ENVIRONMENT

A Rundown on Dolphin Captivity

KARINA HESSELBO Contributor

Out of all the documentaries I have watched, there are two that have stood out to me for what they expose and reveal: The Cove and Blackfish. The Cove was a movie that aimed to show the harm done by the captive dolphin industry and expose the link between it and the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. Blackfish showed the suffering of orcas in Seaworld and captivity in general. The Cove came out in 2009, and Blackfish in 2013. This means nearly a decade has passed since these films were released, and still, millions of people flock to aquariums to see captive dolphins every year.

No amount of tricks, rubber balls, or pats from humans is a good substitute for swimming in the ocean waves.

It seems that in spite of the numerous documentaries, stories, and articles denouncing dolphin captivity, ignorance of this creature’s suffering remains rampant among the public. This article will give a rundown on how and why dolphins suffer in captivity. Imagine being bored all day. Not just for a few minutes or a couple of hours, but every day of your life. That is what life in captivity is like. This boredom comes from the inability to swim for miles in a straight line, something all dolphins, be it a large orca or a small bottlenose dolphin, need to do. Tanks also prohibit natural behaviors. No amount of tricks, rubber balls, or pats from humans is a good substitute for swimming in the ocean waves, hunting, passing on knowledge, and exploring the seabed.

With this boredom comes depression, with which dolphins find different ways to cope. Often, this includes head bashing and gnawing. One orca, Hugo, died from a brain aneurysm after smashing his head on his tank’s walls. A bottlenose dolphin named Johnny wore down his teeth beneath his gum line from chewing on the bars of his tank. Another thing that makes dolphin captivity horrendous is how they are brought to their enclosures. Although we like to believe dolphins live in aquariums because they have been rescued or because they were bred in captivity, the truth is that many are sourced from drive hunts.

Drive hunts are performed in Taiji, Japan. Hunters create a wall of sound by banging on metal poles to drive a pod of dolphins into a cove. Once inside, the most beautiful animals, namely female bottlenose dolphins, are selected for captivity, while the others are slaughtered. The only thing keeping this operation alive is the captive dolphin industry. A live dolphin can sell for $150 000, while dead dolphins only sell for $600. The hunt runs from March to September and kills hundreds of dolphins every year. Last year, 65 dolphins were captured and 498 were killed.

The history of how dolphins and other whales have been brought into captivity is very dark and illustrates their desperate plight. An example is the orca captures that occurred in the 1970s, where southern resident orcas were rounded up for marine parks. In total, seven were sent to aquatic zoos. Five died in the nets. The worst part is that the orcas knew what was happening. They came up with ways to prevent themselves from getting caught. They tried splitting up. The mothers and their calves went one way while the males went the other to act as a decoy. However, as seen in Blackfish, some hunters in airplanes had a bird’s-eye view of the operation and told those in the boats where the calves were headed. Today, only one orca is still alive from this capture era–Lolita. Her native name, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, was given to her by the Lummi people. She is currently kept in the smallest orca tank in America. She has lived there for over 50 years. There are things we can do to stop this. We can choose whether or not we want to support the confinement of these intelligent animals and the slaughter of their pods every time we go on a holiday. By buying tickets to swim with captive dolphins or to watch them perform in shows, we are supporting this cruelty. If you really want to see a dolphin, a much more ethical and rewarding way to do so, a real “once in a lifetime” experience, is to go on a dolphin-watching trip and see them in the wild. If you would like to do more to help these marine animals, you can watch The Cove and Blackfish, and inform others around you about the suffering of dolphins in captivity. p p

The FIRE Movement: How You Can Technically Retire at 30

NATASHA MURMU Science and Environment Editor

Life after CEGEP can seem grim. The idea of working the best years of our lives away in the hopes of retiring at 65 is unappealing for a lot of students. Fortunately, it is possible to quit working full-time and retire earlier. In fact, many people have successfully retired between the ages of 30 to 50 thanks to FIRE investing. FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. It’s a movement followed by people who want to be financially free earlier in life. The basic strategy is living frugally and investing large portions of your income in your 20s so you can live off your investment gains and achieve financial freedom earlier than the traditional retirement age. Before getting into the details of the FIRE method, let’s define some key financial concepts. What is financial freedom? For most people, being financially free means being able to pay for living expenses without having to work a full-time job. Most people achieve this by having some source of passive income, which is a means of making money that requires minimal active effort to maintain. One way of making a passive income is by investing. One way you can invest is by buying an asset, like a share of a company. If the asset increases in value over time and you sell it for a higher price than you originally paid, you will earn a profit. Due to inflation, simply saving money in your bank account or stashing it in cash form means it loses value over time. Investing puts your money to work. Essentially, it can allow you to make money with your money over a long period of time. Most students have some amount of money they can invest, whether it’s from a part-time job or an allowance from their parents. However, the most valuable resource students have, besides youth, is time. Time is important in investing because of compound interest. In simple terms, it is when you earn interest on an initial investment plus previously accumulated interest. Compound interest allows people to grow their wealth exponentially. It’s why almost all investors wish they had started earlier.

What’s most important is getting started as soon as possible and investing consistently.

So, how does FIRE work? The strategy is based on the assumption that a good investment portfolio returns 8% a year and that the rate of inflation increases by 2-3% every year. This means that an investor should be able to safely withdraw 4% of their savings a year. In order to retire early the FIRE way, you need to determine your yearly expenses and how much money you want to live off of in retirement. Most people are able to retire and withdraw 4% of their money yearly once they have saved up approximately 25 times this amount. According to Expatistan, it currently costs $3 282 for a single person to live comfortably in Montreal, which roughly translates to a yearly living expense of $40 000. So, if you want to live off of $40 000 in retirement, you need to save $1 million in total. Dividing this amount by the number of years you want to retire by gives you the amount you need to invest every year before retirement. For example, a 20-year-old Montrealer aiming to completely quit working by age 30 would have to invest a sum of $100 000 a year. Retiring by 40 would require investing $50 000 yearly. Many people who have found success with FIRE have had to invest 50 to 70% of their annual salary. This is not feasible for everyone. In addition, completely quitting work means sacrificing benefits that often come with a full-time job, such as health insurance and dental care plans, among other things. However, how frugal you need to be and whether or not you keep your work benefits depends on your goals and income.

For instance, a person who wants to live off of $45 000 a year in passive income will have to save more money than someone who can live off of $25 000. For some, the objective might be to completely quit working after retirement. For others, the goal might be to switch to part-time work or pursue a lower-paying career that they’re passionate about. Their objective might be for their investment earnings to pay for a portion of their living expenses and for the income from their part-time or “dream” job to cover the rest. Regardless if you think FIRE is right for you, investing in some way can help prevent your savings from losing value over time. There are numerous ways to invest money. You can do it on your phone, through your bank, or through online brokers like Wealthsimple and Questrade. If you prefer to take your finances into your hands, you can pick your assets yourself. If you prefer a more handsfree approach, you can put your money in a managed portfolio and let professionals invest it for you. Signing up for an investment account is easy and only takes a couple minutes. With certain brokers, you can even invest as little as a dollar. There are tons of resources online that can help you determine what the best strategy is for you, be it FIRE or a less aggressive investing plan. What’s most important is getting started as soon as possible and investing consistently. p p

Dreaming and Dreams: Funky, Mysterious & Necessary Products of Your Sleep

SOPHIE ANABELLE SOMÉ Staff Writer

Have you not once created a scenario involving your crush right before falling asleep in the hopes of dreaming about them and your magical love story? Maybe sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Unfortunately, dreams are relatively hard to control. They can be enigmatic, and they occasionally involve whimsical depictions. They are essentially a collection of thoughts, images, and emotions that happen during our sleep. While dreams are integral parts of our sleep, the scientific community still does not agree on a specific answer as to why we dream. Dreams don’t have a specific pattern, and anyone can dream of anything. Blind people or individuals suffering from damage to their hippocampus, however, can see alterations in their dreaming patterns. Sometimes dreams involve objects, words, or concepts we have seen before falling asleep. Studying extensively before a test can result in parts of the material appearing in one’s dream. Some people will dream in color, others in black and white. Blind people, on the other hand, will have dreams that are more focused on sound, smell, and touch. According to an article by Eric Suni, a staff writer for the Sleep Foundation, dreams are associated with strengthening memory. They process emotions, clear unnecessary information in the brain, and replay recent events in one’s head. Besides, dreams are really a purposeless by-product of our sleep. You might recall an extremely bizarre and unexpected chain of events in your dreams. They can almost make you feel like Alice in Wonderland. Your parrot was carrying you above a sea of disturbing and curious creatures. Suddenly, you flew across a cloud and were thrown into the water. The eerie creatures in the sea are integrals and telescoping series from your Calculus test a few days ago. You are suddenly on your couch; your parrot is massaging you and singing your favorite childhood lullaby. Finally, your crush, whom you saw in the hallways that morning, is dancing some ballet moves next to you. Inventing such a dream off the top of my head was easy because dreams really can be about anything. Essentially, they are formed from parts of your daily lives and comprise different elements of your imagination.

No amount of tricks, rubber balls, or pats from humans is a good substitute for swimming in the ocean waves.

In an article written by Erin Heger, weird dreams come from the consolidation of new information. The emotions felt and the information gathered from reading, listening, or learning things before bedtime can influence one’s dreams. Dreams can also be a therapeutic activity where the individual navigates through their emotions. Increased stress and anxiety are known factors that influence the vividness of dreams. Indubitably, sleeping habits have an influence on your dreams. Sleep deprivation along with bettering your sleep quality greatly influences the contents of one’s dreams. Our brains are constantly processing and classifying memories in our heads. When we dream, the brain is recalibrating and replacing the memories it will keep and classifying those it will most likely discard. Essentially, the brain digs into old memories and gathers useful information. According to an article by Sarah DiGiulo in Better by Today, logical thinking in our brain is less active when dreaming. The memories navigated when we’re dreaming are more emotionally centered and do not follow a logical story. Some dreaming patterns can be observed among different individuals. Dreams can be related to relationships, where one could be faced with a conflict, a loving experience, or the feeling of being in danger. Moreover, dreams can have a sexual connotation, like being nude, having sexual experiences, or sexual pleasure. The fear of embarrassment, like failing a test or arriving late somewhere, is a common aspect of dreams. Over 55 registered themes can be familiar to you. Being chased, being on the verge of falling, being killed, and insects or spiders are only a few manifestations of dreams.

Dreams, by their versatility and complexity, are one of humanity’s greatest mysteries and are appreciated when they incorporate our greatest desires. Now off you go, reader, and have your Alice in Wonderland moment the next time you close your eyes. p p