Volunteers try to save whales, but others wonder if it's worth it

Sun-Sentinel.com: Volunteers try to save whales, but others wonder if it's worth it
KEY LARGO— One month after 23 pilot whales were found stranded in the Florida Keys, volunteers are still working around the clock to hold up three of the sickly mammals in waist-deep waters in a holding pen.

Most of the pod died within days of coming ashore, and for the trio of survivors the future is uncertain.

But as the drama of the Marine Mammal Conservancy's efforts to save the whales continues, debate over the value and safety of the rescue operation has surfaced.

One critic has charged that rescuers are violating federal disease-prevention guidelines. Others wonder if rehabilitation efforts are worthwhile if the whales cannot eventually be returned to the wild and end up as display animals or in a research lab.

For those who spend a four-hour shift standing chest-deep in Florida Bay with their arms wrapped around a 12-foot, 1,300-pound leviathan of the deep, the experience can be moving, even life-changing.

"Even if these animals can't return to the wild, we are still saving a life," said Javier Torres, 36, a nursing student from Fort Lauderdale. "It's a good feeling to help a mammal in distress."

The first mass stranding of pilot whales in the Keys since 2003 began May 5 when the pod was found in the shallows off Cudjoe Key. Days later, five survivors were moved by truck 80 miles north to a sea pen at the Marine Mammal Conservancy.

Two of those whales were later euthanized as the conservancy began a rehabilitation effort that could last for months.

Russ Rector, who leads the Dolphin Freedom Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, filed a complaint last week with the National Marine Fisheries Service, charging that the conservancy is violating federal policy by "exposing the public to disease unnecessarily and without telling them they are being exposed to potential" maladies such as bacterial, viral and fungal infections.

According to researchers, isolated cases of human disease from contact with marine mammals have been reported.

Erin Fougeres, administrator of the Fisheries Service's marine mammals stranding program, denied there was any disease hazard on the site, or any violation of federal protocols. "We have visited weekly since the stranding, and no concerns have been noted," she said.

Robert Lingenfelser, the conservancy's director of stranding operations, said the group follows strict sanitizing procedures, and volunteers are offered protective equipment. No conservancy volunteer has ever become sick from contact with a marine mammal, he said.

Yet being around whales can be dangerous. "I tell them in orientation: this is not a swim program or a petting pool," Lingenfelser said. "You are about to get in the water with wild mammals."

Indeed, paramedics took one volunteer to the hospital Thursday night when one of the whales clamped down on his hand, he said.

Other animal activists question the value of costly rehabilitation efforts if the rescued animals will never be returned to the wild.

"We would not support them ending up in a place like Sea World, or any place that would exploit them or use them for experimentation," said Will Hazlitt, a spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office.

Of the three whales now being cared for, two were thought to be nursing calves when their mothers died, according to Lingenfelser. He said the conservancy will recommend that they not be released.

Fougeres said that only one of the three survivors has been positively identified as a calf, which couldn't survive in the wild even if restored to health. That animal will likely end up in what she called "a captive-display community." Sea World is one such community.

"Some may think it is better to euthanize than to be put in a display for the rest of its life, but others think it would be far worse to kill a healthy animal," said Fougeres. "There are two sides of the fence on that one."