Hvaldimir the beluga 

Here are a number of separate articles or quips on the matter of Hvaldimir, which I've posted totally or partially on facebook. 

Hvaldimir the beluga, which passed away in 2024, constitutes an important part of our research work for a number of key reasons. As a solitary, an ex-captive and an otherwise unique individual with a complex relationships with humans, he was at the center of much attention and particularly of a number of attempts at capturing and confining him, and more largely to control or manage his activities and relationship with humans. Many parallels can be drawn between him and our understanding of Randy/Dony, as well as more largely with how solitaries/ambassadors are systematically pathologized, marginalized, and misunderstood. 

We perceive his death as an unfortunate event from the point of view of first contact attempts, as he was a prime candidate for our testing of the heterodyne method as the basis for first contact. Studying his history and the discourses surrounding his fate remains crucial to understand the ambiguous relationship of states, activists and other actors surrounding the field. 

My goodbye text to Hvaldimir, 29/10/2024

(Originally posted on the group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/Freeallcetians/permalink/2909997462481924/)

I delayed writing about Hvaldimir for a month ; I was at first going to write a quite emotionally charged text, with quite a lot of anger contained in it ; an anger also redirected against many of the people and ideas I criticize on this group since a decade. Nonetheless, after some time, I decided it was best to make it an open conversation, open in particular to analysis, exchange and nuance, and which would be the subject of change depending on other users input and on new data and arguments available. I will also try to explain my view in the most concise way possible, trying to source the most elements possible as well, so you get where I come from, and to make my claims falsifiable.

Naturally, I was opposed to the OneWhale plan. The plan  ; led by filmmaker Regina Cosby was two folds. One, in the immediacy, they wanted to forcefully capture and relocate Hvaldimir in northern Norway, near the Russian frontier. Ric opposed that plan, I believe for mostly sound reasons, which he explains here(1). This plan was also opposed in an open letter signed by 73 scientists(2) presented by MarineMind (an org created by Visser and a few others and which one can wonder if it wasn't precisely made to "compete" with OneWhale, especially back when Ric and the last collaborated); nonetheless mostly due to an exclusive concern about "safety" as the usual mantra, rather than due to any consideration for the autonomy, consent, and freedom of decision and choice from Hvaldmir himself, which continues to this day to be considered a mere "wild animal" and a potential piece of property rather than a physical person to exchange with ; no empty declaration or equally empty law reforms can change that profoundly incarnated fact.

The second one, which I believe is key to analyze here, was their initial, long term ideal for where Hvaldimir had to end. This plan, the "Norwegian whale reserve", was, of course, a captive sanctuary(3), that not only aimed to capture and relocate Hvaldimir in a penned Fjord but also host other ex-captives belugas. I insist on this "captive" prefix ; and this is again something that I could easily evidence data-wise ; because current captive sanctuary proponents are unfortunately champions at muddling reality when it comes to promoting their glorified panopticons. It is clear that many of their proponents are uneasy with them and feel ashamed about it. The very use of the term "sanctuary" already constitutes a euphemism, if not a perversion : it generates a complete confusion between captive, institutional systems modelled over the structural violence of the facilities they seek to (great !)replace and what constitutes merely legislatively "protected" (but very much free) areas, such as the Pelagos sanctuary in the Mediterranean. This kind of hubris is unfortunately a topos among many activists, and Vlad Latka's plan for the now deceased Tursiops "Zeus" back in 2016 (which you can see if you look for "Zeus" in this group research bar) in Russia constituted here as well a perfect example. I could here again multiply them : people that believe they have a natural right over cetacean bodies and destinies are a dime a dozen, and I think Lacan was a bit too right when he wrote that as crazy as the madman who think he is a king is the king who also believes he is one.

Ric, thought, isn't perfect on this either. Yes, he *appears* to have swayed on this matter ; at the very least he hasn't mentioned a captive sanctuary in subsequent, more recent articles(4). But when Hvaldimir first showed up, he clearly advocated to shove him in such a facility as the default solution(5) ; in fact the OneWhale one, with unambiguous and particularly egregious terms and arguments I will detail later on, and which I talk about in a stream I did back then on youtube (which I don't want to link because they're not great and I'll rather replace them in the future with a more concise, analytical work).

Here lays the different subtleties which I believe some of you will naturally get, and some of you won't. The first is that, if you know my work, you know how critical of both Ric and Visser for the same core reasons, which have to do not with an absolute rejection of their ideas, but precisely because of their fundamental ambivalence when it comes to the idea of cetacean intelligence, cetacean liberation and whatnot. In due time, I will write full-fledged articles explaining my grievances, point by point, source by source. It will have to wait.

Nonetheless, here, in this precise situation, I have to admit that I agree with them. I have to admit that they took what one could deem as the most progressive take on cetacean liberation, and I have to laud them for that. I won't forgive Ingrid for what she did to Bob the Killer whale. I won't forgive Ric for quite literally owning captives in Bali and Karimunjawa despite literally modelling his activism on the historical struggle against black slavery ; and the deep irony of a man that literally named his own son Lincoln also owning captive sapients will never be lost to me. But I would be acting in extremely bad faith if I didn't admit this state of things : my ideological adversaries can sometime be accurate on key issues.

Now, this points out toward, again, a subtle, complex issue which I cannot develop here without writing a wall of text but which I believe I can easily evidence data-wise : many of the key figures of this field or activism are fundamentally ambivalent regarding cetacean autonomy, and often swayed views and practices on these matters. I could provide a number of quotations and examples (from Visser to Foster passing by Godefroid or Lilly), but the key point here is that many figures are not fully coherent when it comes to their views on the matter. Some figures will claim "hey, maybe an open institution system isn't that bad after all", then unabashedly return toward the most insanely conservative version of captive, permanent sanctuarization. Some will allude toward first-contact/linguistic work, then ignore it all together. Godefroid was unfortunately the telltale example : in the late 90s/early 2000s, he was one of the very few to actively and enthusiastically talk about Kenneth Levasseur's Third Phase Program... and then completely ignored it. Still to do this day, no one in the field cares - or dares ! - to debate his views and to provide a proper critique or counteranalysis of his propositions, let alone debate him frontally. We're the only one (me, Andrew and Russel) as far as I'm aware to not only actively speak of his work, but most importantly to work to make it a practical reality : allowing cetaceans - free or ex-captives - to speak by themselves through technological means as a way for them to say : I want this, I want that, I want food, I want to get out or in.

And as you know, this is what we want : for cetaceans to speak for themselves, no matter who they are, no matter their personal histories or traumas or differences or choices. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing with Randy/Dony. Not just for the sake of science, or art, or as a way to "speak to aliens" in the future, or for some cookie new age reason, or because we believe this will help humanity to heal from his spiritual woes or whatever. No, because we think linguistic dialogue is the key to autonomy, that in a current context where entire species are being enslaved, hunted down, destroyed, their resources extracted by states and companies that perceive their spaces as immense Terra nullius to claim for themselves and to pollute at will, their needs and wants must be heard. Their insults must be heard. From their "mouth" ; or rather their sonar or melon or laryngeal sacs or whatever.

At some point, I sincerely thought about emailing the OneWhale people and telling them who we were, what we were doing tech-wise. Maybe I should have. I had this slight hope that we could have been listened, that they could have attempted replicating some of our work with Hvaldimir, trying some vocalization exchanges or even some very basic linguistic ones, at least experimenting with the matter. Perhaps it would have been in vain. Who knows what he had to tell us. We will never know now.

Sources

(1) https://web.archive.org/web/20240916152928/https://www.dolphinproject.com/blog/hvaldimirs-safety-in-serious-jeopardy/

(2) See : (1) (email me for the pdf in comments in case of data rot, also see comment below post in the group).

(3) See : (1) as well as (2).

(4) Ex : (1) it is not impossible though that he still advocates for the Norwegian Whale Reserve and that this is more evident from now deleted articles, old vids and reels etc. I am not aware of.

(5) See in particular this text : (1) that was deleted but copied by the OneWhales website in 2024 (2) and translated by Réseau-Cétacés back then (3) ; I suspect the deletion was due to a change of view on the matter of his fate. See screenshot. See also (3) (see screenshot).

Exploring the rhetoRic (originally written in late 2024 and intended as a FB post, revised)

On Ric's arguments back in 2020/21 : he may have changed views on this, but I think it's important to go back to this because they remain symptomatic of the general epistemology behind how these people decide about the fate of entire population of sophonts ; and of the many contradictions underlying them.

In this now deleted (why ?) article (https://web.archive.org/web/20200918192738/https://www.dolphinproject.com/blog/the-defector/), Ric and Helen detail the situation of Hvaldmir at the time and what they wanted for his future. This article, as I mention above, is an unabashed and explicit advocacy for his relocation in a very much captive sanctuary ; visibly the one proposed by OneWhale. Let's examine his arguments.

First on the use of the terms "refugees", "asylum seeker" "citizen" and "defector". If you know my work a bit, you know I have received criticisms for doing these kinds of comparisons in the past (i.e between racial minorities and cetaceans), particularly from fellow people in the far left. I don't agree with these arguments ; although I see where they are coming from, and my issue isn't with the use of the terms themselves but rather on the coherence of such a discourse. If you're ready to draw the comparison between Hvaldimir and asylum seeker or a refugee ; and back then, people were mostly thinking of people coming to Europe from Afghanistan, Sudan etc. You have to be coherent about it, i.e advocate for Hvaldimir as a bona fide person, as someone with an autonomy and a voice to be heard, a consent to be respected, choices to be acknowledged. In other words, the point of drawing the comparison is to say "Hvaldimir shouldn't be treated like an animal, he is an individual who fled a disastrous situation, and we must treat him as a guest, like we would do for a fellow human in need". Ric isn't doing that. Instead, in the same article where he uses these terms, he advocates to capture him ; an act that, in any way shape of form, is and will be violent and traumatic ; and relocate him to a penned sanctuary that, as large as it supposedly will be (and they're de facto not, but this is another question I'll talk about elsewhere), remains institutional in form. Question : is that what he would want for a "refugee" or an asylum seeker ? For them to be forcefully relocated in some glorified institution "for their own good", subjected to permanent captivity, deprived of their own choices and unable to formulate claims and demands ? The irony, funnily and tragically enough, is that as we speak this is the policy put forward by many countries today, and one could easily show what’s going in France and the US as telltale instances.

Likewise, is this how one would treat a citizen ? Do we stick “citizens” in captive institutions to be trained ? Do we consider “citizens” property ? Do we consider “citizens” as wild animals that either belong outside a social and political reality ; since they’re either captive or “free” in the sense of “free” within a space incompatible with such notions, and most importantly in both cases completely outside the scope of linguistic dialogue, outside the scope of claim ?

This again is important, because even very bright people within our field don't or rarely talk about this. Dolphinariums ; like zoos, circuses and many forms of animal husbandry, are institutional in nature, i.e they tend to divide individuals within distinct spaces, often common, dormitory and quarantine ones, under specific schedules by a specialized staff who, de facto, has to control the residents ; here through training founded on behaviorist techniques. This way of understanding closed facilities ; which has been theorized mostly by Foucault (Discipline and Punish) and Goffman (Asylum), is key to understand all of this. Cetaceans aren't merely "penned" in some abstract area, where they are free to roam : they are divided into subdivided areas and managed under schedules by specialized staffs, under a certain discipline, coming in and out of restricted spaces and out in "general areas" only for a time, before returning to specially assigned "dormitory" spaces. This is necessary for the very objective behind institutionalization, which remains surveillance and control, and the medical element of it is crucial, as such institutions were born from the need of quarantining the sick - and to separate lepers from the rest of the population. You went to school ? You went through this. You went to the psych ward or in prison or you got conscripted or went one day at the hospital ? Same-ey. You won the human lottery of being mentally disabled or schizophrenic or with drug addiction issues or whatever else ? Welcome to their most egregious versions.

This is of course the case here, like it is already the case in every sea-pen based swim-with facility in the last 40 years, like it is in the current captive sanctuaries owned by Ric as well as in Heimaey - which I believe no one anymore can deny by now that it was just a theme park attraction (something we had correctly predicted from available data back in 2013). Cetaceans - similarly to sanctuarized apes and elephants - must in captivity function under an institutionalized organization in order to be managed and controlled.

I would also like to point toward this sentence and now gone pics : "Norway, with its stunning fjords, is the perfect place for a beluga whale sanctuary". This appeal to beauty, which is a constant among both the "classical" procap and the pro-sanctuary side, is of course scientifically ridiculous. The Fjord being beautiful or butt-ugly has no relevance to the issue at hand or for Hvaldimir for that matter. But they have to say this in order to - there again - muddy the waters, or as we say in France "drown the fish". Do not look at the pens and nets and trainers : look at the fricking Fjord, like how SeaWorld nudged you to focus on the turquoise waters, the palm trees and the blaring Eurodance so you didn't thought about how the whales were just stuck here. This rhetorics is easy to spot through the imagery of OneWhales itself regarding its own sanctuary projects, which also mirrors the WSP and Merlin's Beluga Whale Sanctuary propaganda regarding their own extant or proposed facilities. 

The website's page on their project (1) uses through their imagery a very typical appeal to beauty and bucolism as an argument, which is to be found elsewhere within different sanctuary projects, and arguably as well in the dolphinarium industry through a typical "shallow warm tropical bay" model put forward by some "progressive" swim-with facilities.  Notice a certain evocation of human relaxation as a theme. 

This whole soup obviously ; whether we’re talking of Ric’s articles or the “Norwegian Whale reserve” (“reserve” is another euphemism often used to talk about captive places, like “refuge” also often is ; they’re practical because they’re “boniments” ; empty words that can signify anything and its exact opposite), is of course rhetorically no different than how other captive sanctuary projects are defended and advocated for ; from Ric’s own facilities to the beluga one, the WSP project, or the various projects put forward by the SSCS in Brest, Endlav/CAP, the AIF, Lipsoi island, Baltimore etc. They often unabashedly ape each other when it comes to what they have to say and how and they’re as a rule perfectly interchangeable.

Nonetheless, we’re talking here about Hvaldimir, and that’s where it hurts. Because the whole stake here is his autonomy. He isn’t just - a - cetacean : he is a cetacean who, as Ric put it, defected. Now, please explain to me the pertinence of literally recapturing someone who escaped captivity ; in other words, that sought to escape his condition as a captive, that made a choice of departing from a material dependence toward an institutionalized system at the risk of his life, despite perhaps years of mental conditioning and hunger deprivation. 

I will never cease to repeat it : there is no such thing as dignity in captivity...