The experiences I had in middle school were only the beginning. I had been involved with social media campaigns on Facebook since 7th grade, and eventually an invite to a protest made its way into my notifications. Tired of simply fighting behind a keyboard (although online activism has its place), I decided to attend a SeaWorld protest at the beginning of my first year in high school.

On the way to the protest, my heart pounded inside my chest. Buildings flew by on the freeway. I clenched my fists as a SeaWorld billboard came into view. I scowled, rolled my eyes, and turned my back on the advertisement. I will be fooled no longer. I will illuminate this cruelty for the world to see.

The words “SeaWorld Drive” glared in the morning sun as the car veered off the freeway. A towering blue pole grasped the sky in the distance and a nauseous feeling crept over me, as if the weight of the sky was on my shoulders. The car came to a halt in the South Shores boat ramp and I began walking nervously to the intersection of SeaWorld Drive. A red light glared ominously just above the street, commanding the cars to stop. After they stalled obediently, the light changed to green, signaling the cars to speed into the park. 

While this cycle repeated, repeated, and repeated again, I joined the protestors. Right above the entrance sign to SeaWorld I stood with a sign displaying an acronym: "Overt Cetacean Exploitation And Neglect." Cars sped past and people occasionally glanced at my sign. Others shouted obscenities, and one person even chucked a beer can out of his car. It rolled dangerously close to a storm drain across the street and I stared in disbelief. Why are people so hostile when we are peacefully informing the public and standing up for sentient beings who are trapped in a concrete box their whole lives? How would they feel if they were sentenced to jail their entire lives without even committing a crime?

Protestors next to me spoke to people as they drove by, trying to make them understand that keeping cetaceans in captivity is unacceptable. But I still stood silently at the edge of the curb with my sign, too nervous to say anything. I glanced back behind me. Shamu Stadium jutted just above the trees. A new nauseous feeling consumed me. 

My first protest ignited my activist efforts. Throughout the rest of my freshman year, I participated in protests against McDonalds, KFC, the fur and meat industries, the circus, rodeos, and horse racing. This led me to gain a deeper understanding of the ways mankind is harming nature and its inhabitants. Education is the first step towards developing a solution. By exposing myself to different issues and keeping an open mind, I was able to better connect with nature.

I began creating videos that displayed its beauty– the beauty that we need to preserve and protect. For the first two years, each of my videos conveyed a specific realm of the natural world (i.e. the desert, arctic, rainforest, oceans). The video below, “The Mysterious Rainforest,” features features flora and fauna from the Amazon.

Making these videos and looking at the world through a captive cetacean's eyes also strengthened my connection with nature. But the only way to truly understand nature and its beauty is to see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, touch it, and live it. I go out on bike rides daily through a canyon nearby. There is a creek there and I often write in a small clearing next to it. Hearing the water's whispers always soothes me on a stressful day. Jogging on the beach or playing in the waves washes away outside problems and allows me to return to a calm, composed state.

Being out in nature enriches and heals you. Cetaceans born in captivity or taken from their natural home don't have this option. They are trapped behind concrete walls, left to deal with thousands of ignorant screaming people every day, the emotional trauma of being ripped from their family if they were captured, and the stress associated with decaying social bonds in captivity. There is nowhere to hide, nowhere to heal. They are too far from heaven to be themselves.

My first protest, along with later (and earlier) experiences, pushed me to understand the importance of nature and many unseen follies of mankind.

My next blog is about my experiences and connections with the natural world. Stay tuned...

 

The Beginning:

I always loved and appreciated nature, I've been vegetarian my whole life and will soon be a vegan. I saw Keiko just before he was released when I was two years old in Oregon, my state of birth.

When I moved to San Diego in the third grade, my love for the oceans, especially cetaceans, grew. Free Willy got me started. My passion back then was to become a SeaWorld trainer. I would play with toy Shamus and act like I was riding them. But I never thought about how each individual orca may have felt, how they did feel when performing in real life. I never thought that three of the orcas were captured, that Orkid's parents had died, that they live way shorter in captivity. It was about how much joy I was having, my love for orcas, how I felt when they jumped in the air. Their tricks were all a distraction to what lay behind the curtain.

What changed me:

At the end of 6th grade, our school had a field trip to SeaWorld and I enrolled in a summer camp there. Much like many of the people who spent their money there that day, I enjoyed my time watching the dolphins perform for me and the hundreds of people sitting all around the stadium. I got all excited and my body started tingling as I saw them leap towards the sky on cue.

The theme park music kept blasting as everybody applauded louder than the sound of thunder. I was almost in a trance, taken over by my adrenaline as the show continued on. I lept out of my seat as a dolphin named Dolly jumped over a 20 ft high rope...I was so amazed that dolphins could jump that high. Just when I thought it could not get any better, a twist was added at the end! Someone fell into the pool and got picked up by a dolphin, who carried her around the tank!

Just as everyone started gasping, they announced that it was another trainer! I started laughing my head off as the whole place erupted with uncontrollable laughter. But in time, the loud noise died down as the show ended and everyone began to leave the stadium to continue their fun day at SeaWorld. My day, however, was finished as my sisters were shockingly whining to go home. How could anyone ever want to leave this place? I thought to myself.

When our instructor at the camp led us over to Dolphin Point, the small 8-ft deep enclosure next to Shamu Stadium, she told us that we could feed the dolphins. Excitement pierced my mind. As we walked up to the concrete wall, the dolphins greeted us, swimming over in a robotic fashion. I reached my hand out towards one of the dolphins, touched his slippery skin, then tossed him a fish. I walked away then came back again, wanting to relive the experience.

The dolphin approached the wall again, and I reached out my hand and touched him once more, but I did not toss him a fish this time. Having tricked him, the dolphin stared me in the eye with an indescribable intelligence. I shivered, then asked the instructor if the tank was too small. She said that the dolphins were happy. “This tank is eight feet deep and they have plenty of room.”

The rest of the day, I was startled. I awoke from that trance that the shows put me in. On the way home, I was mad, angry and confused.

The next day at camp, we visited the tanks the orcas circle around in when they aren't performing. I asked the same question I did the other day. No answer. During the Believe show, I thought that something isn't right. A piece of bird poop landing in my mouth confirmed that assumption. Needless to say, after camp was over, I never visited SeaWorld again.

I was always against whaling back then and spread the Whale's Revenge petition around my school in 5th and 6th grade. I never heard about whaling at SeaWorld so I wanted to learn more.

I got into the TV show “Whale Wars” and after talking on an online discussion with somebody, I found myself becoming an administrator for an organization called Global Wildlife Warriors. I also wrote several articles for the organization and met several friends who are still close to me today. This allowed me to research topics and find out about more issues, like the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan and the full truth behind SeaWorld.

I saw wild dolphins for the first time in Savannah, Georgia (as far as I can remember – I saw wild orcas when I was two but have no memory of it) in the middle of 7th grade. I went on a whale watching boat and bottlenosed dolphins came right up to the boat. One even looked me in the eye. I couldn't help but notice their grace and beauty.

But it was only when I snorkeled with wild dolphins in Hawaii that summer that I began to fully realize why keeping sentient beings in captivity is so wrong.

The tropical, salty waters of Hawaii kept me afloat as I ducked my head beneath the surface. Spinner Dolphins gracefully swam 10-20 feet below, caressing and nudging each other. I took in a big breath of air as they let us right in to the middle of their pod, as if we were one of them. Babies swam next to their mothers, effortlessly riding the slip stream as we flopped about above, unaware and unable to match their grace.

Suddenly, about a few hundred yards away, one of them leaped from the surface, spinning and twirling his/her body through the air. It looked so much more different than what I had seen at SeaWorld. The ambient ocean sounds fluttered into my ears, along with the enigmatic language of the dolphins. I had always wondered what they were saying below, what they thought of us.

Please watch, like and share.
Dedicated to the Pilot Whales murdered in the cove 9/28/14.
[Click for more info about the slaughter.]

by Zach Affolter 

A Wavering Sun:

The sun wavers in the crimson sky;
The waves weep and cry.
The shadowed hills slash the ocean,
sawing back and forth until it lies bleeding and broken.

A red tear falls from a mournful eye,
children scream in horror as they leave their mothers left to die,
hovering above the blackened sea,
destined for a miserable life in captivity.

A white heart glistens on the babies' chest,
that the greedy men below want only to possess.
The babies glare at the murderers who will butcher their parents.
Their gazes are met with glossy eyes that see only dollar signs - a lust that is so errant. 

The sun is suffocated by the clouds, turning all color to gray. 
The trees are battered by the wind; branches snap in two and helplessly lie on the ground slain.
The waves grow angry and careen into the sharp edges of the rock,
but this slaughter even the ocean's endless power could not stop. 

The last cries of the babies fade away,
their bodies to be left in prison and decay.
Their family lies trapped in the land's ravenous maw,
left to battle memories, exhaustion, and fear before they are crushed by its jaw.

Distressed, they throw themselves against the rocks, hoping to escape,
but the cold clutches of mankind have already sealed their fate.

Light fades to black as the sun drowns itself in the angry sea,
never to rise again on these poor souls destined to be slaughtered in Taiji.
They cry to each other and huddle in the darkness,
trying to find a glimmer of light but the sky is starless.

Wisps of fog and angry winds descend upon the pod in the morning,
then fade away, smothering them in an eerie silence; the rest of the world is snoring. 
Boats sneak out of the harbor,
leaving an ugly white scar in the water.

You'd think people would see its wake,
but they turn their heads away and bite into a steak.
All around them the world crumbles and falls,
but, feeling the need for new makeup, they rush like sharks to the mall. 

Screams fill the air as the Pilots cry in despair;
in this cruel world they are hopelessly ensnared. 
Waves crash into the side of the cove as blood stains the water.
Babies are pushed away, watching helplessly while their mothers are slaughtered. 

The blood-red arms clutch the wild, blue sea,
stains so bright you'd think the world would see.
But it goes about fussing and fretting
on its appearance; the real flaws it is forgetting.

Bodies thrash and drown in their own blood.
Shadowed figures throw the carcasses onto the skiffs, blocking the light of the sun.
The boats crawl away, leaving a white scar in the blood-stained water,
but people still are blind, frantically searching for that dollar. 

The cove grows silent, as if nothing had happened,
as if no one was watching, as if no one cared, as if no one was saddened.
The crimson water glares against the colorless sky, 
as if the ocean had bled and was about to die.

An angel cloaked in white sulks her head against the prison's glass,
knowing that, like her family, another pod had passed,
had been chased from the depths of the sea,
had been slaughtered in the blasted cove of Taiji.

The remaining members of the Pilot Whale family
swim in the blood of those murdered so wrongly.
Babies float listlessly without their mothers,
alone in this cruel, heartless world where those with white hearts are slaughtered. 

Red waves surge onto the shores,
angry of this murder that the world fails to abhor. 
The land stabs the dying sea;
the waves recede in defeat.

Is there any hope left in this world so heartless,
or are the skies forever starless?
Is there any common sense hiding somewhere on the earth,
or all we all destined to lie dead in the dirt?

All the green, all the blue, all the beauty in this world is fading away
while mankind blindly stumbles, its face buried in a cell phone all day.
It is time for us to reawaken,
it is time for us to save this world so forsaken.

It is not too late to change our ways.
The sun rises in Taiji, exposing the horror in its rays.
There is hope, we can stop this bloodshed, this murder, this greed and save the earth.
Now is the time. The choice is yours!