Web in the Water

By Stan Minasian

A Navy dolphin researcher, who discovered a way to communicate with the dolphins he worked with, refuses to divulge this information to his superiors, leading to a courts-martial and dishonorable discharge. Through a series of events, he joins with an environmental organization to utilize this discovery to end the killing of dolphins in tuna nets. Unbeknownst to him and his team, his discovery poses a serious threat to a worldwide way of thinking, and an effort is organized to kill the project and anything that gets in its way.

For the past fifty years, tuna fishers have been setting nets on dolphins to catch yellowfin tuna due to an enigmatic relationship between these two species in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Over eight million dolphins have been killed in the process. While the premise of Web in the Water is fiction, much of what is included about these animals is not. This work informs readers of a severe and ongoing humanitarian issue. It opens a dialogue as to what internal assets a species must possess for us to recognize their right to live without human interference and exploitation.

Are we the only intelligent species on the planet, with logic, reason, a social nature, and culture? If not, how do we treat those who share so many things we have in common? Web in the Water is designed to get people thinking about these magnificent animals, the rights they should have, rand our role in understanding non-human intelligence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stan Minasian
• Release date: May 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201483180

Stan Minasian

About the Author: For nearly three decade, Stan Minasian presided over the non-profit organization Marine Mammal Fund (later changed to Animal Fund), whose purpose was to end the killing of dolphins during fishing operations of the U.S. purse seine tuna fleets. Over the past forty years, over eight million dolphins have perished in U.S. tuna nets. In the process of helping to end the U.S. involvement, Minasian produced two major television documentary films on this issue, one of which was the recipient of three Emmy Awards. His documentary film, Where Have All the Dolphins Gone?, hosted by the late George C. Scott, was broadcast primetime on the Discovery Channel and was instrumental in all three U.S. tuna canneries (StarKist, Chicken-of-the-Sea, and BumbleBee) no longer accepting tuna caught by the use of dolphins, thus establishing the "Dolphin Safe" label on all cans of tuna sold in the United States. As a filmmaker, he has written, produced and co-produced documentaries centering on animal education and welfare issues. Below is a partial list of his productions and links for free viewing. Where Have All the Dolphins Gone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6NHyYqFJw A Fall From Freedom https://vimeo.com/26338045 By All Rights https://vimeo.com/269046489 The Free Willy Story: Keiko's Journey Home https://vimeo.com/422442912 Minasian has been a certified scuba diver since the early 70s, part of Special Forces Training as a six-year member of the U.S. Coast Guard. He has an Advanced Arts degree and currently lives in Marin County north of San Francisco.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

All rise, shouts the sergeant-at-arms. The civilians and Navy personnel in the packed courtroom all rise to their feet in unison as the judge, dressed in his sharply starched Marine Corp uniform, enters the room and makes his way to the bench, adjusting his glasses along the way. With a downward wave of the judge's hand, everyone takes their seat, and the room goes quiet. It takes some time between sips of water and the shuffling of papers for the judge to direct his attention to the defendant's table.

Will the defendant please rise? A captain in full Navy dress blues with four rows of colorful ribbons on his left chest and a gold aiguillette around his right shoulder rises with his attorney and faces the judge. This has been a long and complicated courts-martial proceeding, says the judge to the audience. In many ways, I've never seen anything like it. He then directs his attention to the defendant, who stands at erect military attention. Captain Emmitt Caldwell, having heard all of the evidence against you, I am ready to pronounce judgment in this courts-martial proceeding.

Your honor, voices the captain's attorney. Captain Caldwell has a statement he would like to make before you pronounce judgment. The judge turns to the defendant. Very well, Captain, you may proceed with your statement.

Your honor, I stand here accused of theft of government property and failure to follow a direct order. As I have told the court and the prosecuting attorney numerous times, divulging information on the things I discovered in my research would only lead to military abuses the likes of which I can easily imagine. They could have been used for good, but not in the hands of the Navy, nor for any military purpose. I couldn't allow that to happen and I'll live with the consequences. What the Navy calls 'theft' I call a moral and ethical imperative.

It was up to your superior officers, Captain, to determine what is or is not a moral and ethical imperative, says the judge. What you undertook to do on your own, without consulting your superiors, is theft, plain and simple, and a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Technically, I can make a strong case for the destruction of government property as well. You knew this.

The judge shakes his head, then stares down at the paperwork in front of him, shuffling it nervously and rubbing his forehead. He is struggling with the decision he is now forced to make against a man who, up to this point, has served honorably and with distinction. After listening to and weighing all of the evidence presented in this courts-martial trial, I again say I am ready to render my decision.

The Captain and his attorney remain standing facing the judge. The courtroom is so quiet one could almost hear the defendant's heart beating.

Captain Emmitt Caldwell, you have been found guilty of theft of government property, insubordination, and failure to follow a direct order. Therefore, it is the court's decision that you be reduced in rank to Seaman First Class, and that you be dishonorably discharged from the Navy forthwith.

Instantly, the courtroom erupts in commotion. The judge bangs his gavel in an attempt to maintain order. Mr. Caldwell, the judge yells over the commotion. Mr. Caldwell. Amid all the commotion, Emmitt turns toward the judge. The judge, meeting Caldwell's eyes, yells over the crowd, You are dismissed.

Surrounded by a horde of people, Emmitt Caldwell, a civilian now for the first time in over two decades, turns and desperately looks around at the crowd yelling Beth, Beth. An arm emerges through the thundering press corps, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the door, behind his attorney. All three exit out the main entrance and make their way through a barrage of people, camcorders, and microphones to an awaiting car, the press shouting question over one another at Emmitt to get some kind of a quote from him. But it doesn't come.

With the rear door open, Caldwell hesitates for a brief moment, glancing at all the dozens of people across the street behind temporary barriers holding animal rights signs. Then, gently but firmly, he pushes his wife Beth into the back seat of the car and climbs in beside her. His attorney slams the door behind them, slaps the roof several times hard, and the car accelerates, leaving the crowd, the press corps, and a yearlong nightmare behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

A file drawer roars open and a set of nervous hands plunges into the thick volume of paper and dividers. Just as quickly, those hands pull out a stack of documents from the cabinet and slam them onto the desk in the corner of the tiny room, under a large crucifix, mounted neatly on the pale white wall.

Father Joseph Bentley has what he needs. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he packs the documents into an old, tattered backpack and heads out the door. Creeping into the hallway, he frequently stops, scanning in every direction to avoid being seen by anyone who might be walking the halls of the tiny church early on a Friday morning.

Outside the church, in the small fenced-off parking lot, a large black Cadillac waits for him with its engine running. He quickly scampers down a long ramp and enters the back seat, slamming the door behind him as he turns to the chauffeur. Go, Go, Go, he hollers, and the driver pushes the pedal to the floor, speeding out the back exit and onto the street.

A half-hour later, a twin-engine Gulfstream waits next to a cavernous hanger, with both engines whining. The Cadillac pulls up, screeching to a halt. Father Bentley exits the car and rushes toward the plane without closing the car door behind him. He whips up the stairs, and with the hatch still closing, the jet starts to roll toward the tarmac, stopping only to wait for a Cessna in front to lift off the tarmac. Moments later, with both engines now screeching, the sleek jet begins its steady roll down the runway, flaps at the takeoff position.

Inside the luxurious jet, Father Bentley sits on a lush couch clutching his backpack, sweat pouring down from his forehead into his clerical collar. Across the narrow aisle sits another man dressed in dark street clothes. The two men lock eyes.

Did you get them all? the man asks.

Father Bentley smiles, Enough to expose this parish all the way to the Vatican.

At the end of the runway, hidden in the underbrush, stands Meridian, a muscular, dark-haired man in his early forties. At over six feet tall with broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a countenance that would scare an attack dog, it's clear that not many men could take him on. As he watches the plane rise into the sky, he glances down at a small black box in his hand -—an onyx ring with a gold cross in the middle glints on his ring finger. Here goes the Holy Ghost, he murmurs, and he pushes a small red button on the box.

Seconds after the jet lifts off the tarmac, all three landing gears fold neatly into the belly of the fuselage. As it heads skyward toward its flight level, a huge blast rocks the morning sky. The sleek, graceful Gulfstream explodes into a thousand fiery chunks of metal, and black smoke trails chase the pieces to the ground.

CHAPTER THREE

The hot sun beats down on the azure blue tropical Pacific Ocean, four hundred miles west of Ecuador. The calm waters are disturbed only by a huge mixed herd of spinner and spotted dolphins that swim inexorably toward the horizon in search of fish while playing, mating, and interacting along the way as dolphins are known to do. Unbeknownst to them, high above, a small two-man helicopter has been monitoring their movements for the better part of an hour, for beneath this large herd of marine mammals swims a vast school of yellowfin tuna. It's an association in this part of the ocean that has baffled biologists for years but exploited relentlessly by fishermen.

Two miles away, the Dos Amigos, a large Mexican purse seine tuna boat, heads in their direction, cutting through the water at speeds approaching twenty-five knots. Alongside the sleek, massive vessel is a group of high-powered speedboats matching the pace of the mother ship.

Once the dolphins hear the high-pitched whine of the speedboats, the captain gives the order, the speedboats go to full throttle, and the chase is on. The dolphins have been through this before, with calamitous results. The calm manner in which the herd had been moving is suddenly transformed into a full-fledged race to escape.

High in the crow's nest, Manny Ortega, the ship's captain, looks out to sea with binoculars raised, a hand-held radio poised in the other hand. With a loud voice that can be heard over the whine of the ship's engine, the captain screams in Spanish into the radio, Round 'em up.

Three of the speedboats continue their high-speed pursuit of the dolphin herd. The one in the lead has the name Bandito sloppily painted on its side.

As Bandito races toward the dolphin herd, the driver hears the captain screaming through his headset, Get 'em. I want 'em all. The driver slams the throttle to its maximum position, the twin 200-horse power engines shooting the boat forward like a torpedo, skipping hard from wave crest to wave crest as it slaps down on the water over and over again. It's heading toward the front of the fleeing dolphin herd, cutting them off and slowing them down, while the other speedboats follow along each side to keep the herd from breaking up.

The vast school of yellowfin tuna remains under the dolphin herd throughout the ordeal, never leaving the protective comfort of their marine mammal canopy.

Inside the tuna boat's galley, Ted Armstrong looks out the kitchen porthole. In the distance, he can see that the speedboats have created a circular wall around the dolphin herd, with each driver tossing small M80 underwater bombs to send dolphins attempting to escape back to the nucleus of the herd.

Armstrong is the ship's cook, brandishing a week-old beard and a Mohawk haircut, having hidden the fact that he is normally a clean-shaven, muscular, well-spoken ex-marine and college graduate. Working with a small environmental organization, he took the job under false pretenses to videotape a fishing method that in the past sixty years has killed at least eight million dolphins from entanglement and suffocation in the nets. It's an act he's excited about, even though if his real intentions were to be found out by any member of the crew, his life would be in serious jeopardy. This is not the kind of thing any tuna fisherman wants to see on the six o'clock national news.

Ted hung around the docks in Ensenada, Mexico, for weeks, talking to and befriending tuna fishermen in hopes of landing a job as crew on one of the Mexican seiners.

As luck would have it, one huge seiner was in port for repairs and just happened to need a cook, something Ted learned working part-time as a short-order cook while studying at the University of Washington.

Those weeks of befriending fishermen paid off, and as the Dos Amigos set sail fully-rigged, it carried a spy whose personal mission was to document on video and expose to the world this lucrative fishing method that has taken the lives of so many dolphins.

From the crow's nest, captain Ortega stares down at a huge skiff sitting precariously over the stern deck sloped at a forty-five-degree angle. All that is keeping the skiff from sliding off the deck is a thick metal cable; two segments joined together by a solid metal pin. It extends from the bow of the skiff to a large metal ring screwed tightly to the deck. Crew member Orlando Perez stands next to the pin with a huge sledgehammer raised to his shoulder, and as the captain turns to begin his climb down the crow's nest, he points to Perez and screams in Spanish at the top of this lungs, Now. Perez raises the sledgehammer and smacks the metal pin, sending the skiff sliding off the stern with one end of the mile-long, three hundred-foot deep net attached. The mother boat steams ahead in a mile-long circle, deploying the net as she goes, with a vast array of colorful floats keeping the net from sinking.

Ted darts from the porthole and races to his quarters, sliding on his knees at his bunk and pulling out a small fiberglass case from under the bedsprings. He opens the case and grapples with a small video camcorder, fumbling as he grabs for the battery. Get a grip, Ted, he mumbles to himself as he takes a deep breath and snaps the battery in place.

By the time Ted slams the battery into the camcorder, inserts a tape, and heads for the rear deck, the net is already closed off at the bottom by a cable running through iron rings along the bottom, much like a drawstring purse; hence, the name. Hundreds of yellowfin tuna are trapped in its grip, along with a large mixed herd of spinner and spotted dolphins.

The captain makes a token attempt to get the dolphins out of the net without releasing the tuna, but when he yells out, How many porpoise left in the net? and the response came back, About a dozen, he pulls the net.

Releasing dolphins from the net without letting the tuna escape is a tricky maneuver and requires not just boat handling talent but dedication as well.

For the most part, the dolphins gather at the farthest end of the net while the tuna swim rapidly around the entire perimeter. As the tuna pass the far end and head back toward the boat, the captain puts the engines in forward gear, pulling the end of the net slightly underwater to allow some of the dolphins to escape. When the tuna have made their full circle and head back to the far end, the engines are put into neutral, and the net pops back to the surface.

The procedure is supposed to be repeated as many times as possible until all the dolphins escape. But this captain, as with many before him, is impatient, and when about a dozen dolphins are left inside, he orders the net pulled in, entangling and suffocating the remaining animals. The old philosophy that time is money is no more relevant than on a tuna seiner.

Few outside of the international purse seine tuna fishing fleet have ever seen the brutal way these animals die, let alone know much about it.

The dolphin killings have been hidden from the public since the birth of this fishing practice in the 1950s. It's a small sacrifice in the eyes of the fishermen in order to make boatloads of money. After all, the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, where this enigmatic association of fish and mammals takes place, extends from Baja to Chile and into the Pacific for over a thousand miles. Out of sight, out of mind.

Ted heads out of the galley with a camcorder in hand. What he is about to do was a long time in the making, for from the time the vessel left port, he has been videotaping everything he could, from deckhands repairing the net to dinners in the galley.

By now, Ted has purposefully videotaped just about every moving object on the boat and in the water over the last few weeks, so no one thinks twice when he comes on deck to film the last dozen dolphins in panic and only moments away from a violent death.

There's Ted with that camera again, blares one of the crewmembers stacking the net as it slowly falls to the deck from the large power boom overhead. Hey, Gringo. Film this, yells another crewmember, who raises his middle finger while all those around him chuckle. Fucking idiots, Ted mumbles to himself as he feigns a smile and waves to them.