EarthTrust projects revolutionized

the two largest sources of dolphin kill on the planet, by doing away with the huge destructive driftnet fleets that had scoured the largest oceans, and by bringing “dolphin friendly” tuna into reality internationally.  In addition, ET’s field DNA revolution proved that a huge market for dolphin meat existed in Japan, mis-labeled as ‘whale meat’.

It became clear that many continued killings, from drive-kills of dolphins to mislabeled dolphin meat in bento lunches, could not be dealt with while dolphins were treated as “fish” or “parasites” within Japan. The existence of a readily available “smugglers’ market” for dead dolphins – in which each dolphin could be worth several thousand dollars – meant that market forces would tend to supply the demand.  Part of the answer was to continue DNA studies, and to support toxin analysis of mislabeled dolphin meat, and part had to be changing the very way dolphins were seen in Japan.

EarthTrust had long done cultural outreach within Japan, beginning in the late 70’s. It worked to expose the effects of mercury contamination of villagers who ate a lot of dolphin meat: hair samples showed that they suffered Minimata disease (mercury poisoning) due to the high bioaccumulation of heavy metals in the dolphin meat they had eaten. However, ET board member Dexter Cate felt his heart torn out when he repeatedly witnessed drive kills of dolphins.  As a marine biologist and high school science teacher, Dexter had known dolphins personally as complex beings and friends.

Dexter and his young son at Tatsunoshima Island view living dolphins intentionally driven onto the beach, the day before he untied nets and helped release drive-kill dolphins and whales.

So in 1980, he took an inflatable kayak and paddled to the ongoing kill at Tatsunoshima Island, where in the freezing cold he untied the nets and helped many dolphins to safety. For doing so he was arrested and held in prison for 80 days before deportation. It focused world attention, but it solved little inside Japan, where individual protest is frowned upon.

This was the end product for the Tatsunoshima dolphins Dextrose didn’t save. They were basically fed into a giant grinder to make slurry that was dumped on fields as a toxin-heavy fertilizer.

So Dex joined with Don White, ET President and co-founder, to create a project designed to change Japan’s view of dolphins, and that of other cultures too.

The project would ultimately have young Japanese students seeing dolphins use computers, and being inspired by the dolphin mind.

Don had met in 1979 with Dr. John C. Lilly, the “altered states” scientist who first looked into dolphin intelligence, and decided to take Dr. Lilly’s work further in less “altered states” ways. The goal was ambitious: to change the way the human world perceived dolphins, so that their killing would become culturally unacceptable.

A dolphin at the Delphis lab controls a computer with voice commands and the world’s first underwater dolphin touch-screen interface. There was no training or reward done: the dolphins used computers for the same reasons human kids do – fun.

Thus began a project unlike any others. The work would center on improving the lives of dolphins already in captivity. No training or food reward would be done: the dolphins would have full control of the research and determine what they wanted to participate in. By interacting with mirrors, TV, and computers they could gain control over aspects of their environment; and by so doing open a window to the dolphin mind. Designed by Don White, the work would be conducted under respected ethologist and cetacean researcher Dr. Ken Marten, a student and friend of Dr. Ken Norris, and work would be peer-reviewed.

ET’s Dr. Ken Marten calibrates the dolphins’ computer touchscreen interface while dolphin Paleahu watches.

Dex died in a diving accident in 1990, so the project was dedicated to his memory and continued.

One early result of the Delphis project was to revolutionize the status of conscious self-awareness in the universe. Prior to Delphis, it was believed that conscious self-awareness had only evolved once – perhaps in the entire universe – and that the only self-aware beings were members of the Great Ape tribe: humans and their close relatives.  ET showed, with a clever experiment, that dolphins also passed the test. This finding changed all the textbooks, changed the way we humans thought about ourselves and about the evolution of intelligence in the universe. A profound, Copernican-level paradigm change, it opened the door to studies on many other species.

The Delphis lab profoundly changed the way humans view intelligence. Prior to this experiment, it was believed that self-awareness might have evolved only once in the universe, in the great apes. Finding self-awareness in a species which was evolutionarily separated from humans by 70 million years changed all the textbooks. It showed that we weren’t alone.

And it helped inside Japan and other dolphin-killing nations, because Delphis was not just a one-of-a-kind lab. It was designed from its outset to be a “documentary factory” to promote good science and highlight dolphin abilities. Thus, about half the time at the lab was spent on setting up and running experiments, and the other half was welcoming independent film crews to educate the world about dolphins and the issues affecting them. It was an ironclad requirement that any media wanting to film the delphis research had to also cover dolphin kills, and this led to dozens of major documentaries and many hundreds of national and international media stories.

The lab also documented and popularized dolphin creativity, such as sculpture of air-core vortex rings; doing the definitive science and writing it up for Scientific American and a host of Japanese media sources.
As young people in Japan saw dolphins spontaneously playing video games, using touch-screen computers, dancing to music they controlled themselves, and talking with one another over the phone, it became very clear that these weren’t fish, they were a different kind of person. A growing percentage of Japan’s population has refused to eat dolphin meat. In addition, Delphis images have helped in shutting down drive-kills in other locations. It’s one thing to see what looks like a big fish throwing a ball. It’s quite another to see one using a computer the way a human does.

Analysis:

Delphis has changed the way humans see dolphins and the way we see ourselves, the way we humans think about mind in general. It definitely helped save dolphins in Japan and elsewhere.

It didn’t end the killing of dolphins. Making deep cultural changes can take awhile. It has greatly lowered the demand, and has helped create a generation of people who see dolphins as people.

And it fundamentally changed the human understanding of intelligence, the evolution of awareness, and the way we have to see other species. It was nothing less than a Copernican reframing: humans are not the only self-aware minds which have evolved on earth.  Once we showed that, many barriers started coming down, and entire new fields of study were created.

It may not be the impossible mission with the fastest results, but it may well be the most profound. Such a discovery could be made only once in human history. It was made by ET, because the mission seemed possible to us.