30/3/98
The
tale of Moby Dicky
Of all the dolphin joints in the world, Dicky was
lucky to end up in this one.
Dolphin Reef in Eilat is rare among menageries in
that animal-rights activists can't think of a bad word to
say about it. (The exception would be haredi animal-rights
activists, who might object to the topless sunbathers on
its
beach.) If pressed, they might even be prepared to commend Dolphin Reef for
an act of extraordinary humaneness -- the unusual story
of Dicky.
Dicky wasn't doing anyone much good swimming around
in a part of the Black Sea where there aren't any tourists.
There were tourists in Eilat, but no dolphins. The solution
was obvious.
Dicky didn't seem to mind relocating from the Black
to the Red Sea. He was happy, his trainers say. He enjoyed
performing, was well fed and even free to leave the confines
of the Reef.
Could a dolphin ask for more?
But there was something missing. A Mrs. Dicky.
Hamutal Shilo, one of the humans at Dolphin Reef,
relates the tale. ג€When we opened in 1990, we brought five
dolphins from the Black Sea -- two males and three females.
The problem is, a typical dolphin family is one male, a
coterie of females and their babies.ג€
Cindy, the dominant male, was 18; Dicky was five.
At the time it was copacetic: Dicky was accepted. Eventually,
though, when he reached the age of 10, he wanted a piece
of the action.
ג€Cindy didn't let him get close to the females, and
he couldn't incorporate with the family. Dolphins need a
social life because they're very sociable, which is why
you always see them in large groups. If you see a solitary
dolphin, it means something horrible happened to him.ג€
The Reef's Maya Zilber, another fully grown female,
relates that Dicky settled for the next-best alternative: people. But ... there was a problem.
ג€Dicky would expose his sex organ and rub up against
swimmers and divers.ג€
Well. Something had to be done.
The reef opened the enclosure and gave Dicky the
run of the Red Sea. It had been planning to give all the
dolphins free access eventually -- confident that they would
always come back home -- but Dicky's urges hastened the
plan.
It was hoped that Dicky would meet a nice girl out
there and bring her home to roost, but it turns out the
local babes just weren't interested in a Russian immigrant.
ג€There
are 80 kinds of dolphins in the world, each with its own
dialect,ג€ Hamutal explains. ג€Because Dicky came from
the Black Sea, he couldn't communicate with dolphins from the Red Sea.ג€
And there is no dolphin ulpan in the area.
The reef had options: it could have said the hell
with it, Dicky is otherwise happy here, and tourists are
spending lots of money to watch him jump around; it could
have imposed a human compromise on the family structure
and revoked one of the females from bigamist Cindy; it could
have washed its hands of him and sold him for $100,000.
Who would know? Who would care?
But there was another option: return Dicky home.
And that's what they did.
ג€Instead of selling him for $100,000 to some
circus, Ronny Zilber, the owner of Dolphin Reef, spent that
much to do what he thought was right,ג€ says Hamutal, obviously
proud of her employer. ג€I believe this operation was unique.ג€
It was an emotionally charged decision because Dicky
and the staff loved each other. ג€We lifted him out of the
water, placed him in a specially made rubber tub, and put
him into a truck. Everybody was crying; it was so sad for
all of us. The truck drove to the airport, to a plane hired
by Mr. Zilber.ג€
Zilber and Cissy, a trainer who had a special relationship
with Dicky, accompanied him home, stroking and talking to him along the way.
Dicky was brought back to the same spot where he
had been captured six years earlier, at Taman Bay. But the
operation was not yet finished.
Academics of the Severtsov Institute, which specializes
in the field of marine mammals, took over. Severtsov originally
transferred the dolphins to Israel as part of scientific
cooperation agreements signed during a visit to newly democratized Russia by then-science minister Ezer Weizman.
Continues Hamutal: ג€Severtsov put Dicky together
with a female, Blanca. Happily, there was good interaction.
After a while together in a specially built aquarium, they were released into the sea, their fins marked with male and female signs.
ג€From time to time we get messages from boats in
the Black Sea that they've seen the marked fins. The last
message we got was in November.ג€ Hamutal smiles warmly,
maternally. ג€Now we're just waiting to hear about a sighting
-- with babies.ג€
Dicky will have quite a story to tell his grandchildren.
