They Call Him Flipper

What's large and shiny and flies through the air with a thousand flash bulbs going off at the same time? A bus full of Japanese tourists falling over a cliff. Since I'm a dolphin, about thirteen years old, I don't feel the constraints of political correctness that the average North American male Caucasian human might feel. I admit that I don't like the Japanese very much, but any animosity that I might feel towards them says more about me than it does about the Japanese. Let it suffice to say that, in a country that gave the world karaoke and Nintendo, people who have to herd dolphins into nets and then club them to death to make a living must not be very bright. Of course, my views are biased, based on a rather unusual set of experiences, but experience has taught me that the Japanese can be very rude rather than polite when it comes to dolphins. Like most people who hate (if I hate anyone, of course), it's because I have perceived that they hated me first.

The fishermen of the Japanese village of Genji have reason to think that dolphins aren't very intelligent. Year after year, they create a panic among us dolphins by creating a sonic boom through sonar devices planted underwater— and we dolphins fall for it every time. You would think that we'd have figured out by now that it's just some Japanese fishermen trying to herd us into their nets so that they can club as to death and make mercury-tainted fillets of us that they will then sell in their fish markets, but no, we obviously haven't caught on. Every year, scores of us are caught in their nets and drowned because we swim right into their nets in a panic. The surviving adults are then clubbed to death while the children and adolescents are sold at auction to aquariums around the world.

Of course, some dolphins escape the nets entirely, but then they repeat the same mistake of being duped by loud noises in subsequent years. If history teaches us anything, it's that we don't learn from history. That could be why the Japanese don't even dignify us by thinking of us as fellow mammals. To the Japanese, the dolphin is just a big fish while the whale is a "monster fish." Really.

I will try not to bore you with too many details about the life of dolphins. I am a member of the species lagenorhyncus obliquidens, or "white-sided dolphin," an adult male, approximately thirteen years old. Whereas the better known bottle-nosed dolphin may hang out in groups of only ten or so members, L. obliquidens may travel with thousands of other members of the same species. That's why the Japanese consider us to be such pests: we eat more food as an aggregate than the bottle-nosed dolphin. We subsist on a diet of squid, crustaceans, and fish— something that the Japanese also subsist on. If it swims, chances are that the white-sided dolphin will eat it, which is why dolphins are in competition with the Japanese fishermen for food; the Japanese will eat anything that swims, too, including the poisonous puffer fish. (We dolphins don't eat the puffer fish, however. We have enough trouble surviving without the puffer fish making things more difficult for us.)

Like nearly every species of flora and fauna that live underwater, the white-sided dolphin can't see very well in its native environment; L. obliquidens would be as blind as a bat, if bats could swim. However, Evolution, Intelligent Design, or whatever you want to call it, has provided dolphins with a form of sonar called echolocation that humans were not able to replicate until the middle of the twentieth century with the invention of sonar. The way sound travels under water, echolocation does have its advantages. One well-timed shriek can lead a group of dolphins to an all-you-eat feast of thousands of fish or shrimp hundreds of kilometres away. An adult dolphin like myself needs to eat at least one-third of his weight in fruits de la mer every day in order to survive, but thanks to echolocation and the sheer abundance of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks in the oceans, it isn't very difficult for the average dolphin to meet his daily minimum nutritional requirements.

However, nothing fails like success. Once members of homo sapiens discovered the scientific principles behind sonar, they began to use our weapon against us. As I have already told you, Japanese fishermen plant sonar devices underwater that emit loud shrieks that would startle the you-know-what out of anything that has ears in order to stampede us. All they have to do after that is lay their nets down and wait in ambush with their clubs. It doesn't take much intelligence to do that. And bear in mind: sound travels much farther and much faster under water than it does over land. The fisherman with an intelligence quotient in two digits might consider him intellectually superior to the unsuspecting L. obliquidens scared feces-less by a sudden burst of ungodly sound, but even Albert Einstein would have jumped if a firecracker was suddenly hurled at his feet. Sound does that to people, you know.

I have always been reluctant to talk about how I ended up on public display in a glass fish tank because, frankly, it still hurts to talk about it. One minute, you're swimming with your friends off the coast of Japan, and the next thing you know, some very nasty Japanese guys with some very nasty clubs are trying to club you to death for no apparent reason. You might think I'm joking, but I'm not. I lost some friends that day— lots of friends. Most of them drowned in the nets, though, because we were just adolescents and it was the adults that they wanted to kill. They only wanted to sell the juveniles to aquariums like SeaWorld for profit, and for the amusement of human families, not kill us. I suppose you could say that we were sold into slavery, since we dolphins didn't make any money in the deal.

I'm like the soldier who has experienced combat. Sometimes, usually at night when I'm asleep, I can still hear the screams of my comrades. There's blood mingled with saltwater everywhere; you even see blood, guts, and gore on the rocks and on the beaches. Those who swim away wounded often escape only to be eaten by sharks. It's pitiful to hear some hulking youth scream for his mother as he dies a slow and agonizing death, or somebody crying out the name of some girlfriend that he will never see again as he slips permanently into the ether. And then there are those who call out for some god to end it all, only God, Providence, or whatever you want to call it, never seems to end it quite soon enough. Even the most merciful of deities are slow to act in situations such as I have faced with my friends.

So there I am, lying on the beach, waiting to be clubbed. Like a baby harp seal, I flash those baby blues at some middle-aged Japanese guy with a conical hat and seaweed for a raincoat, holding a humongous club, and plea, "Please don't kill me! But if you have to do it, make it quick."

The guy looks into my eyes and he stops to think about it. We connect. Maybe he realizes that I'm like him. Maybe he realizes that there's something in me that's human, or something in him that's dolphin. Maybe he even thinks that dolphins have souls.

Then he looks over to another guy who has a club and says, "Not this one; we call sell him to an aquarium."

Through some final selection process, I ended up at SeaWorld. But that was then— this is now. Every morning at approximately the same time, a buck-toothed Japanese man dressed in a white uniform stained from sweat and fish entrails throws buckets of smelt to the dolphins in the tank. It's always the same species of fish, and the fish are always dead, but who is a captive dolphin to complain, right? Only you eat your morning repast with little enthusiasm, particularly if you still remember the taste of live giant squid. But what's really humiliating is that the guy in institutional white sometimes expects you to dance on your tail and try to clap your fins together just for one fish while your friends are snickering in the background. And then, when it's their turn, you do the same thing: you try to suppress a laugh as one of them begs for a fish. Mostly, it's very boring, really. Sometimes, you don't care if you get a fish.

So what do we do to pass the time? We get high. Trust me: there are things that dolphins know about pharmacology about which humans know nothing. Even at SeaWorld, they unknowingly put plants in the tank that will do the trick. When you see a dolphin lying on his side about to roll over on his blowhole after a performance, psychologists think that it's because the dolphin is clinically depressed, but that isn't always the case. Yeah, you get suicidal from time to time, being in captivity and all, but after you've really been lifting during a performance, you have to come down eventually. Lots of dolphins crash right after the performance, which is why they make everybody leave the building right after the show. They're afraid of animal rights activists.

What do dolphins talk about? Here's a typical conversation:

— What do you want to do?

— I don't know. What do you want to do?

— Hey! I asked you first!

That's a typical conversation between and my friend, Buzz, who's another dolphin. Dolphins like to gossip, just like the members of other species. There's always some bottled-nosed hottie that all the guys have their eye on. We may reminisce about the "good old days," before we encountered those Japanese fishermen, but there are some things that we don't like to talk about, like seeing your friends drowned in nets or your parents clubbed to death. Nearly every dolphin and orca in this tank has had similar experiences. In the end, you usually end up getting high. We blow lots of bubbles down here. There isn't much to do here. You can't have sex because hundreds of people see you each day, and you're in a confined space with dozens of other dolphins. That's why dolphins don't breed very well in captivity.

Human beings are really touchy-feelly, even the Japanese. The people who run this place want us to swim near the people so that they will reach out and pet us. It's a fact of life that children, particularly the small ones, like to pet animals. We only let the children pet us. When an adult reaches out with his hand, we swim away like he must be pervert or something— an ichthiophile, I think is what they call it. The female dolphins like to flirt with the clientele, like they're going to get an extra fish or something out of it, but the guys don't like to be touched at all. Me, maybe I'll let some little girl pet me, because children are innocent and pure, and you think that they won't do anything to hurt you. I avoid the really small ones, however, because I have had a few toddlers in their mothers' laps smack me hard on the nose and then laugh their asses off— all in fun, of course. They're just testing the boundaries of reality, and the parent think it's cute, bopping a dolphin on the nose.

Winters are the worst. When the weather starts to get cold, the customers stop coming and they close up shop. Then they bring everything inside and you spend the next four to six months all cooped up, waiting for spring. It sucks. There's nothing to do but wait for spring and summer. When they throw you a fish, you know that it's not from a fresh catch. It's probably from something the fish market down the street threw out. Or maybe they caught if off Madagascar. I might have eaten a coelacanth a few times, if I got lucky. If dolphins could hold their noses...

If dolphins could hold their noses. The difference between us and you guys is that you can play video games. Me, I can't even masturbate. Then, some marine biologist discovered that we dolphins could communicate. Duh! What did they think we were doing when their first heard us making strange sounds (to you) underwater? But some marine biologist, a "seasoned vet," probably said, "They're just passing gas." But even Japanese fishermen can communicate, if only with each other.

You should try talking with whales. I bet we dolphins do it better than you guys. They have their sounds and we ours, and you learn to understand in the end. Eventually you figure it out. But you have to learn the boundaries of reality: no means no. You have to keep your distance, particularly with orcas. (Orcas are intelligent animals, you know: sensitive, even if they will occasionally rip out the tongues of whales with their teeth for food.) You have to keep your distance with everyone, really, something you guys are only just learning.

But back to the fish tank. Most of my contact with other fishes has been in tanks like this one. Humans like to keep the fishes separate, if they can, but they mix hammerhead sharks with great whites and angel fish. If you make sure that a shark is well fed, however, he won't stoop to eating goldfish. You just have to keep your distance with sharks. In the ocean, dolphins and sharks keep their distance because they can kill each other. So do dolphins and orcas. When I see an orca jump out of the water to kiss a woman on the cheek, I think, "Man, that's a lot of trust!" Any orca can tear the head off of a woman easily.

It's July, the summer of my second or third year. The place is full of people. Since the aquarium is in Japan and all the people there are Japanese, they all look alike to me. Even with my limited vision, clouded with water in my eyes, I can still see the girls scantily clad in their halter tops and cutoff shorts, dressed for comfort rather than modesty. Sometimes, you thrust your head out of the water just to get a closer look, though she's a human and you're just a dolphin. When you dance on your tail and speak to her in Flipperese, you think that maybe she'll be impressed, though she can't understand a word that you're saying. However, orcas have the advantage of size, because they can at least give a woman a ride on their backs. That's why Shamu is the Elvis of our business. But any love here is going to go unrequited.

Then one day, the inevitable happens: a child falls into the water. The mother and the father want to jump in and rescue the child, but the water is too deep and they can't swim. As well, the Japanese don't like to step out of the box. They will wait until they are sure that nobody else will jump in and save the child before they conclude that they have to do it themselves or it won't get done. The Japanese are hesitant to do anything, because they are taught to conform to a bunch of rules and they won't do anything unless they first know what the rules of engagement are. (I know that this is only a stereotype, but for the sake of my story, it's true.)

There's a collective "What do we do?" among the crowd. A few grannies even whisper "Oh my!" Instead of trying to rescue their own child, the parents politely call for help while the child thrashes madly in the water. If it drowns, they can always make another one, right? Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese don't have a one child per family policy. But not to worry: there are plenty of rescue workers on hand. It's just a simple matter of somebody throwing the child a life preserver. However, the child is a little too far out to make it easy or convenient for the parents and the rescue workers. The rescue workers are beginning to panic too, because only a few children fall in every year and this rescue is more complicated than what the workers are used to. Nobody knows what to do, it seems. They might have to let this child go.

That's when it hits me. I realize that the little girl could die before she reaches her fifth or sixth birthday unless I do something. A part of you might think, "Hey, it's not my problem. She's a human being out of her element while I'm a dolphin a little bit more in his element." (SeaWorld isn't really my element either, but hey, I can at least swim, though the water is stagnant and contaminated with feces. But at least they're my feces.)

Then I have the mental image of a mammal like me drowning in water. His or her eyes are bulging out of their sockets as they try to breathe in water like a fish and flap their limbs helplessly. Sometimes the drowning victim even breathes in sediment before he or she dies. And I see the look of distress in the child eyes, sending out an SOS. "Help me!" her eyes cry.

You might think it's funny, if you had a warped sense of humour, but I have seen it happen, you know— when those fishermen herded us into their nets. I watched many of my friends drown in nets, because even though dolphins can hold their breaths a lot longer than humans can, in the end, even dolphins will lose consciousness and drown, if they go too long without resurfacing. Until you mercifully pass out from lack of oxygen, drowning is not a peaceful way to die. People really lose it when there isn't enough oxygen going to the brain because oxygen deprivation makes you panic. And, in the end, all death is due to lack of oxygen, which causes death in the tissues and organs.

As they say, if you save one person, you have saved the world. (Though I doubt that it was the Japanese who came up with that pearl of wisdom.) So I do my bit to save the world. I swim around the girl until, in her panic, she reaches out and grabs my dorsal fin, almost pulling me underwater in the process. But not to worry: I have other dolphins to help me, once they realize what I'm trying to do. My friend, Buzz, yells, "Hey, she's drowning! Let's help Flipper save her!"

I try to talk her down from her terror, though I only sound like a dolphin to her. Then I pull her to the edge of the tank and I get a standing O from the crowd and the rescue workers, like it was all part of a well-rehearsed performance.

I know that all I will get for my efforts is a herring or a smelt, or whatever it is that they can get from the fish market before the fish go bad. The mother and father will be eternally grateful to somebody they only know as "Flipper" for having saved their daughter, but my life hasn't changed very much. I'm still just a dolphin in an aquarium, living on herring and smelt: I'm just a big fish in a bath tub to them.

I know that rescuing that child was the right thing to do, but I derive very little satisfaction from it. A Canadian ambulance worker whose grandmother was bayoneted in Hong Kong by Japanese soldiers during World War II would still rescue somebody of Japanese descent, though he or she may still harbour ill feelings towards Asians. It's just something that we do, when we know what to do, regardless of what we feel or what we may want to do. We do it because it's the right thing to do. It's just that, sometimes, doing the right things gives us little or no satisfaction and does little to change our lives.

Sometimes, it even sucks being a hero. And we have to move beyond our triumphs as well as our tragedies.