As time went on, we were joined at public hearings by numerous organizations, celebrities, scientists and citizens who agreed that the navy’s testing proposal didn’t ensure the safety of the marine mammals around the Channel Islands. All of these written statements were supposed to be taken into account before the federal agency in charge of marine mammal protection made a decision. After the last hearing I asked an agent when we could expect a decision. He told me to call the next week, but something in his voice seemed to imply that a decision had already been made.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked him.
He smirked. “I can’t discuss it.”
That expression, that we didn’t stand a chance against the government, infuriated me. When I told him I would see him in court, he started laughing, as if I had made the most ludicrous statement in history. His reaction was just another example of the uphill battles we faced.
Our legal team had managed to arrange a few meetings with naval officials. Each time we asked the navy to consider alternate tests in areas less populated with marine mammals. On the day our last request was refused, I joined my mother for dinner. Neither of us felt like eating. “What else can we do?” my mother said. She had supported me throughout this fight against the government, and I could see that it had taken its toll on her. No one had ever stopped the navy from performing these kinds of tests before. Even other environmental organizations said that it was hopeless. “You will never stop the navy!” they said. I always replied, “How will you ever know if you don’t have the courage to try?”
But we were running out of time.
The first test was scheduled in less than a month. Our legal case to block the tests required the declaration of an expert scientist in the marine mammal field who specialized in bioacoustics. All of the experts we contacted were unwilling to speak out against the testing because their research was funded by the U.S. government. “We need to find an expert independent of government funding,” I told my mom. She looked skeptical. “We’ve tried everyone in the country,” she said. “Who else is there?”
The answer came from Paul Spong, Ph.D., in British Columbia. Dr. Spong told me that we had no other option than to look outside the United States.
I cried, “I can do that?”
“An expert is an expert,” he replied.
With less than two weeks before testing began, Hal Whitehead, Ph.D., a Canadian, and the world’s foremost authority on sperm whales, agreed to testify. His testimony revealed in gripping detail how the naval tests would deprive these marine mammals of the very senses they depended on to survive in the wild. Soon other experts joined the struggle. The hearing lasted five days. At its conclusion, the presiding judge, Stephen V. Wilson of the United States District Court, Central District, ruled in our favor. He said that the navy had failed in its obligation to protect marine mammals, that it hadn’t prepared a full environmental impact statement, and that it hadn’t investigated all reasonable alternative sites and properly mitigated the impact of detonations on marine life. The exception was that one detonation would be allowed farther offshore with observers, of our choice, and instruments to help detect deep-diving marine mammals.
Those of us who had fought so long and hard listened to Judge Wilson with a mixture of disbelief and elation. A handful of people had achieved the impossible. We had taken on the mightiest naval force in the history of the world—and we had won! We prevented 269 naval detonations, and in so doing, saved the lives of more than 10,000 marine mammals.
Maris Sidenstecker
Dolphin Rides
Original painting by Wyland © 2003.
Everything I Needed to Know About the
Ocean I Learned in the Second Grade
Filthy water cannot be washed.
African Proverb
Every time I meet with a group of kids, I’m reminded of why I and so many other people work so hard to preserve the beauty of our natural world. Mention the ocean to children, and their eyes light up. Ask them about whales or dolphins or sea turtles and you’ll get a joyful litany of facts, figures and explanations. Children accept our world unconditionally. When they’re happy, it shows. When they’re dissatisfied with the state of things, they’ll let you know. I got a glimpse of this recently during a visit to a second-grade class in Southern California. I was lucky enough to talk with a group of bright, funny kids right after they had taken part in a cleanup project at a nearby beach. Even at seven years old, the kids were learning how important it is to become caretakers for the environment.
Being a curious person, I wanted to hear what they learned from their recent experience. My “panel” included Johnny, Cassidy, Sarah F. and Sarah G., Matt and Jenna— all bubbling at the idea of sharing their thoughts.
First we had to decide who would answer my questions. Sarah G., the most outgoing of the group, thought the first person who slammed their hand down on the table, “like they do in Family Feud,” should be given the honor of responding. We tried this a few times, and then moved on to the more democratic approach of taking turns. With the new ground rules firmly in place—for the time being, anyway—I asked the group to start the discussion by naming a few different types of bodies of water. The answers came fast and furious: “The ocean!” “A river!” “Lakes!” “Streams!” “Ponds!” . . . “Fresno!”
The last answer came from Matt.
“Fresno?” I asked.
“Fresno has water,” he said, proudly.
I couldn’t argue with his logic. Fresno does have water. I’m pretty sure of that.
I could see I was in good hands. Clearly, this was an advanced group. So I upped the ante and moved in with a real hardball question. Pollution is something that I often talk about when I meet with kids. They have very strong opinions on the subject and, in fact, they can be very persuasive in encouraging adults to curtail environmentally damaging habits. All it takes is one withering look from a little kid to make you pick up your chewing-gum wrappers for the rest of your life.
“How can adults take more responsibility for the environment?” I asked.
Cassidy’s hand shot up.
“Don’t litter,” she said. “And don’t waste water. . . . I turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth.”
Yes, I said, that’s important. I tried to remember if I had turned off my faucet that morning. I imagined the lecture these guys would give me if I had left the water running. Next we talked about the types of trash they saw during their beach cleanup experience. Apparently, the beach that day was littered with plastic water bottles, Styrofoam, grocery bags, cigarette butts and beer cans. The kids asked me how adults could be so forgetful.
“That trash washes out to sea,” Johnny said. “Fish eat it.”
“But they don’t like it,” Jenna said. “If I were a dolphin and saw someone dropping trash in my home, I’d think that’s not fair.”
Sarah F. said, “When a dolphin sees trash, it probably wants to swim away to someplace cleaner . . . probably farther out to sea where we’ll never get to see it again.”
I asked if any of them had seen really polluted water. The answers were a mixture of yeses and noes. Matt, who judging by his T-shirt was an active member of the Indian Guides, said he’d seen a dirty lake in Idaho. He said the water was hard to see through. “It’s kind of smoky looking . . . and it smells,” he said.
When I asked what dirty water smells like, Sarah G. said, “Polluted water smells like dirty socks.” She volunteered to take off her shoes to demonstrate.
I told her I got the point.
Wyland
Do You Hear It?
The ocean is breathing, do you hear it?
Its soft breath rolls with every wave.
It crashes upon the sandy beach
Making its mark upon the shore.
The ocean is whispering, do you hear it?
Its soft voice is a melody of the wind across the water.
It whistles silently through our minds
r />
Making its mark upon our souls.
The ocean is calling, do you hear it?
The sweet sound of life beneath.
It calls to you, it calls to me
Making its mark upon our hearts.
The ocean is weeping, do you hear it?
The silent cries rise from the deep.
It pleads for us to save it
Making its mark upon our conscience.
Will you help it? Do you hear it?
The voice so sweet and gentle.
All it asks is that you help
And keep its breath safe from harm.
Tiffany Pope, age 16
Life Imitates Art
No one person has to do it all, but if each one of us follows our heart and our own inclinations, we will find the small things that we can do to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment.
John Denver
I’m constantly amazed at the goodwill and support of the many people who turn out to watch me paint my murals. Of course, at the same time, there’s always at least one critic in the crowd. My mural in the small community of Marathon in the Florida Keys was one such experience. Painted on a building along the A1A Highway, the mural I wanted to create was to be over 150 feet long and twenty feet high, making it the largest in Southern Florida, not to mention a landmark for many years to come. For me there was no pressure. I would simply paint the undersea world of Florida’s colorful living reefs, then add a life-size sperm whale and her calf. Finally, I intended to paint all the different kinds of marine life that thrived in the warm tropical waters around the keys.
As expected, the mural generated a lot of attention. Thousands of people showed up to watch its evolution. On the last day I decided to paint a large green sea turtle hovering over the reef. I didn’t have any photographs of a green sea turtle, but I had a great deal of experience swimming with them in Hawaii, Florida and other parts of the world, so I winged it from memory. As I was completing the turtle, a local marine biologist approached me in a huff and told me point-blank: “That is not a green sea turtle.” Naturally, this surprised me. So I asked him politely what he thought it was. He took a step forward, peered at me above his glasses and said in a scolding voice, “It’s a combination of a hawksbill turtle and a green sea turtle . . . there is no such thing.” I tried to defend myself with artistic license and all, but he was adamant about critiquing every aspect of this imaginary species. He seemed very upset that I could even do this without his permission and finally left in disgust. All I could do was shrug and say, “Hey, I did the best I could.”
The new mural was dedicated the next day at a special ceremony. The entire town showed up to cheer their new landmark and the environmental message that it carried. Ten years passed. One afternoon I received a phone call at my home studio in Hawaii from my good friend Mandy Rodriguez, the vice president of Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Florida. Mandy seemed very excited. “Hey, Wyland,” he said, “you’re not going to believe this. I just got a call from the turtle hospital in Marathon. They just saved a sick little hawksbill green sea turtle.” He paused to catch his breath. “That’s a species that no one’s ever seen before! The first thing I thought of when I heard about it was you. They want you to come down next month and release the turtle into the Atlantic Ocean.”
I was amazed to hear this news, and I had to admit I had a huge smirk on my face, remembering the words of the turtle expert at the mural site. I was pretty used to the idea of art imitating life, but I never thought I’d see the day when life would imitate art. Mandy explained that the turtle owed its survival to the turtle hospital in Marathon, where they perform rescues of turtles all over Florida—the first facility of its kind. The volunteers at the hospital include doctors who actually perform surgery on injured turtles and remove the life-threatening tumors that are being found more and more on these endangered creatures. The general feeling is that pesticides and other chemicals are entering the food chain and the turtles, which have thrived for 200 million years, are feeling the full impact of man’s destruction of the ocean environment. Every once in a while, though, there is a victory, as in the case of this young hawksbill green sea turtle. It had been found stranded on the beach, dying from malnutrition. Soon it was to be returned, healthy and recuperated, back into the sea.
When I flew down to Marathon to see this amazing new species I was astounded. It was exactly like I had pictured it. I hate to personify animals, but this turtle was one of the cutest things I had ever seen. As I gazed at the turtle, I was amazed that, sure enough, it had the features of both the green sea turtle and the hawksbill. Nature never fails to astonish me, and I felt like this was an important moment in science and art. Gently, I lifted the fragile, five-inch creature from its healing tank and carried it to the fishing boat of Richie Moretti, the founder of the turtle hospital. Mandy Rodriquez joined us, and we boated out to sea in search of the sea-grass cover that would camouflage and protect the turtle until it was large enough to defend itself.
Eventually, we found a large, thick floating mass of sea grass—the perfect place to release the turtle. The boat stopped and, carefully, I slipped into the Atlantic with the turtle in my hand, placing it near the edge of the sea grass. To my surprise, it circled around to me and hovered by my face mask before disappearing into the sea grass. To this day I believe there was something miraculous about the entire event. It shows that we do not know all the mysteries of the sea, that nature will always surprise us, and that man can make a difference in our world. Every time I visit the Florida Keys and drive past that Whaling Wall mural, I remember the hawksbill green sea turtle and the important lessons it taught me.
Wyland
More Chicken Soup?
Many of the stories and poems you have read in this book were submitted by readers like you who had read earlier Chicken Soup for the Soul books. We publish at least five or six Chicken Soup for the Soul books every year. We invite you to contribute a story to one of these future volumes.
Stories may be up to 1,200 words and must uplift or inspire. You may submit an original piece, something you have read or your favorite quotation on your refrigerator door.
To obtain a copy of our submission guidelines and a listing of upcoming Chicken Soup books, please write, fax or check our Web site.
Please send your submissions to:
Chicken Soup for the Soul
P.O. Box 30880
Santa Barbara, CA 93130
fax: 805-563-2945
Web site: www.chickensoup.com
Just send a copy of your stories and other pieces to the above address.
We will be sure that both you and the author are credited for your submission.
For information about speaking engagements, other books, audiotapes, workshops and training programs, please contact any of our authors directly.
The Wyland Foundation and
Wyland Ocean Challenge
A portion of all proceeds from Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover’s Soul will go to the Wyland Foundation, which has partnered with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, to create the Wyland Ocean Challenge “Clean Water for the 21st Century”—a free, nationwide marine life art and science educational program for every school in the nation. This program is designed to teach children everywhere about the importance of our marine resources. Your purchase of this book will help make this program a great success.
Art is the linchpin that engages interest in science and conservation and fires the imagination, particularly among young students, who will inherit many of the problems we face today. The Wyland Ocean Challenge is the first interdisciplinary art and science educational program for grades K–6 that addresses these issues. The program integrates easily into primary school science units through:
Exploring Science Through Art
and Imagination
•Free Downloadable Teacher’s Activities
Activities are
divided into two grade categories: K–3, 4–6. Three thematic areas are covered to enhance the student’s understanding of adaptations, water cycles, and environmental stewardship and conservation. All activities are designed to support National Science and Art Standards.
•Live Learning Events
A Wyland-designed “Underwater Village” will tour seventeen cities throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico in fall 2003. The tour will supplement the activities of the curriculum.
• Nationwide Art Contest
An art contest promoting self-expression and science research will take place in late 2003.
The Wyland Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that inspires people to care more about our oceans and the marine life within. Founded in 1993, the foundation encourages involvement in ocean conservation through classroom education programs, art and scientific research scholarships, and life-size art in public places. Generous monetary and service donations from local, national and individual sponsors make these programs possible.
The origins of the Wyland Foundation begin with the work of artist Wyland, who is recognized by political leaders, scientists, scholars, teachers and environmentalists around the world for his care and concern for our ocean planet.
For more information about the Wyland Foundation or Wyland Ocean Challenge:
Wyland Foundation
P. O. Box 1839
Laguna Beach, CA 926561
phone: 949-497-7979
fax: 949-497-7991
Web sites: www.wylandfoundation.org
and www.wylandoceanchallenge.org