Trolling SeaWorld

I have read research that states males can live to be 70 and
females to 100. I first photographed that fellow with the wavy
 fin in 1977 and a friend photographed him last summer (2015).
 That's 39 years. It's not too difficult to imagine him an
18-year-old teenager in 1977 which would make him older
than SeaWorld. Notice they're swimming toward the boat.

Every time CNN shows the movie "Blackfish" SeaWorld fires up the PR team and floods Twitter with
their side of the story in 140-or-fewer-letter snippets. The foolishness of it is I think they have it on some kind of autodial because they seldom change, just the same old defenses with their unique corporate spin. The best part may be that it doesn't take nearly 140 characters to refute their justifications for keeping whales in captivity.

The only good side of it is trolling them and they caught me in a good mood tonight. At first I wondered about all the tweets and then I remembered "Blackfish" was on tonight. It only took a glass of wine or two to wind it up. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ Wondering what it takes to be a killer whale trainer? 


@tjonesak‬ 

@SeaWorld‪ a crass disregard for killer whales' quality of life‬

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ We have received a number of questions asking why we chose not to appear in Blackfish.

 @tjonesak‬ You had your chance to respond when the film was made. Kibitzing after the fact is so much sour grapes. How's your stock?

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ We love our killer whales & want everyone to know the truth about our world-class care


@tjonesak‬ 

‪@SeaWorld‪ You have to wonder how they can function at all in the wild without your world-class care. Oh, wait, they don't need it.‬

SeaWorld @SeaWorld Independent research shows SeaWorld’s killer whales live as long as wild killer whales

 @tjonesak @SeaWorld You haven't been in business as long as some killer whales live in the wild.

There's a lot of history involved here and for me it dates back to 1983, earlier if you count my first encounters with killer whales in the late 1970s.

Here is a photo of the same whale made in 2015 and posted by my son on
his facebok page. the whale is AE-14 in the Prince William Sound populaton.

The links below will document most of the history. Each of those stories contains more links so you can go as deeply into this history with the whales as you want to go. There's this, SeaWorld, if you are watching, if you don't remember my name, I bet you remember Tim Jones et al v. Secretary of Commerce.

It gets old posting responses to the same tired defenses SeaWorld puts up every time "Blackfish" comes on, but it needs to be done, over and over again. I am getting old, but there are some young people out there already picking up the flag and fighting on (read, yes, you @Pilo2Lilo ). You are awesome.

The cool thing tonight was I picked up a couple more followers. Almost 40 now, lol. Not quite Lady Gaga numbers yet but I have a few more years left.

A Catalogue of Killer Whales in Prince William Sound Alaska 
One simple fact SeaWorld cannot refute

Blackfish

The singing whales of Alaska's Prince William Sound

Let someone else go down to the sea in boats

Every so often, usually in spring, the urge arises to find a way back onto the big ocean. Then thanks to all the new ways to recall what that's like, as in this YouTube collection, there comes a good reason to pour another scotch, turn up the heat and find a good movie on Netflix. Not interested in trying to sleep held in place by lee straps while the bow pounds into wave after wave and water crashes into the wheelhouse windows.
Take a look at some good reasons to stay home.



Singin' them songs about them storms at sea

Some comments:

Joe May One of the first ones looked like Columbia bar. I especially enjoyed the one with the traveling furniture. The one I thought most serious was the container ship....only one big cross sea away from a broach.
Every spring on the first warm wind I have a wish to be back out there...happily the wish only lasts a few minutes and passes for another year.

Like · Reply · 3 hrs

Tim Jones I thought the same thing about the Columbia Bar, the second one I think. It was almost funny the guy out on the bow taking a picture and then seeing what's coming hightailing it for the house. I was on a boat once where a car on deck started to come loose. Long story about that, but fortunately the seas weren't anything like this.

Like · Reply · 3 hrs

Joe May I was only in something comparable once, on an 85 ft tug. I was a deckhand and the Capt and I alternated 15 min. on and 15 min. off the wheel for 12 hours. Nobody else could get to the bridge to relieve us. In the morning after it had subsided a bit s...See More

Like · Reply · 2 hrs

Tim Jones I have heard of water coming down the stove pipe. Makes you wonder. I got down to half hour wheel watches once, never 15 minutes though. Must have been something on a tug that size.

Like · Reply · 2 hrs

Betty Sederquist Crazy! Glad to be on land.

Like · Reply · 2 hrs

Joe May We were responding to a distress call from another tug. In the middle of the night a spare anchor lashed to the inner bulwarks broke loose and was running free on the deck. If it wasn't captured it would breach the superstructure and sink us.The Mate ...See More

Unlike · Reply · 1 · 2 hrs

Tim Jones haha i wish i could be somewhere other than here

Joe May I scanned an entry out of my old sailing log and sent it to Bonnie this morning. similar to Bruce's problem but with a happy outcome. 1988 on the SE end of POW Island...Kendrick Bay.
Wind shift at night when on anchor and boat swung over a mud hump of the ebb tide and grounded.

Unlike · Reply · 1 · 10 mins

Tim Jones I dragged anchor against the beach in an 83-foot tender in Icy Bay. Fortunately it was a steep beach and the hull was configured for a large, deep fish tank which put the propellers and rudders higher than the bottom of the hull. I was able to twin screw the stern seaward and then back off the beach with no damage

Joe May Would it be legal then to write "shipwrecked" on a resume?

Like · Reply · 12 mins

Tim Jones Legal perhaps, but advisable? I don't think so.

Like · Reply · 9 mins

Tim Jones This is the last line of the "Legend of Adak Charlie:" "Those times I gets to thinkin' real fondly about them poor souls in the Bering Sea and the time I spent there. Don't last long, though. I always come back to my senses.” http://alaskaatitude.blogspot.com/.../we-come-off...

Alaska with attitude : The legend of Adak Charlie

ALASKAATITUDE.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY TIM JONES

Joe May Tim Jones Makes an impression though if used between "shot-at" and "frozen".

Like · Reply · 2 hrs

Tim Jones That would make an impression.

Like · Reply · 2 hrs

Eric Lopez Ya the whole "Ship Wrecked" or "Foundered/sunk" is really way over rated on the ol' resume...first hand experience...

Unlike · Reply · 1 · 1 hr

Alaska's missing senator sighted

Maybe next time he should choose a teaching aid that 
makes his own point instead of the president's.

Apparently Alaska's missing senator came out of his basement office last week  to do as he promised during his campaign, stand up to President Obama. Here's the headline:
Sullivan blames Obama for slow economic growth in Republican address

Are you kidding me? Still blaming Obama for everything despite his popularity and many calling him one of the best presidents ever. It's like a rerun from  his senate campaign four years ago. Next week he'll be blaming Roosevelt for Social Security. And maybe this goober won't accept it but it was his party that put the economy in the toilet in the first place with huge tax cuts for the rich and two unpaid-for wars. In fact, the president's successes and the missing senator's party's total failure has led to a total collapse of that party. I mean, look who's probably going to run on their ticket for the presidency – incidentally backed by the missing Alaska senator.

Obviously the Senate mail delivery system is leaving him off the route  and no periodicals or newspapers are making it to the basement.

This is so 2012, and so irrelevant. It's like he has no clue what the issues are today. By any measurable means the economy has improved tremendously since Obama took office in 2008. Nobody is even listening to this smackdaddy talk about a dead subject. If there is a problem with the economy it is totally the fault of his obstructionist party faithful with whom he fell into lockstep once he stole the office from Alaskans in 2012. As i said in an earlier post this week, I probably helped create more jobs than any Republican in this Congress.

And what does it matter anyway considering the president only has about half a year left in office. Are economic matters going to hurt or help him in the next election. It's like shooting a guy in the back when he's already headed for the door. Classy move.

And speaking of economies, Alaskans discovered this year that the state is paying out more in subsidies to the oil industry than it has been taking in from royalty payments. That's a deal generated when the missing senator was part of the state's administration. But, that's probably Obama's fault too.

Just go back in your hole Junior. We'll see you in 2020.

Alaska senator blames the president for everything
Leave a cart, save a job

An afterthought

I saw this meme a friend shared on facebook a few days ago. I added this comment to it:

"The thing about judgments is you never know the full story. I am sure this person would not like that I leave my shopping cart out in the lot where my car was, but make sure it is not in the way of parking. I do this not because I am lazy but because the store has to hire a couple of kids at entry level jobs to gather those carts all the time. I am just helping keep kids off the street and earning some money."

It's for the same reason I won't use those automatic checkout machines at stores. They replace entry level employees as well.

I was surprised to see a couple of other commenters agreed with me.

Today reviewing old facebook activities a little I came across it again and I realized I probably helped create or at least maintain more jobs than all the Republicans in Congress over the past few years, one shopping cart at a time. Isn't there a saying somewhere about if one person does something it's this and if two people do it, it's this and if three people do it it's a movement? 

From Arlo Guthrie"s "Alice's Restaurant: "And if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people, I said fifty people a day …"

Join the movement, leave your shopping cart, create a job for a kid.

Random observations 2016

Random observations, Spring 2016 version

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