Word: whaled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Your piece on the release of J.J., the orphaned gray whale raised by SeaWorld, questioned the motivation of Anheuser-Busch, which owns the four SeaWorld theme parks [AMERICAN SCENE, April 13]. You suggested that the effort to help J.J. was inspired by commercial considerations. However, it should be noted that J.J. was brought to SeaWorld at the request of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Our animal-care staff in San Diego has quietly treated and returned to the wild hundreds of other beached marine mammals. No organization in the world today rescues, rehabilitates and releases more marine mammals than...
...environment through field trips, hikes and interactive presentations. Kids and adults go their separate ways during the day. While children ages 3 to 17 go on microhikes or wildlife expeditions (there are four adult-supervised camp programs), Mom and Dad get to spend the day birding, learning about astronomy, whale watching or taking a nature writing class. In the late afternoon and evening, everyone regroups for family activities like barbecues, lobster bakes, folk dancing and Native American storytelling...
That it was left behind is appropriate, since this particular voyage was the very antithesis of Melville's great saga. For the first time in humankind's 5,000 years of seafaring, the prized whale lying on the deck wasn't a trophy of the hunt. Instead, the return of J.J. the whale to the sea, after 15 months of care by animal-rescue workers at nearby Sea World, was a triumph of both compassion and commercialism. "J.J. is so intensely marketed, they fell just short of stamping the whale's tail with a Sea World logo," a sardonic Conifer...
...whale's odyssey began when the one-week-old J.J. was found rolling in the surf near Los Angeles in January 1997, sick and emaciated (a mere 1,670 lbs.). Lifeguards and beachgoers loaded her into a U-Haul truck and drove her 120 miles to Sea World. She arrived comatose, but within days perked up and began gaining 2 lbs. an hour. She dined at first on a baby formula of cream mixed with mushed-up herring and vitamins--sort of a whale version of New England clam chowder--and later switched to bottom feeding on a diet...
...carried through gentle swells to a position 2.1 nautical miles off Point Loma, Calif., a scenic finger of land near San Diego. There, amid a noisy flotilla of 12 boats, the sling was lowered, and chief boatswain's mate Thomas Young barked the words never before heard: "Release the whale...