DOLPHIN DREAMS CHUCK HESSE THE PHILOSOPHER PREACHES FREEDOM FOR CAPTIVE DOLHINS. CHUCK HESSE THE OCEAN ENGINEER IS MAKING IT HAPPEN WITH WHAT HE CALLS THE WORLD’S FIRST DOLPHIN REHABILITATION CENTER. (original) (raw)

Chuck Hesse, tall, bearded and intense, towers over the edge of a limestone outcropping above a stretch of ebbing seawater between Bird Rock and Boy Stubb’s Shoal on a distant island called Providenciales .

Above, a full Caribbean moon casts its light into the clear tropical waters, illuminating a large eagle ray gliding past a few feet away. A welcome trade-winds breeze wafts over the steamy island, teasing the skin. Heat lightning flares in the distance.

Although Hesse is here with just one other person, he holds both arms wide apart as if he is preaching to a faithful assembly. It is a common gesture for the Naval Academy-schooled ocean engineer turned biologist and philosopher.

“Imagine, if you were a dolphin who had spent 20 years as a captive in a dolphin penitentiary. You’ve been imprisoned in a ‘bathtub’ somewhere in the Keys or in a glass-walled cage at Epcot.”

Hesse pauses, spinning to address the water itself, and all the queen conch and damsel fish and spiny lobsters beyond. Just offshore is what amounts to nearly a mile of fenced aquatic “pasture” marked by hundreds of white cork buoys.

“Wouldn’t you just love to come out here and splash around under the moonlight?”

Like the rest of Chuck Hesse’s visions, the notion is a gripping, cosmic one, not too terribly different from the other goals he has worked 17 years here to achieve – the World’s First Queen Conch Farm, and the World’s First Island-Nation To Become a Marine Biosphere Reserve.

In a similar manner, the world’s first “Dolphin Rehabilitation Center” has first taken life as a dream that flutters about Hesse like a moth around a bright flame. In a time when treatment of the highly intelligent marine mammals is coming under increasing scrutiny, it is a dream, which, if realized, would have implications that stretch far beyond Providenciales – reaching all the way to the shores of Florida, where a captive dolphin industry has thrived for decades.

To know why the dream even exists, you must spend some time in this distant upside-down tropical land where linear time visits, but never, ever stays, and where hopeful, idealized longings for ecological order – even Hesse’s “Into The Blue” dolphin project – could come true.

THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS, where this tale takes place, is a British Crown Colony comprising the southeastern tip of the natural chain of the Bahamas.

Insular and, until recently, virtually unexploited by widescale corporate tourism, this seven-island nation seems to have evolved with its very own world view. It is a view in which the sun always shines, and tomorrow, when it comes, will be pretty okay, mon.

Once the center of a thriving salt-collecting industry, its national seal at one time beheld a native “salt raker” squatting in front of what was suppose to be a large, conical mound of salt. Ignorant of geography, a 19th century British artist drew the salt mound as an igloo, complete with rounded door. As a result, an igloo was on the national seal of the Turks and Caicos until well into the 20th century.

Oddly, no one in the island-chain seemed particularly offended.

Today’s seal is a more accurate reflection of island priorities. Done in exquisite pinks and greens, the seal depicts two flamingos holding a crest containing a spiny lobster, a queen conch and a turks head cactus. At the top, a white pelican forever nests on a swatch of colorful plumes.

All that’s missing from the seal, say insiders, is a pile of cocaine. It’s what got the prime minister, Norman Saunders, busted by DEA agents in Miami in 1985. For years, it’s what lined the pockets of drug pirates who took full advantage of the islands’ strategic location as a midway refueling point between Colombia and Florida. When the London Observer came here to report on the state of affairs in 1986, it returned with an article headlined: “Burnt Fingers and Hot Passions in the Cocaine Isles.”

Igloos on coats-of-arms. Queen conch farms and pink flamingos, spiny lobsters and cosmic, impassioned visions. It is a place where reality seems to be constantly in flux, reshaping and forming, like a perceptual Silly Putty.

Hesse came here in 1973, seeking the proverbial port in a storm as he was sailing through, aimed for the eastern Caribbean. His life was already as varied as this country’s coat of arms: After six years of navy nuclear submarine service, he took an early retirement to learn more about the “real meaning of life underwater.” Equipped with a master’s in biology from a New England college, Hesse taught there long enough to build a wooden sailboat that would take him and his young wife to Barbados to do field studies on the queen conch.

After the storm passed, the Hesses put on their scuba gear and explored local waters, finding more queen conch here in shallow 30-foot depths than they ever hoped to find around Barbados. In fact, the marine resources of this undeveloped island-nation were wonderfully intact. With few environmental laws and no real tourism infrastructure, the Turks and Caicos seemed like a political blank slate, Hesse thought. It might be the perfect place to test all manner of environmental ideals.

If Hesse, working closely with government leaders, could subtly impose his sense of ecological order on the country, perhaps it could become a working example of a healthy biosphere reserve for the rest of the Caribbean. And if the marine resources remained plentiful, then islanders – who relied on lobster and queen conch fishing for centuries for high-protein sustenance and a steady job – could stay traditionally employed, and their timeless, low-tech island culture might also endure – rather than being displaced by a Westernized, pre-packaged tourist economy.

Although researchers have experimented with dolphin rehabilitation from time to time, Hesse’s dream was to create the world’s first permanent center.

Island leaders began to listen. Impressed with the expatriate’s articulate concern for their native land, as well as his grasp of natural sciences, they passed laws encouraging renewable energy use, protecting fish and shellfish from sport divers, and setting up a series of marine sanctuaries and parks. Philanthropic foundations active in the region, like the Rockefeller Brothers, gave the former naval officer grants to install windmills, educate island students to tropical ecosystems and practice mariculture.

Hesse’s dream became a grassroots “agency” he called PRIDE – Protection of the Reefs and Islands from Degrada tion and Exploitation. With volunteer help, PRIDE became a sort of mini-Peace Corps.

By 1985, investors supported Hesse’s idea to grow queen conch to revitalize a badly depleted regional resource. The Caicos Conch Farm was assembled out of wood and fiberglass on a desolate limestone shore of Providenciales. It grew steadily into the $4-million facility of today, offering tangible hope for a natural solution to a host of problems.

Taken together, Hesse’s dreams here had substantial impacts. But they were no match for the commercial tourism industry, which unleashed bulldozers and drag-lines on the islands in the late 1980s, coaxing the economy steadily toward dependence on Western-style resorts. Hesse saw limits on his visions for the first time. To keep the unnatural realities in check, he would need a new, more powerful dream.

Enter Ric O’Barry, a man with his own style of dreaming. Once head trainer at the Miami Seaquarium, O’Barry worked with the five captive bottlenose dolphins who performed as “Flipper” on the television series by the same name. Before becoming a born-again believer in the freedom of all captive dolphins, O’Barry also helped the U.S. Navy train dolphins to plant mines and attack enemy swimmers with exploding gas.

O’Barry, who publicly grandstands to call attention to the plight of captive dolphins, was once jailed in Bimini for using wire cutters to free a sick dolphin from a pen. More recently, he was run down by Navy ships off of Key West as he held onto a large buoy to protest maneuvers that might have injured wild dolphins in the area.

In his book “Behind the Dolphin Smile”, O’Barry explains his transformation from dolphin trainer to zealous critic of training. “Dolphins are not little wind-up toys; they’re complex individuals with likes and dislikes, fears, moods and dispositions, good days and bad. . . .They are almost anything you might say of a human child.”

Today, O’Barry of Coral Gables devotes nearly all of his waking time trying to convince people that dolphins do not belong in chemically treated tanks of water, performing stooge-like tricks for human audiences. Besides distorting the public’s perception of how a dolphin really lives, says O’Barry, captivity is usually fatal.

In fact, most captive dolphins, like those held in 19 separate display sites in Florida, often do not survive more than five years because of stress and disease, O’Barry says. In the wild, they may live for 40 years or longer.

Of the 414 bottlenose dolphin born into captivity in the U.S. during the 1980s, some one third of those had died by the end of the decade, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. In Florida, where 141 captive dolphins – 40 percent – are held, theme park conditions may seem luxurious to tourists, but they can be deadly to the dolphins.

For instance, at Epcot’s Living Seas, four of six dolphins there died in the last five years.

Despite the theme park claims that their animals are getting the best possible care, it’s clear that a hardy free-ranging marine mammal with a complex brain 40 percent larger than a human’s just doesn’t belong in a cage, say O’Barry and other activists, like Greenpeace.

In response to such criticism, Australia has closed all but one marine park, and became the first country to outlaw the capture of its wild dolphins. In the U.S., a move is under way to change the federal Mammal Protection Act of 1972 to allow states to ban the capture of wild dolphins.

Just this fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which routinely inspects marine mammal parks, undertook an investigation of World in Fort Lauderdale. They found that half the dolphins there from 1964 to 1987 died, largely because of illness.

What this all means, say dolphin advocates, is that Florida parks that have operated with virtual impunity will be pressured to either keep their captive dolphins healthy or release them. If released, they will need a place to readjust to the nuances of the natural, non-chlorinated world.

When O’Barry traveled to Providenciales last winter, he did so to swim with a wild dolphin who had increasingly courted human contact. That dolphin, nicknamed “JoJo,” was rare in that he had formed a bond with humans not reinforced by food rewards.

Each day, at 5 p.m., JoJo would swim into the clear, green shallows of Providenciales not far from Hesse’s conch farm to play with tourists there. JoJo would twist, flip and twirl about with the swimmers, sometimes aggressively pushing away young men and nuzzling young women in places they didn’t want to be nuzzled.

So interesting was this dolphin that Hesse set up the “JoJo Project” to educate tourists, as well as residents, to the unique behavior of the wild, friendly mammal. The willingness of JoJo to interact with people “could form the cornerstone of interspecies communication,”

Hesse pronounced.

As a wild dolphin, JoJo comes and goes when he wants, ranging over 45 square miles at speeds of 35 mph and more. Since dolphins are usually shy of humans in the wild, divers and swimmers had a rare chance to see a bottlenose dolphin in its natural habitat.

“This is not clown-like behavior taught to them in a theme park tank,” says Hesse. “This is how a dolphin really lives.”

A list of “Do’s and Don’ts” were distributed, and Dean Bernal, a former diving instructor with Club Med who had spent a lot of time with the dolphin, was hired to study and lecture about the animal. At the conch farm, dolphin exhibits and videos explain JoJo’s behavior; dolphin-themed jewelry sold in the farm’s gift shop helps pay for the Project.

In an underwater video, JoJo is shown stunning a peacock flounder under the sandy bottom with his sonar, and then bringing it to Bernal. In another scene, JoJo ‘herds’ a 7-foot nurse shark – a lethargic, bottom-dweller – into the shore to show to his human friends. Later, he does the same with a large ray, sometimes coaxing the ray along by grabbing at its wings with his teeth. In other shots, the dolphin responds to hand signals from Bernal by circling and diving – and then prompting Bernal to respond to him by poking Bernal with his snout.

While impressed with JoJo, O’Barry was particularly keen to Hesse’s attempts to raise environmental sensibilities in the country. When he saw the 80-acre tidal pasture where thousands of conch grazed benignly on the bottom, he deemed it the largest fenced enclosure of seawater he had ever seen. Could it hold dolphin? he wondered. Hesse’s eyes light up at the prospect.

With encouragement from O’Barry and dolphin expert Dr. Horace Dobbs, Hesse asked for and received official permission from the Turks and Caicos this past summer to import, duty-free, live dolphins for the purpose of “rehabilitation.”

“The rehab center will serve as a sort of ‘half-way house’ for those captive, hand-fed dolphins who need time to re-learn wild behaviors,” including fundamental chores like catching live fish and adapting to ocean currents, says Hesse. He figures an average stay for a dolphin would be around three months, based on work O’Barry initially did “de-training” captive dolphins “Joe” and “Rosie” from the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key in the Florida Keys.

As newly freed dolphins are cycled through the island center, and then released, their presence there would also provide the same educational purpose as the “JoJo Project,” except on a larger scale, Hesse figures.

Once introduced to life outside the pasture, the de-programmed dolphins would find not only JoJo, but three other local dolphins who have been friendly enough with human divers to be identified with names: Spot, Ben and Socrates. “There is the hope that the native dolphins will help with rehabilitation,” says Hesse, adding that wild dolphins around the world often come to the rescue of injured or stranded brethren.

To encourage Florida parks to participate, Hesse is mailing detailed proposals to “firms and persons holding captive dolphins,” asking them to consider the conch farm pasture “as a place where your dolphins could be safely and properly rehabilitated to the wild.” Recipients are en couraged to kick in a fair share of operational expenses.

Epcot officials were the first to hear of such a proposal when curator Tom Hopkins and several other employees of the Living Seas visited the conch farm last summer. Hesse says he personally gave Hopkins a copy of the proposal and later wrote suggesting that the Living Seas be the site of a world-wide conference on dolphin rehabilitation. He’s received no response.

(At Epcot, publicist Wallace Sears says the visit to the conch farm was made when the Epcot officials were on vacation, and had nothing to do with plans to re lease dolphins there or anywhere else. Hopkins, he says, does not recall seeing such a proposal. Hopkins did not return repeated phone calls.) “In Florida, they’re absolutely paranoid about the word ‘rehabilitation,”‘ says Hesse, sighing. “They don’t want the public to know the dolphins can be taken back to nature to survive. They want everyone to think they’re living the best, possible life they could be living.” Any acknowledgment from Epcot or others that “rehabilitation” is needed implies “they need to be rehabed from something that is not good for them. . . .”

Aware that he is operating in an arena where public relations can put a spin on perceptions, Hesse tries his hand at that game.

“We’re going to start calling it a ‘Retirement Home for Captive Dolphins,’ ” smiles Hesse. “It’s where dolphins will come when they’re finished ‘working.’ No more ‘rehabilitation.’ “

O’BARRY HAS RETURNED TO COR al Gables to continue his stateside protests. He looks forward to the day when he can travel back to Providenciales to be present when the conch pen receives its first dolphin.

Hesse, who says it will cost $30,000 a year just to feed one animal, turned to dolphin activist groups to help with operational expenses, instead of seeking support from captive dolphin keepers.

By late fall, a non-profit British watchdog group called “Zoo Check” found a donor with $150,000 in start-up funds. It will pay for air freight costs, a freezer for food storage, a trainer’s salary and scads of live fish. Also in the budget is a provision to “provide initial 24-hour human companionship for dolphins” used to being constantly watched by trainers.

As a result, the first dolphin is headed from England to the World’s First Dolphin Rehabililitation Center. “His name is Rocky,” says Hesse. “He’s 27 years old and has been in captivity for 23 of those years. This is a dolphin that hasn’t seen daylight for a very long time.

“This is like having a baby,” says Hesse, excitedly. “We’ve got the ‘crib’ and we know he’s on his way.”

Soon, in a broad, swiftly flowing tidal pasture between Boy Stubbs Shoal and Bird Rock, off the limestone shore of a distant Caribbean island, a dolphin will test the waters of his new home, splashing freely under the moonlight for the first time in years.

Captive dolphin activists and keepers everywhere will be tuning in to the results, either because they have everything to gain, or everything to lose.

And so, even here, in an odd, whimsical land where conch and flamingos dance together on a national seal, and bottle nose dolphins are rebirthed in aquatic cribs under the tropical moon, this story is far more than just a dream.

It is reality, and it’s pretty okay, mon.

Originally Published: December 16, 1990 at 5:00 AM EST