For The Wild - KURT RUSSO on the People Under the Sea⧸91

00:00:00.120 Hey, for the wild community, it's Ayana here, and I wanted to share with you that this is our first episode of our new theme months, and our theme of October is More Than Human Kin, so I'm so blessed and honored to be sharing with you about orcas for this first episode of our More Than Human Kin theme month.

00:00:20.080 Also, this is our first episode with Action Steps, so in the middle of this episode, Molly's

00:00:25.060 going to come on and share with you a number of things that we can actually do that's tangible

00:00:29.940 that will support the healing and regeneration and hopefully survival of orcas.

00:00:36.660 And then, of course, we're always looking for continued support through our drip, especially

00:00:40.860 as we work harder to make the shows more impactful with Action Steps.

00:00:44.620 We really could use your help.

00:00:46.000 head over to d.rip slash four dash the dash wild one last thing is that you're about to hear some

00:00:53.140 sounds from the j k and l pod so we hope that you enjoy the sounds from the pacific ocean

00:00:58.940 so our

00:01:15.920 our prayers go to J50

00:01:18.640 and her mother

00:01:19.260 her family

00:01:20.420 the same

00:01:23.160 and all our relations

00:01:24.940 and to your listeners

00:01:28.020 that they keep their hope up even if their pessimism grows stay hopeful because as one

00:01:33.780 person once told me you're an activist you are not allowed to lose hope

00:01:43.040 the silence is broken by somebody crying trying to be heard

00:01:56.780 never a word. Always the attitude, sort out your own, always alone. Wishing for something

00:02:06.020 the world is denying. Out in the wilderness, somebody's crying.

00:02:12.920 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:02:26.300 Today we are speaking with Kurt Russo.

00:02:29.080 Kurt has worked on environmental issues, land preservation, and treaty rights with the Lummi Nation for 40 years.

00:02:36.340 He is a senior strategist for the Lummi Nation Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office,

00:02:41.880 coordinating the Lummi Nation's Salish Sea Campaign and the Tokatai Repatriation Project.

00:02:49.060 He is also the Executive Director of the Foundation for Indigenous Medicine

00:02:53.080 and the former Director of the Native American Land Conservancy.

00:02:57.480 He holds a BS and MS in Forestry and a PhD in History.

00:03:03.240 Well, thank you so much, Kurt, for joining us today.

00:03:06.440 And before I begin, I would just like to extend the deepest of gratitude from all of us at Fur the Wild for the passionate and moving work you are doing on behalf of the Southern resident orcas and in working to bring Tokatai back home to her natal waters and relatives who await her.

00:03:26.660 Thank you.

00:03:26.860 And it feels only right that we begin our More Than Human theme month in honor of the mother orca, Taliqua, who carried her dead calf on a tour of grief for more than a thousand miles over a 17-day period.

00:03:42.380 And it's a profound reminder that we share our place and experience with other beings that bear memory, whose capacity for love and loss mirror our own.

00:03:53.600 And it also highlights the uncertainty of the southern residents' livelihood, and quite frankly, the livelihood of our planetary community, if we continue to act with reckless abandon.

00:04:05.820 And I see Taliqua's act as a communicative plea to our humanity, as an acute demonstration of the wisdom that these kin possess.

00:04:15.760 So could you begin by sharing with us what Lummi cosmology might make of this happening

00:04:23.140 and what place orcas occupy within Lummi cosmology more broadly?

00:04:29.760 Cosmology is one of those words that sort of, you sort of drop back into your eyes,

00:04:34.180 if you know what I mean.

00:04:35.520 I can tell you what I've been told about those questions.

00:04:39.480 There was a time and there was a Lummi word for this in their cosmology.

00:04:45.220 which is spelled E-L-H-N-E-X-W-T-E-X-W.

00:04:54.000 And that refers to a time when all life forms were one and related.

00:05:03.880 And that time is a time when the Kualalmach and the blackfish

00:05:09.700 and the young ones 1.00

00:05:13.200 the humans and others

00:05:15.200 all were one 1.00

00:05:17.580 the Kualalmachin

00:05:21.200 is considered

00:05:22.080 one of the people that lives under the water

00:05:25.720 that's what the word means

00:05:27.200 blackfish

00:05:28.140 cosmology like I said is a big word

00:05:32.740 so if you can imagine

00:05:35.440 because that's what it takes right

00:05:37.120 blackfish

00:05:41.140 take out the image you have in your mind

00:05:43.500 and imagine that people are actually blackfish

00:05:46.560 as much as blackfish are people

00:05:49.020 it's all one family

00:05:51.060 and that's very unusual and it's very unique

00:05:55.260 and the same is true for salmon

00:05:57.220 the salmon woman 0.99

00:06:00.400 speaks, spoke to Lummies 0.97

00:06:03.540 about their sacred obligation 0.98

00:06:05.520 to the creation

00:06:07.980 I'm

00:06:11.600 in a very

00:06:14.360 emotional state right now

00:06:18.040 you have to bear with me

00:06:19.860 the fact is that you're right

00:06:23.100 and this is what I've heard

00:06:26.640 the chief of the Lummi

00:06:28.280 Salik is his name say this

00:06:30.440 Tahlequah 0.98

00:06:32.360 was showing to the world

00:06:35.760 what the ones that live above the water

00:06:39.960 are doing

00:06:40.460 look

00:06:42.700 look at my dead baby

00:06:49.540 look

00:06:52.600 look at my dying ocean

00:06:57.080 look for a thousand miles in 17 days

00:07:03.820 till I put her down

00:07:04.740 and I won't eat

00:07:06.980 all that time

00:07:09.100 the last

00:07:13.420 surviving calf

00:07:15.180 that was born

00:07:18.500 to the J-pods

00:07:21.200 in 2015

00:07:21.920 is missing

00:07:25.220 that calf is called Scarlet

00:07:29.820 J-50

00:07:30.700 and we know from the rake marks on

00:07:35.240 J-50's side

00:07:37.920 that she was midwifed into birth by other members 0.76

00:07:42.220 of the pod midwifed

00:07:43.580 pulled out of her mother

00:07:48.260 by other killer whales to give life to little Scarlet 0.96

00:07:50.860 pulled out and midwifed

00:07:53.300 these are the people that live under the water

00:07:55.620 so yes, the Lummi cosmology

00:07:59.840 goes back to that tongue

00:08:01.800 that is

00:08:02.920 known as the

00:08:05.860 every when 0.59

00:08:06.480 E-V-E-R-Y 1.00

00:08:09.300 W-H-E-N

00:08:11.120 and the before time and one time

00:08:12.800 and that's the time we're speaking in now

00:08:15.760 the fact is

00:08:21.580 there are worlds

00:08:24.900 within worlds and the sailor sea

00:08:27.140 is showing us that

00:08:29.020 one world that we are living in

00:08:31.040 is in a deep crisis

00:08:32.780 and the people that live above the water 1.00

00:08:35.300 have to understand

00:08:36.600 they don't own this place

00:08:39.120 their presidents

00:08:41.380 don't own it

00:08:42.160 their congresses don't own it

00:08:44.440 they don't own it

00:08:47.300 they were gifted

00:08:49.300 it

00:08:49.660 until that's understood

00:08:53.240 we'll see more dead calves

00:08:56.520 so that's what I have to say to that

00:09:01.040 thank you for your

00:09:05.780 your emotional connection

00:09:08.740 it really

00:09:09.420 expresses the grief

00:09:14.580 and the pain around

00:09:15.960 these beautiful being

00:09:18.540 these kin that are speaking to us and i i truly believe that so the lumi reverence for their orca

00:09:28.120 kin brings us to the story of tokatai or lolita an orca who is currently kept at miami sequarium

00:09:36.800 in florida and i'm wondering if you could share with us this story beginning with the traumatic

00:09:42.640 capture of Tokatai back in 1970. We have a website which we talked to you about called

00:09:50.060 sacredsea.org. Sacredsea all runs together.org. And on that website is the work we're doing for

00:09:59.940 the Salish Sea. And part of that work for the Salish Sea is the rescue and repatriation of

00:10:05.400 Tokatai. So on that website is a button called Media Resources. And on that button, Media

00:10:12.080 resources are two videos. One video is a trailer of a film we're doing about the return of

00:10:21.160 Tokatai. It's in production. And the other is the chief of the Lummi Nation speaking

00:10:26.540 about Kualalmachin. Tokatai, if you would see the original footage taken in Penn Cove

00:10:38.560 in 1970

00:10:39.680 it's very hard to even recount

00:10:42.260 but by

00:10:44.200 the captive industry they were herded in by

00:10:46.420 dynamite

00:10:47.000 and underwater

00:10:50.320 explosions

00:10:51.360 they were herded into a cove

00:10:54.800 and they took

00:10:58.700 whale after whale

00:11:00.400 after whale after whale

00:11:02.460 seven whales

00:11:04.740 died they drowned

00:11:05.940 four young ones died

00:11:07.980 they were drowned and each of the drowned

00:11:10.080 whales was their stomachs cut open

00:11:12.200 with cement blocks put in to sink them

00:11:14.000 so they wouldn't be found

00:11:15.000 these were human beings that did

00:11:18.180 this if you hear the

00:11:20.180 keening, keening is the sound

00:11:22.140 killer whales make when they are highly

00:11:24.080 distressed

00:11:24.840 people that were in Penn Cove

00:11:27.960 that day will tell you

00:11:29.260 the haunting sounds

00:11:32.080 of the screams of the killer

00:11:34.100 whales of the matriarch 0.99

00:11:36.220 spy hopping desperately to search

00:11:37.980 for their family as they were taken

00:11:40.060 onto ships and vanished

00:11:42.120 the keening

00:11:44.080 is almost

00:11:44.720 too much to bear

00:11:47.320 Tokatai

00:11:50.380 was taken out of the water that day

00:11:51.940 she was four years old

00:11:53.220 and these

00:11:56.000 captains of the universe

00:11:58.020 of

00:12:00.100 SeaWorld and

00:12:01.980 others who irrigate

00:12:03.920 to themselves the right to take these 0.97

00:12:06.000 beings captive 0.91

00:12:07.220 shipped her off to

00:12:09.900 Miami 1.00

00:12:10.340 this is a whale that lives most of its

00:12:13.940 water, its temperatures average

00:12:16.060 about 50 degrees

00:12:17.260 she's taken to Miami

00:12:21.200 at 4 years old

00:12:23.620 17 other

00:12:26.180 whales were shipped off that day to other

00:12:28.220 sea circuses

00:12:29.840 for people to be treated

00:12:32.220 tricks for treats for the whales

00:12:35.040 to educate their kids about killer whales, right? 0.54

00:12:40.940 She was placed in a concrete tank 1.00

00:12:43.340 80 feet long and 20 feet deep for 47

00:12:47.000 years. She's the 0.84

00:12:51.340 only surviving wild orca in North America in captivity.

00:12:55.720 She's the last one. They all died within 15 years.

00:12:58.660 there was a killer whale

00:13:01.760 placed in the Seaquarium

00:13:03.520 Miami Seaquarium's tank

00:13:05.000 and if I sound angry

00:13:05.980 it's simply because I am

00:13:07.300 another killer whale

00:13:09.480 was placed in the tank with her

00:13:11.080 his name was Hugo

00:13:11.980 and Hugo committed suicide

00:13:16.520 he smashed his head up

00:13:21.680 against the sign of the tank

00:13:22.500 until he was dead

00:13:23.160 they disposed of his water

00:13:24.200 like waste into a landfill

00:13:25.380 so she was left alone with two young porpoises

00:13:30.180 and she's been there ever since

00:13:31.900 and the Lummi Nation had heard about this some years ago

00:13:34.080 but until recently

00:13:36.200 didn't really bring the full weight to bear

00:13:38.920 to get her free and back to her family 0.55

00:13:40.620 her mother is still alive 1.00

00:13:41.820 her mother is now the matriarch 0.95

00:13:44.640 of the L-Pod

00:13:46.200 if you were to go outside

00:13:50.400 Miami's Aquarium

00:13:51.400 stand there in the middle of the night

00:13:53.900 you will hear Tokatai singing.

00:13:58.160 You will hear her voice.

00:14:01.820 She has done that every night for 47 years.

00:14:06.220 So we have, and Joel James, my colleague and inspiration,

00:14:11.640 is a master carver of totem poles,

00:14:14.260 and he carves a totem pole in dedication to the reunion

00:14:17.900 and return and rescue of Tokatai.

00:14:20.140 So that totem pole is now in Gainesville, Florida,

00:14:23.240 at the University of Florida where it's going to be brought out

00:14:25.420 on December 10th for exhibit

00:14:27.300 along with an exhibit at the Sailor Sea

00:14:29.300 as part of our campaign we're

00:14:31.180 working with to get her 1.00

00:14:33.220 free, get her here, get her home

00:14:35.180 get her well, get her strong

00:14:37.400 and get her back to her mother

00:14:38.560 and we will do that and it'll be done

00:14:41.280 within two years

00:14:41.980 Miami's Aquarium

00:14:44.100 doesn't take it seriously

00:14:46.500 but they will soon enough

00:14:48.780 they say 0.92

00:14:51.460 she's worth 20 million dollars 0.99

00:14:52.880 we're not going to pay anything to get her out of there

00:14:56.460 and the tribe was called to do this by

00:15:01.560 let's put it this way, it wasn't a phone call

00:15:03.700 they were told to get this done, so we're getting it done

00:15:08.480 she's with the L-Pod, J-K-N-L-Pod 0.99

00:15:11.720 make up the southern residents, southern resident 1.00

00:15:15.160 killer whale population, spend a lot of their lives

00:15:18.440 in lummy waters, traditional waters

00:15:21.420 so we have a sanctuary ready 0.96

00:15:24.560 for her to return to

00:15:26.160 near Orcas Island

00:15:30.340 in the San Juan Islands

00:15:31.580 where her family tours by routinely

00:15:33.980 there will be a moment

00:15:35.340 sometime in the next two and a half years

00:15:38.520 when

00:15:38.940 Tokatai is going to be singing out her song

00:15:43.180 and her mother is going to hear

00:15:44.740 she can hear it 10 miles away

00:15:45.960 and they are going to reunite

00:15:48.940 and that's our job is to make that moment happen and the salish sea when that moment occurs

00:15:55.880 will never look the same again to anybody that's the tokatai campaign

00:16:03.140 wow kurt that's so raw and hearing the details of these captures is devastating but so necessary

00:16:17.840 for us to hear it's just insane to think in 1970 that over 40 orca calves were captured and sold

00:16:25.660 eight adults were killed at the time and like you were saying the pods were just completely

00:16:30.440 frantic um yeah so i i just feel compelled to underscore just how traumatic the capture of

00:16:39.240 these orcas was like you were saying to this day human residents of the area recall hearing the

00:16:45.400 frantic kings of matriarch orcas as their children were torn from the sea by helicopters.

00:16:51.940 Similarly, resident orcas avoid Penn Cove, where their relatives were stolen and have done so for

00:16:58.660 the past 50 years. In an article written by J. Julius, who you had mentioned, the chairman of the

00:17:05.100 Lummi Nation, Julius writes, quote, just like Tokatai, members of the Lummi Nation have endured

00:17:10.760 centuries of destructive policies. Policies that separated our families, depleted our salmon runs,

00:17:17.320 desecrated our sacred sites, and reduced our traditional fishing areas to a fraction of what

00:17:22.080 they once were. These policies and willful disregard for our treaties have damaged the

00:17:28.280 health of the Salish Sea and negatively impacted the well-being of our people, end quote.

00:17:34.380 I'm curious about the connections between government policy that separated human families

00:17:40.360 as well as those that have done the same to the southern residents.

00:17:46.220 How do these stories of separation tell one another?

00:17:49.620 And how does Tokatai's abduction reflect the failure of policy to protect the Sailor Sea?

00:17:56.200 Well, that's an important question.

00:17:59.520 I think it has many different levels that you come in to try to answer it.

00:18:03.660 I'm going to pretend to know most of the answers,

00:18:06.020 but one thing, it speaks to something clearly out of order

00:18:12.640 in the way our society deals with life forms, even their own.

00:18:23.460 There's something seriously wrong with all of this.

00:18:26.140 It's not just normal.

00:18:28.300 It's not just normal for a person to come in the community and steal children.

00:18:36.020 But what's painfully normal is the ability for people to rationalize doing it.

00:18:44.320 Everyone that did these things, these government agents or these agents of the C-circuit industry,

00:18:54.520 they may be great brothers and mothers, but yet they do these things.

00:19:02.180 And they can explain it to themselves.

00:19:03.720 So, you know, I was told once by a woman who counseled battered women, and I got to know her fairly well.

00:19:11.380 She once told me, there's only one thing most important, and it is how you explain yourself to yourself.

00:19:26.240 Everything flows from that.

00:19:27.720 i actually met a gentleman who was involved in the captures in pen code when he was 15

00:19:38.020 he was part of the capture team

00:19:40.440 i said how could you do that and he said well i was only 15 i said well i was 15 once i wouldn't

00:19:49.520 have done that it's complicated but now he's involved in orca rescue

00:19:56.100 so it came back to haunt him

00:20:00.680 I think I fear

00:20:04.480 and I hope that my fears are wrong

00:20:06.820 that there's something missing

00:20:08.780 in the way we treat

00:20:12.240 life

00:20:14.160 not just orcas

00:20:16.820 but each other

00:20:19.600 there's something missing

00:20:22.200 in the day to day cruelty

00:20:24.820 we see in the paper

00:20:26.420 I had a dear friend

00:20:30.020 who was very involved

00:20:31.500 in Buddhism

00:20:32.920 she's very well placed

00:20:35.600 in that tradition

00:20:36.780 and she went through

00:20:38.120 a seven month silent retreat

00:20:40.260 seven months

00:20:41.060 of silence

00:20:42.660 I said what was the hardest thing

00:20:45.500 when you came out

00:20:46.220 she said the front page

00:20:51.800 of a newspaper

00:20:52.420 violence after violence

00:20:56.100 after violence

00:20:57.100 the front page stories of

00:20:59.760 people being less than human

00:21:01.540 to their world and each other

00:21:03.160 and I think killer whales

00:21:05.680 and boarding schools

00:21:07.640 draw a line

00:21:11.180 that we need to pay attention to

00:21:13.600 that we're being

00:21:14.360 we're being

00:21:16.120 how can I put this

00:21:18.720 molded

00:21:20.180 by a system or a process or something

00:21:24.240 to do things unspeakably cruel to each other

00:21:28.180 and to perfectly innocent lifeforms

00:21:31.120 that have done nothing to us

00:21:33.040 but inhabit the same planet.

00:21:37.520 There's something missing.

00:21:39.940 There's a presence of an absence.

00:21:43.100 And that's, I think, what connects

00:21:45.020 what a human being can do to ascension being.

00:21:50.180 that has the form of a killer whale and how a human being can do that

00:21:54.160 to a six-month-old native child

00:21:56.900 tearing it from the arms of its mother and shipping it 2,000 miles away.

00:22:04.400 You know, Jewel and I have worked around the world

00:22:07.160 and one time we found ourselves in Brazil

00:22:10.920 having an audience with a gentleman who was trying to stop the construction

00:22:15.900 of a nuclear power plant

00:22:19.240 they were going to build on the coast

00:22:20.220 between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo

00:22:21.800 and we thought,

00:22:23.080 well, there's madness.

00:22:27.060 So we're having an audience

00:22:28.240 with this gentleman who was fighting it

00:22:29.720 and he was asked,

00:22:32.380 are you an optimist?

00:22:36.900 He laughed and he said,

00:22:38.080 no, no, no, I'm not.

00:22:40.220 I'm hopeful.

00:22:43.620 I, uh,

00:22:44.160 I have been so distressed

00:22:47.400 by this

00:22:48.040 that I had to go see a therapist

00:22:50.340 and I said to her 1.00

00:22:54.580 J50 0.54

00:22:58.520 and the residents

00:23:00.560 said I can't stop crying

00:23:03.120 I know why

00:23:08.640 she said to me

00:23:12.700 she said to me

00:23:15.260 because you work

00:23:18.500 every day

00:23:19.400 with people

00:23:22.660 with great empathy

00:23:24.140 for their world

00:23:26.220 and it's true

00:23:33.120 empathy

00:23:37.640 is

00:23:38.800 the ability to take on

00:23:43.560 the impressions of the other

00:23:44.800 and I think that

00:23:49.960 when the world saw that

00:23:51.760 grieving mother

00:23:54.700 it took on that mother's

00:24:00.140 song

00:24:02.300 and a kind of mea culpa

00:24:17.400 one can only hope that

00:24:19.040 one can only hope that we find 1.00

00:24:23.820 J50 little Scarlet alive 0.98

00:24:25.480 seems unlikely

00:24:29.120 I was mentioning this to someone here in the tribe about how this morning the residents, very unusual, were all traveling together.

00:24:52.440 And the J-pod was in the lead.

00:24:56.200 Tight formation. 0.84

00:24:59.120 And the lead of the J-Pod was J-50's mother.

00:25:11.980 It's called the grief formation.

00:25:15.820 the entire resident population

00:25:21.320 standing with the mother

00:25:24.860 who probably just lost her

00:25:27.360 four year old baby

00:25:29.360 that wasn't in the formation

00:25:33.300 and nobody knows where it is

00:25:34.680 I need to say this though

00:25:38.580 it didn't have to turn out this way 0.83

00:25:40.980 J-50 could have been

00:25:47.480 saved 0.70

00:25:50.060 but she died more than likely 0.86

00:25:55.680 she died of starvation

00:25:56.980 her mother was trying to feed her

00:25:58.840 her family shared their food with her

00:26:01.760 isn't that amazing

00:26:02.380 but it wasn't nurturing her because

00:26:05.800 well we don't know why

00:26:07.580 because they're living

00:26:10.840 in a sick ocean

00:26:12.480 we here in the tribe

00:26:16.640 participate in the governor of the state

00:26:18.780 of Washington's southern resident

00:26:20.880 killer whale task force

00:26:22.780 yeah

00:26:24.460 well

00:26:24.960 it's not rocket science what these

00:26:28.780 killer whales need, they need food

00:26:30.300 they need 580,000

00:26:36.480 pounds of Chinook a year

00:26:38.680 to survive.

00:26:43.520 They're not getting

00:26:44.440 one-tenth of that.

00:26:48.780 If they really cared about this,

00:26:50.380 rather than having task force debate over how many

00:26:52.600 angels can dance on the head

00:26:54.620 of a pin, all they've got to do is

00:26:56.460 take down the Snake River dams.

00:26:58.480 They can do that in two months. They don't even need

00:27:00.600 congressional approval to do it.

00:27:04.000 That's where 0.55

00:27:04.560 the Chinook were decimated.

00:27:06.480 for those dams.

00:27:11.100 But no, instead they're talking about

00:27:13.540 slowing down ferries.

00:27:16.900 Or asking tribes to stop fishing in areas 0.94

00:27:19.520 that they're entitled to.

00:27:23.520 You know, it's madness.

00:27:27.720 You know, one thing I'll mention to you,

00:27:29.280 the four dams on the Lower Snake River

00:27:32.240 on the Columbia

00:27:33.000 have produced only two hours

00:27:37.180 of electricity that's been needed

00:27:38.860 in the last 10 years.

00:27:42.300 Two hours.

00:27:45.180 Why do we have those dams?

00:27:50.680 75% of all the Chinook 0.99

00:27:52.260 that try to get down that river

00:27:53.500 are crushed in the dams.

00:27:58.560 You know, it's kind of decision time.

00:28:03.000 And I think people that love your show, and we honor them, we honor them, have to help us understand how we can turn this big ship of a wave of life perched on the edge of the Salish Sea that is destroying it.

00:28:29.200 Because that's what's going on.

00:28:30.580 I mean, this is, they say, when industry arrives, salmon go away.

00:28:35.500 And when salmon goes away, killer whales die.

00:28:39.400 Chinook is the only food southern residents will eat.

00:28:43.800 They don't eat anything else.

00:28:46.520 If there's no Chinook, you don't have any southern residents. 0.95

00:28:50.620 It is a situation that we simply have to understand we can win this, but not without an awful lot of leaning into the issue and sacrifice.

00:29:21.620 The most immediate and pressing threat for the southern resident orcas is starvation.

00:29:27.620 Due to the Snake River dams, the Chinook salmon, their primary food source, cannot spawn.

00:29:33.180 Action points for this episode include calling Governor Jay Inslee at 360-902-4111

00:29:42.100 to insist they take action to breach these dams.

00:29:46.180 Secondly, call the U.S. Army Corps at 202-761-000 to insist the same.

00:29:54.840 Third, call the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at 604-666-0384 to insist on a cap on salmon fishing.

00:30:05.800 And lastly, in your personal life, to choose to stop eating Chinook salmon, the main food source for our orca kin.

00:30:15.540 I want to talk a little bit more about the issue of the Chinook salmon,

00:30:23.580 basically the collapse of salmon fisheries in Washington, Oregon, California,

00:30:30.580 British Columbia, and now Alaska.

00:30:34.760 And I've been up in Alaska for the last two and a half months

00:30:39.180 and been doing interviews with people around salmon,

00:30:42.460 basically be on a listening tour and it's really devastating to hear in these last vestiges of

00:30:51.640 intact ecosystems that people have been saying i don't know where the kings are we don't know

00:30:59.800 where the cohort they call them the silvers they're not coming back we don't know where

00:31:03.640 they're going they're going out to sea they're not coming back and there's a lot of questions

00:31:08.460 and a lot of confusion and and just really not knowing why they're not coming home the the salmon

00:31:15.700 so i'd like to hear more from you about the chinook specifically and what's happening to

00:31:25.860 the fisheries in washington and in near the sailor sea why do you think although we could

00:31:32.200 state some obvious pointers of why we think they're collapsing i'd like to hear from you

00:31:36.220 your point of view on their collapse and you know what is their state in the area and what are

00:31:43.100 what are the things that people can do to support the return of the fisheries

00:31:49.580 yeah it is um it's been um it's been known for three decades or more what the basic problem is

00:31:58.160 in terms of the 98% reduction of salmon runs

00:32:03.020 between 1920 and 1990, 98%.

00:32:07.320 And an awful lot of that,

00:32:09.920 whether it's whatever part of your talk,

00:32:12.300 in the Washington State Pacific Northwest,

00:32:14.760 a lot of it's habitat loss.

00:32:17.720 They can't even get to where they need to spawn,

00:32:20.620 and when they get there,

00:32:22.140 the spawning grounds are no longer viable.

00:32:25.080 Habitat loss is a lot of it.

00:32:26.840 Not all of it, but a lot of it.

00:32:28.160 A lot of it.

00:32:30.700 And it's one of those things which it is allowing window dressing to pass as a solution.

00:32:41.100 For example, having buffer zones.

00:32:43.620 Oh, I love that one.

00:32:44.940 Buffer zones along a stream.

00:32:47.040 And above the buffer zone, well, you can do anything.

00:32:50.680 It's a laugh.

00:32:51.440 Like I said, my degrees in forestry.

00:32:53.400 We knew in forestry in 1968 what you had to do to protect salmon.

00:32:57.180 the science is not new

00:32:59.140 though they always seem to need more of it

00:33:00.660 but science doesn't make its

00:33:03.100 way into politics and it doesn't

00:33:05.140 make its way into practices on the

00:33:07.160 ground because it is not

00:33:08.340 profitable

00:33:09.860 to do it responsibly

00:33:12.520 in the nooksack basin where I

00:33:15.180 am now

00:33:15.980 it would take a century

00:33:17.940 to get the habitat back

00:33:21.160 habitat loss

00:33:25.400 and then you have

00:33:26.220 contamination

00:33:27.760 I mean

00:33:30.100 the Salish Sea

00:33:31.800 especially in the southern portions

00:33:33.460 but really

00:33:34.000 give you an example

00:33:36.760 down in Seattle

00:33:37.900 when the

00:33:40.360 beginning of World War II

00:33:43.400 and the Japanese were forcibly removed from their homes

00:33:45.660 and sent to various camps

00:33:47.000 there were a lot of strawberry farmers

00:33:50.280 Japanese strawberry farmers

00:33:52.300 that

00:33:52.680 had truck farms in the Seattle area

00:33:56.200 guess who owns their land now?

00:34:00.360 Boeing.

00:34:02.820 So Boeing moved in and took their land

00:34:04.840 to build whatever they build.

00:34:08.940 One of the places that they build military drones

00:34:12.140 is some of the most important salmon estuary

00:34:15.720 in southern Puget Sound

00:34:16.960 that they have completely destroyed.

00:34:23.640 Habitat loss, contaminants,

00:34:26.200 whether it comes from off the roads, through the sewage system, out of boats and ships.

00:34:32.900 It's just an endless stream of contamination.

00:34:36.060 Everyone knows the salmon that the killer whales are eating are contaminated.

00:34:44.280 The salmon that the seals are eating are contaminated.

00:34:49.080 And why is it contaminated?

00:34:50.540 Because we don't have state-of-the-art wastewater treatment systems throughout Puget Sound.

00:34:55.700 We don't have them.

00:34:56.200 It's aging infrastructure.

00:35:01.260 I think overfishing is the least of our worries.

00:35:07.020 Right now it's simply managing extinction and fighting over the last fish, rather than

00:35:12.620 addressing the problems.

00:35:13.620 The tribes, to their credit, and one of the great ironies of history, I think, is trying

00:35:21.540 to save financial capitalism from itself.

00:35:29.300 And the endless pursuit of profit, short-term.

00:35:33.800 The unconscionable socialization of cost

00:35:37.780 that goes on and on.

00:35:42.000 These are things that need to be addressed.

00:35:43.340 I am hopeful that the younger generation

00:35:47.960 has not been so brainwashed by a system

00:35:50.280 that is overtly unfair to everyone

00:35:53.560 but a small percentage,

00:35:55.080 that they are woke to a situation

00:35:57.900 that this is a non-sustainable system.

00:36:02.420 If they want to have...

00:36:05.260 Now, I'll mention something to you.

00:36:06.860 I had dinner in California

00:36:08.100 with some very interesting people.

00:36:11.780 Sitting at my table in Paradise Cove

00:36:13.520 down there near Malibu

00:36:14.620 was a Navajo medicine man and his wife.

00:36:17.420 my host with the director

00:36:20.060 that's organized

00:36:22.200 the foundation of indigenous medicine 0.76

00:36:23.620 and a young woman

00:36:24.920 who has just started up her fifth

00:36:28.180 startup, high tech startup

00:36:29.780 her fifth

00:36:30.900 she's also 0.66

00:36:32.680 an Olympian medalist

00:36:35.200 mother of two

00:36:37.480 I mean you know

00:36:38.140 one of those people

00:36:39.440 and she creates virtual reality 0.99

00:36:43.440 and

00:36:44.980 security software security software for the white house and the nsa she said two things i want to

00:36:56.840 mention and she said i can quote her on this said i can teach a nine-year-old to hack into

00:37:04.620 our electoral system a nine-year-old one thing and the second thing she said is i really prefer

00:37:13.440 the virtual world to the real one

00:37:15.040 that terrifies me

00:37:17.200 what really

00:37:19.380 I hope that

00:37:20.420 I'm hopeful that

00:37:23.120 through programs such as yours

00:37:25.340 and people such as you and your listeners

00:37:27.380 that we

00:37:29.560 don't lose the real world to the virtual

00:37:31.440 one because the virtual one is how do I put this

00:37:33.460 it's not real

00:37:35.100 and as we

00:37:37.360 compromise the real world some people

00:37:39.380 are going to escape into their headsets

00:37:40.980 or their earphones

00:37:42.560 that would be a tragedy

00:37:45.440 and I really appreciate work you do

00:37:48.940 to keep people connected to the real one

00:37:51.460 the real one

00:37:53.700 because that's the one we are actually birthed from

00:37:57.480 we didn't create it

00:37:59.880 we were created by it

00:38:03.800 and as I mentioned

00:38:06.780 in the before time

00:38:10.280 we were all one

00:38:11.980 And it wasn't one in a headset.

00:38:16.380 I couldn't agree more with you.

00:38:19.640 It's just, I see a lot of people turning towards virtual reality.

00:38:24.700 And I was at a Best Buy a few months ago.

00:38:31.300 And it was really horrifying.

00:38:33.520 I hadn't been into one of those stores for a really long time.

00:38:35.760 And the first thing I saw was this poster of a woman with one of those headsets, you 0.99

00:38:43.880 know, face masks on. 0.80

00:38:46.120 And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is where we're going.

00:38:49.220 We're going to look into a screen at a forest and an ocean filled with orcas.

00:38:54.280 But if we take that mask off, we'll see clear cuts and dead oceans because we are in so

00:39:00.000 many ways being distracted and lost by a world that isn't real.

00:39:03.960 It's these, you know, if you take a picture with a camera, you can create a frame that isn't what reality is. You can just, you know, take a picture. But, you know, if you actually turn 360, you'd see a very different view.

00:39:21.960 and i think this these extinction crises and what happened with taliqua it is these loud cries to

00:39:31.100 wake up and you know thinking that there's only 76 southern residents left and 30 well less than

00:39:38.820 30 have the potential to breed you know some suggest that if immediate action isn't taken

00:39:44.400 the southern resident orcas could become extinct within the next 15 years so waking up is mandatory

00:39:51.900 If we say we care about our kin, if we really say that we care and we want to actually live

00:39:57.840 up to that, we need to do something.

00:39:59.480 And I, you know, we've been talking a little bit about the Snake River Dam and the issues

00:40:05.700 of, we haven't gone into this, but the recreational and commercial vessel traffic, the noises

00:40:10.740 that that make underwater, how that can psychologically and communicatively affect the whales, the

00:40:17.940 pollution you had mentioned the pollution the ongoing threats of future pipelines um salmon

00:40:23.880 atlantic salmon fish farms in bc so of course like there are a lot of stressors but we need to look

00:40:31.260 at these stressors because if we don't look at them with honesty we're never going to be able

00:40:36.100 to do something about it and it's true the population of whales has declined to its lowest

00:40:41.500 levels in 30 years has decreased 20% since the late 90s. So I just wanted to bring those things

00:40:49.660 up and then back to mentioning Chinook, the fact that two-thirds of the southern residents'

00:40:56.580 pregnancies have failed due to starvation. Additionally, the lack of food forces orcas

00:41:01.320 to burn their body fat, which ends up releasing toxins like DDT and flame retardants into their

00:41:07.240 system further suppressing their reproductive health so you know these are again these are

00:41:13.640 things that we really need to look at the starvation and and one thing that i had read

00:41:19.380 while getting ready for this interview is that since 2002 the eis has designated dam breaching

00:41:26.220 as the best solution to recover wild salmon on the snake river and they said that if it was breached

00:41:31.720 it would double or triple the survival rate of chinook salmon so i wanted to bring that up

00:41:36.540 Because yeah, I kind of just mentioned a lot of really hard facts around the numbers of

00:41:43.540 extinction and starvation and all of the issues that are affecting salmon, which then in turn

00:41:49.820 are affecting orcas.

00:41:51.180 But then again, look, if we take out the Snake River Dam, that is something that we can do

00:41:56.460 that would have massive positive consequences.

00:42:00.000 So it's not that there aren't solutions, but getting to those solutions, really prioritizing

00:42:05.500 those is where we need to go. And that's, I feel like what you were saying with the economic

00:42:10.540 capitalist technological, gosh, just delusion to be able to get out of that so we can actually

00:42:17.860 do the things that need to be done. It's a curious thing. You have a natural condition.

00:42:23.660 Salmon want to be in the Columbia River and the Snake River. Eastern Washington doesn't want to be

00:42:28.560 wheat it's a desert

00:42:31.260 so they create these dams

00:42:33.480 to sustain an artificial

00:42:35.680 way of life

00:42:36.720 at the expense of a real one

00:42:39.920 I mean

00:42:42.020 if you look at the Palouse

00:42:43.820 the bioregion

00:42:46.020 of the Palouse

00:42:46.880 it is the most compromised

00:42:49.380 bioregion in North America

00:42:51.240 so little remains of what it once

00:42:54.080 was

00:42:54.400 I want to mention one thing though about the

00:42:57.800 Chinook back a second to

00:42:59.880 your folks 0.99

00:43:01.840 listening in Canada or even

00:43:03.880 in the northwest are aware

00:43:05.320 that just north of the border

00:43:07.320 here is a very large

00:43:09.820 coal terminal

00:43:10.440 called Sawasin. Very large.

00:43:14.400 Very polluting.

00:43:16.560 Well, you mentioned

00:43:18.060 ship noise.

00:43:19.980 The idea they now have

00:43:21.920 is to

00:43:24.160 create another

00:43:24.960 platform

00:43:27.260 that will service ships, container ships.

00:43:33.300 You ready for this?

00:43:35.380 These ships, imagine a football field.

00:43:39.060 Now walk across four of them.

00:43:41.520 That's how big the ships are.

00:43:44.000 They want to have three of those going right over primary orca foraging habitat every two days, year-round.

00:43:52.760 and they say

00:43:55.900 this is an example of the

00:43:58.080 of the disingenuous

00:44:00.400 nature of EIS's

00:44:02.420 anything government does in EIS

00:44:04.280 comments are due by October 5th

00:44:06.680 and then the EIS says well you know

00:44:07.880 this many ships is only

00:44:10.520 a 6% increase in the already

00:44:12.340 existing vessel traffic and anyway

00:44:14.060 the southern residents

00:44:16.140 are so highly compromised and won't make much difference

00:44:18.180 that's the mindset

00:44:22.220 of people that are going to make

00:44:24.040 a lot of money off these ships.

00:44:27.600 But we, you know, the people here,

00:44:30.620 I think it's really important

00:44:33.220 that they understand

00:44:34.080 there may come a time

00:44:35.520 and may not be far off

00:44:36.740 when they're going to have

00:44:38.480 to put themselves on the line

00:44:40.020 and their fists in the air

00:44:42.160 and their feet on the ground

00:44:43.980 and say, enough, stop.

00:44:50.500 That's what it's going to take.

00:44:52.220 Yeah, I know voting is important.

00:44:54.320 Yeah, right.

00:44:55.580 Yes, but feet on the ground and fists in the air is also important. 0.87

00:45:01.300 There will be no fishing rights for tribes in the Northwest 0.90

00:45:04.080 if men and women hadn't gone to jail, breaking what was then the law. 0.97

00:45:10.460 To create a new and better one.

00:45:14.000 And unless people are willing to stand the line,

00:45:17.440 take off their earphones, take off their headsets,

00:45:20.060 and rejoin the world, the real one,

00:45:23.080 we're going to lose it.

00:45:24.980 I taught a class at the University of Washington,

00:45:27.800 forest economics.

00:45:31.180 And, you know, you got a final.

00:45:32.720 Everyone gets all bleary-eyed and they're up all night.

00:45:34.940 And they come in for the final.

00:45:37.560 And I said, well, you all ready for your two-hour final?

00:45:43.340 So put all the chairs in a circle.

00:45:45.620 and i said i want everyone to give me their definition of extinction

00:45:50.660 that's a big word you know

00:45:55.740 you use that word a while ago and i think sometimes that word it's like skipping a stone

00:46:03.160 across the human mind they don't quite pause for a moment and think about that

00:46:08.100 millions of years dedicated to creation of a life form because of someone wanting to make

00:46:14.720 a short-term profit for a small number of people

00:46:17.260 goes extinct?

00:46:21.820 I really believe

00:46:23.140 that tribes

00:46:24.640 probably more than anyone

00:46:26.460 right now

00:46:27.140 are

00:46:29.580 the best chance we have

00:46:33.240 and I really

00:46:35.260 encourage people

00:46:36.160 to stand with tribes when they're standing

00:46:38.960 for their treaty rights because treaty rights

00:46:40.820 protect everybody

00:46:42.400 everybody

00:46:44.880 I think

00:46:47.280 personally even more than the Constitution does

00:46:49.280 at this point

00:46:49.800 at least in this country

00:46:52.860 so we're hopeful here

00:46:55.380 we will always be hopeful

00:46:56.780 and I want to, if I can

00:46:59.180 before we started this

00:47:01.220 I wanted to

00:47:03.340 mention this one

00:47:04.140 verse written by Wendell Berry

00:47:07.220 do you mind if I read it?

00:47:08.740 please

00:47:09.180 Because we have these moments and we look for a place to resort to our souls and regain our spirits.

00:47:21.540 It's a piece he wrote called, The Peace of Wild Things.

00:47:27.080 when despair for the world grows in me

00:47:34.600 and I wake in the night at the least sound

00:47:39.820 in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be

00:47:42.820 I go and lie down where the wood drake rests

00:47:48.960 in his beauty on the water

00:47:50.520 and the great heron feeds

00:47:53.360 I come into the peace of wild things

00:47:59.460 who do not tax their lives

00:48:01.140 with forethought of grief

00:48:02.600 I come into the presence of still water

00:48:07.240 and I feel above me

00:48:11.420 the day blind stars

00:48:13.120 waiting with their light

00:48:14.360 for a time I rest

00:48:19.520 in the grace of the world

00:48:21.060 and am free

00:48:23.840 so our

00:48:29.340 our prayers go to J50 and her mother

00:48:32.680 her family

00:48:33.840 the Sailor Sea and all our relations

00:48:38.380 and to your listeners that they keep their hope up

00:48:44.020 even if their pessimism grows

00:48:46.080 stay hopeful because as one person once told me

00:48:49.480 you're an activist.

00:48:54.840 You are not allowed to lose hope.

00:49:19.480 Thank you.

00:49:49.480 I think about how she wasn't the only orca ripped from her home, as you had mentioned.

00:49:57.360 In fact, throughout the 1960s and 70s, one-third of the southern residents were taken and sold to parks all over the world.

00:50:05.760 Today, she is the sole survivor of those calves who were taken from the Salish Sea,

00:50:10.920 as orcas who live in captivity often live less than half of their traditional life expectancies.

00:50:15.860 expectancies. So I'm wondering what are the mental, physical, and emotional stresses of

00:50:21.680 living in captivity without the companionship of other orcas? And why do you think she has survived

00:50:28.000 when others have not? And could it be said that she has remained resilient by remembering her

00:50:33.740 home and the songs of her pod? That's certainly true. There's a number of, I've asked that

00:50:40.660 question of people that know a lot more than I do

00:50:42.680 about her and about

00:50:43.720 blackfish

00:50:45.680 one answer that has stayed with

00:50:48.800 me is

00:50:49.300 she's in a tank 1.00

00:50:52.840 she's in an open air tank 1.00

00:50:54.580 close to the water

00:50:55.540 she hears

00:50:57.800 the ocean

00:50:59.800 she may think

00:51:02.860 her family's not far away

00:51:06.260 that's why she sings

00:51:08.660 every night

00:51:09.140 I don't know if you saw that part of the video in which Dateline TV show went to Seaquarium with a recording of the L-Pod's songs.

00:51:27.080 And they went to the side of the tank.

00:51:30.880 And where the Seaquarium minders had stepped away for a while, they turned on the tape recorder.

00:51:37.540 practically nose to nose with the guy holding the tape recorder

00:51:42.320 over and over again

00:51:45.960 she heard her songs

00:51:48.480 she heard her pause

00:51:50.100 that was 1998 I believe

00:51:53.220 she's never stopped singing her song

00:51:55.800 I mentioned that I

00:51:58.800 have worked with a man who was involved in her capture

00:52:02.580 he was also one of her first trainers

00:52:04.320 and he said

00:52:08.240 she's an unusual girl

00:52:12.400 she's very unusual

00:52:14.860 she is indeed 1.00

00:52:18.980 she's also high as a kite

00:52:21.300 she's on 14 different kinds of medications 1.00

00:52:24.040 she lives in a chlorinated pool 1.00

00:52:27.340 in Miami

00:52:28.460 in the sun

00:52:29.900 so she's on a lot of medications

00:52:34.120 no one really knows

00:52:37.120 her actual state of health

00:52:38.420 be that as it may

00:52:40.500 she displays vigor

00:52:41.740 you see when no one's around 1.00

00:52:43.780 she's racing around the pool 1.00

00:52:45.000 she's still happy to be a killer whale 0.96

00:52:48.240 I think because she really believes 0.96

00:52:50.060 she's going home

00:52:50.740 I was at

00:52:52.120 we went there

00:52:54.720 with one of the Indians

00:52:56.940 they followed us

00:53:00.540 they knew who we were

00:53:02.660 before we even got there

00:53:03.760 was standing by the side of the

00:53:08.160 tank.

00:53:12.040 And a Lummi tribal member, councilman, and very inspired

00:53:15.660 leader, Fred Lane, standing with his arms

00:53:20.000 folded across his chest, looking in the water. Down below.

00:53:25.600 She was all the way on the other side of the pond

00:53:28.140 there, the tank. She turns 180 degrees 0.96

00:53:31.900 and swims right over to you 1.00

00:53:33.480 and just hangs in the water.

00:53:38.680 So I'm going on there.

00:53:41.180 It happened twice.

00:53:43.160 Two different visits.

00:53:46.700 So when that was,

00:53:48.640 when it happened the first time

00:53:49.860 and Fred moved aside

00:53:53.020 to recompose his prayers,

00:53:55.900 she went back to where she'd come from.

00:53:59.240 So I walked around the side 0.99

00:54:00.960 the queer eminent i said uh to the people standing there can i say hi to her 0.98

00:54:09.440 and this one gentleman probably in his mid 40s goes no that i can't say hi to her

00:54:17.840 said no but you can say hi to me and i said okay um where's she from and he gave me that that look

00:54:30.960 And he said, you know exactly where she's from.

00:54:36.080 And then asked me to leave.

00:54:39.920 He is the curator of her at the aquarium.

00:54:45.240 That's her master.

00:54:48.600 I'm sure he has a great family life.

00:54:51.700 He's a wonderful man.

00:54:52.640 I'm not saying he isn't.

00:54:53.680 But I am saying what they are doing with her is beyond evil.

00:54:58.620 she needs to come home

00:55:00.820 and they know it

00:55:01.600 but I also need to say this 1.00

00:55:03.260 the women 1.00

00:55:04.900 that work with her 1.00

00:55:06.540 on a daily basis

00:55:07.580 love her

00:55:08.700 there is no doubt

00:55:10.800 in my mind

00:55:11.440 they love

00:55:13.220 Tokatai

00:55:14.720 management

00:55:16.840 not so much

00:55:18.280 cash cow

00:55:19.500 but they

00:55:21.020 really

00:55:22.400 love that girl

00:55:23.620 you can see it

00:55:25.720 so she does have that connection 0.81

00:55:29.200 but it's also

00:55:30.620 kind of the Stockholm Syndrome 0.99

00:55:32.300 she is a black fish 0.98

00:55:34.720 she needs a family 1.00

00:55:36.320 these women are her family 1.00

00:55:38.240 when she comes back here 1.00

00:55:41.960 we're going to fly her back 0.99

00:55:44.560 that'll express 1.00

00:55:45.660 in one big plane 1.00

00:55:49.140 and she's going to land

00:55:52.700 at Delingham International Airport

00:55:54.200 she's going to be 0.53

00:55:57.320 taken to the water 0.76

00:55:58.700 slowly taken out

00:56:02.660 to the sanctuary

00:56:04.340 in Orcas Island

00:56:05.340 she's going to have her 1.00

00:56:08.920 handlers, she's going to be a veterinarian 1.00

00:56:10.400 she's going to have everyone she needs 0.98

00:56:12.240 to reassure her

00:56:13.920 she's okay

00:56:15.040 and then she's going to start going for walks

00:56:18.820 out into the water and back again 0.99

00:56:22.020 out into the water and back again 1.00

00:56:23.580 She's going to learn to feed herself again 1.00

00:56:25.260 and avoid ships.

00:56:28.160 And then that day will come

00:56:29.680 when her mother's going to go by and go,

00:56:31.840 I know that voice.

00:56:36.440 That is a healing moment

00:56:37.840 for the L-Pod.

00:56:41.440 From a trauma that, as you said,

00:56:43.080 they have never gone back to Penn Cove again.

00:56:46.340 They were traumatized, 0.99

00:56:47.560 just like Native folks taken from family 1.00

00:56:51.480 and put them in boarding schools.

00:56:52.340 They were traumatized.

00:56:53.580 her coming back to her family

00:56:58.340 will be a healing for that

00:57:00.820 pod

00:57:01.320 and they need it 0.99

00:57:04.460 because likely

00:57:06.720 they just lost another one

00:57:08.220 oh Kurt

00:57:12.060 I've just been

00:57:16.440 on mute crying

00:57:18.240 on the other end

00:57:19.460 yeah

00:57:23.220 i i do i feel um definitely feeling speechless and i would just like to offer to you any way

00:57:30.860 you feel like closing this conversation if you'd like to call out to taliqua and uh scarlet you

00:57:39.020 know however you wish to to close this conversation please well that's hard that's really hard uh

00:57:47.640 You know, I had a dream about her, and though I don't remember all the images in the dream,

00:57:56.880 the felt sense, the felt memory sense of that is what I would send back out, you know,

00:58:05.640 for what it's, what it might mean, is that everything is going to be fine, we're going

00:58:17.000 to be all right. Things will work out. Because like Scarlett, that fighter, that little fighter,

00:58:28.680 we don't lose hope, Scarlett. We will never lose hope.

00:58:42.500 well i will keep my prayers and energy towards scarlet and i

00:58:51.700 for those who will listen i ask you to do the same and kurt thank you so much for your love

00:59:01.740 and dedication to the sailor sea illumination and our more than human kin the black fish

00:59:11.220 um thank you for spending this time with us today and we'll continue staying abreast of what

00:59:19.960 is to come and take our actions from you all thank you and thank you to all listeners for for

00:59:30.560 listening

00:59:41.220 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:59:56.380 I'm Ayanna Young.

00:59:57.220 The music you heard today was by Mon Plaincer and Amoeba.

01:00:02.200 Our theme music is Silence Returns by Bo and Like a River from Kate Wolfe.

01:00:07.040 I'd like to thank our incredible production team

01:00:09.880 our producer and editor Andrew Storrs

01:00:12.280 our research collaborator and writer

01:00:14.760 Francesca Glassbell

01:00:15.940 and our media director Molly Lee Bove

01:00:18.300 and our music coordinator Carter Lou McElroy

01:00:21.020 follow us on Instagram at 4.the.wild

01:00:24.880 also find us at drip at d.rip

01:00:28.280 slash 4-the-wild

01:00:30.440 and rate us on iTunes if you haven't already

01:00:32.960 alright thanks so much and until next time

01:00:37.040 sky on the concrete trails and wine, through the canyons dark and white.

For The Wild - October 04, 2018

KURT RUSSO on the People Under the Sea⧸91

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