It’s a chance for people to make money: Satu

Evan Wasuka
Three years after the export of live dolphins was banned in the Solomon Islands—the trade is back in full swing with a shipment of 28 dolphins to Dubai and a further load scheduled for Mexico.

The lucrative trade which ISLANDS BUSINESS has been informed could fetch well over S$1million per dolphin, has as expected drawn severe criticisms from international and local conservation groups.
Dolphin exporter—Solomon Islands Marine Mammals Education Centre and Exporters Limited—won’t say how much they’ve made from the October shipment but it’s clear they’ve hit pay dirt.

“The price is so good that it’s better than round logs. It’s big—bigger than gold,” says company director Robert Satu.

According to customs officials, the company is paying the government S$1.5 milllion in export duty taxes.
In October, two chartered Airbus 310 cargo planes arrived in the Solomon Islands to transport two loads of live dolphins across the world to what is believed to be one of the world’s largest aquarium parks in Dubai.

The scene is a flashback of 2003 when a similar plane-load of 28 dolphins heading to Mexico sparked international outrage—courtesy of a band of international journalists who happened to be in town waiting for the arrival of peacekeepers from the Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI) who mistook the arrival of the dolphin plane for a military troop carrier.

But there was no mistaking the furore resulting from the Solomons government slapping a ban on the trade—despite the company holding a permit to export dolphins.

Nine out of the 28 dolphins didn’t survive the ordeal.

Fast forward four years—and the Solomon Islands Court of Appeal ruled that the ban was illegal, thus opening up the lucrative trade.

Furthermore, the government of the day is backing the trade—calling it as a form of its much hyped “bottom up policy”.

“This is a chance for the grassroot people to make money from their own resources,” says a smiling Satu, who reputedly holds a chiefly title in Honiara’s fishing village community.

“I have been selling my fish for (SBD)$10 a heap and now the government wants me to go overseas and sell my dolphins,” he said.

Conservationists were horrified when the government overturned the ban. But now that the trade has actually taken place, they’ve taken to their global network to rally support against the trade.

Amongst those leading the charge is the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute. Mark Berman of the institute is a long-time opponent, who has described the trade as inhumane and outrageous.

“Solomon Islands will join the likes of other whaling nations as this is a form of whaling. Once these dolphins are captive in Dubai, which is non-native to these dolphins, their only way to freedom again is in death,” he said.

Though Satu is the local face of the Dubai deal, the figure behind Solomon Islands Marine Mammals Education Centre and Exporters Limited is former dolphin trainer and entrepreneur Chris Porter.

Export ban: The Canadian had set up Dolphin Island Resort on Gavutu Island, touting it as a research and education centre for the dolphins.

This was soon followed by the setting up of an export arm of the company to sell dolphins on the overseas market to supplement the running of the research centre.

But things changed drastically with the government’s export ban, bringing the business to a standstill. Worse was yet to come when the Australian government imposed a new law banning its citizens from touching dolphins outside of Australia—visitors to Dolphin Island dried up.

But with the export ban overturned and the trade heading into full swing, Porter is back running the show.

For Satu, the Dubai deal was just the beginning with another load already scheduled for Mexico. But, he says, the future goes beyond his company with plans for villages and local communities to have their own dolphin farms.

“We’ve already found the market...they just follow,” he says.

A plan that Berman and his conservationist pals have labelled as absurd.

“Captive breeding of dolphins will simply not work. These intelligent mammals are brutally captured from their ocean homes and forced to live in pens or tanks causing stress and other ailments.

The breeding success is not proven in this species,” said Berman.

As for the prickly issue of sustainability and the possibility of stocks running out due to over-harvesting, Satu said "there are thousands of dolphins in the Solomons and we’ve been hunting them for generations".

On the local level, it has been the likes of conservationist Lawrence Makili who has been campaigning against the dolphin trade.

Makili, the local rep for Earth Island Institute and a Honiara city council rep, has been warning about the repercussions of the trade.

He says the Solomon Islands fisheries products by Soltai that are being exported to Europe and now the United States will be boycotted if the dolphin trade continues.

Overseas consumers are educated and if they know this government is supporting the capture and export of dolphins, they will boycott our tuna products, he said.

So concerned were the exporters that Makili may disrupt the shipment, 18 security officers were hired from a local security firm along with police to keep out would-be troublemakers.

But Makili took a different approach. He aimed for the jugular by going to court to block the shipment by way of an injunction.

On the same day as the planes were scheduled to arrive in Honiara, Makili filed an ex-parte for the courts to hear an application for an injunction.

“They can’t get away with this. They don’t even have a proper fisheries management plan,” he said.

“There are irregularities within the law. Which makes me believe there are illegal things happening,” said Makili.

But the High Court ruled that Makili’s application did not have enough evidence to support his claim and refused to hear his application, although the court agreed to hear a civil case by Makili and landowners over what they claimed is an abuse of their natural resources.

More concerns were raised when a number of dolphin carcasses were washed up at Ranadi, the site of the company’s temporary pens.

The carcasses were shown on local television with residents in the area complaining of the stench from other dead dolphins.

An outraged Makili said this merely proved what he had been saying all along—that these wild dolphins cannot survive being kept in captivity.

But even this couldn’t stop the operation from rolling on with a barge being dispatched to Gavutu Islands in central Solomon Islands to bring back up to 28 dolphins.

Back in Honiara and under police escort—and with the media kept at bay, the dolphins were transported onto trucks before they were spirited to Honiara Airport where the domestic terminal was shut down for the export and all local flights rerouted to the international terminal.

The dolphins, most weighing over 60 pounds, were kept on a wet mattress like material and covered with wet cloth before transported on to tanks on the plane for the 30-hour trip to Dubai.