock and disrespect one of

nature's most fabulous of beings. "

 

After the Flipper TV series had finally run its course Cathy, the

dolphin who had played Flipper more than any other, swam up to

O'Barry one day, took a breath and just stopped breathing. Unlike

humans, dolphins and whales have no involuntary breathing reflex and

O'Barry was convinced that Cathy's death was an intended act of

suicide. It was the last straw for the world's most famous dolphin

trainer.

 

" I got tired of being a professional liar, " he said in his

presentation to the Defensoria. " You have to lie to the public every

day, occasionally you have to lie to the media, and you have to lie

to yourself several times a day. I got tired of that. "

 

But Ocean Embassy's vice president Ted N. Turner, in statements to

The Panama News and other media, impugns O'Barry as " an ex-convict "

and the honesty of the movement that he and Moncada represent: " They

get a chance for fund-raising at Panama's expense and sadly, the

environment, the dolphins and the economy ultimately pays the price

of their actions. "

 

In an interview with La Estrella, Turner gave at least the third

distinct description of Ocean Embassy's intention over the course of

this controversy in Panama:

 

Ocean Embassy Panama is not attempting to install an dolphinarium but

an oceanarium, a tourist center on a grand scale. There we will carry

out activities like rescue and rehabilitation of endangered

animals... and study of animals in their natural habitat and within

the installations. We will provide educational resources to boys and

girls in primary schools....

 

He said that his company has already invested $17 million of the

planned $23 million " first phase " of its Panama project, and that

some years down the pike there will be a major tourist complex that

" represents an investment of $400 to $500 million. "

 

One of the main criticisms that Moncada, O'Barry and other opponents

of dolphin captures make is that that Turner, Ocean Embassy president

Robin Friday and their partner Mark Simmons have an unenviable

history as dolphin catchers, and at the presentation to the

Defensoria they showed a video by ABC's Prime Time television show

about a controversial Solomon Islands dolphin capture in which these

men, doing business as the Wildlife International Network, were

involved for capture and transfer operations. But in La Estrella

Turner asserted that " in 30 years of having collected animals for

zoos in which Robin Friday has participated... we haven't lost one

animal. Not one has died. "

 

That operation documented by ABC, before it was shut down by the

Solomon Islands government, resulted in the export of 28 dolphins to

Parque Nizuc in Cancun, Mexico. That " swim with the dolphins " park,

owned by members of the Zambrano family that also owns cement giant

CEMEX (and thus Panama's Cemento Bayano), got thrown out of the

Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, a dolphin park

industry group, for its importation of Solomon Islands dolphins.

According to the Dallas Morning News, one of the dolphins that the

Ocean Embassy promoters delivered to Parque Nizuc died the day after

it got to Cancun and another died a few days later. Solomon Islands

activists told the paper that a number of other dolphins died during

their capture.

 

And is Ric O'Barry an " ex-con? " Well, he has been arrested a number

of times, and in 1999 he and another man and some institutions with

which they were associated were fined more than $50,000 for releasing

two dolphins who had been used for US Navy experiments and held in

captivity after their military careers were over. He was escorted out

of an International Whaling Commission meeting for displaying a video

about the Japanese dolphin meat industry. The Bird family regime did

ban him from Antigua & Barbuda, but after different people took over

that Caribbean country O'Barry's visa was restored. " Ex-con " as in

guy who has done hard prison time, as in a mafia don, murderer,

rapist, armed robber or drug dealer? Not one of those. But O'Barry

has had his run-ins with the authorities of several countries.

 

The economic development promised by Ocean Embassy has led the San

Carlos city council to endorse the project, and is behind such public

support that it has. (A Dichter & Neira poll conducted for and

published in La Prensa indicated that more than 80 percent of

Panamanians oppose it.) But Moncada and O'Barry turn the economic

question around in a bid that has had some success to gain the

support of people making a living from Panama's existing dolphin

tourism industry. These are small businesses that take tourists out

in boats to see dolphins and whales, dolphin watching mainly taking

place around the Bocas del Toro islands and whale watching mostly

around Coiba on the Pacific side. " If the gringo tourists want to see

dolphins they should get in a boat and go see them, " O'Barry argued

in his presentation at the Defensoria. " The tourists who come here

have the opportunity to see them as they are. "

 

And what about the science that Ocean Embassy says it will advance?

Moncada just sighed when asked about that, and O'Barry told this

reporter that the Ocean Embassy people " are dolphin trainers, not

scientists. "

 

A review of the CVs of the Ocean Embassy principals and staff that

were appended to their permit application to the Panamanian

government does show that they have a doctor of veterinary medicine

and a PhD animal psychology professor at San Diego State on their

team. Robin Friday's higher education is two years at Gaston College

in North Carolina without earning a degree. Mark Simmons has a BS in

business administration from the University of Central Florida. Ted

N. Turner has a BA in psychology from the University of Central

Florida. Nobody on the Ocean Embassy team is qualified to do the DNA

testing that would be a part of the Panamanian dolphin population

studies that the company promises, or to conduct a systematic dolphin

census. Nobody is certified as a primary or secondary level science

teacher. The one scientist who has considered the Ocean Embassy

proposal during the permit process, the representative of the

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, has voted against the

company.

 

The debate will go on, especially if Ocean Embassy gets all the

permits it wants and begins operations.

 

So will the court cases, although it looks more likely that the

complaint against Celma Moncada will linger for a long time than the

complaint that she filed against Ocean Embassy. You see, under

Panamanian defamation law --- calumnia e injuria --- there are

typically two charges, calumnia being the rough equivalent to the US

libel or slander to which the truth is a defense and injuria being

the crime of harming somebody's reputation, to which the truth is

irrelevant. Moncada and O'Barry argue that the company's request to

capture 80 dolphins shows their intent to engage in the export

business, as the San Carlos facility wouldn't have the capacity for

that many animals, but as probative as that might be about the

question of present intent on the calumnia side of the case,

demonstrating a discrepancy between what a millionaire investor says

and what the circumstances suggest is more likely true is the essence

of the crime of injuria.

 

It's not just Ocean Embassy's reputation that's at stake anymore,

either. At the Defensoria both Moncada and O'Barry predicted that if

Panama allows the capture of wild dolphins from its waters, the

ecotourist attractions that bring many foreigners to this country

will look less attractive to potential visitors. O'Barry cited the

experience of the last place where the Ocean Embassy promoters were

allowed to catch dolphins as an example: " The Solomon Islands

received international negative publicity. They destroyed their

ecotourism. People do not go there. "

 

Appearances do matter to some people, not only abroad but here as

well. During the session at the Defensoria, O'Barry got a text

message of encouragement and support for Celma Moncada on his

telephone. It was from Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro. The

mayor, who is expected to run for the PRD's 2009 presidential

nomination, said that it would be " a national disgrace " to allow the

capture of dolphins in Panamanian waters.

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