Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 19, 1993 TAG: 9307190097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: LEESBURG LENGTH: Medium
Benjamin White has interfered with whaling ships in Russia and cut fishing nets to free captive dolphins in Japan.
The Loudoun County resident calls himself an environmental "terra-ist," and for more than a decade he has been trying to live up to the name.
"What I am is an advocate of direct action," said White, an arborist who owns a company called Growing Earth Tree Care in Loudoun County. "I'm a terra-ist, and I'm not alone."
White and several other protesters were at Sea World in San Diego on Saturday, demanding that the aquatic park free an orca whale named Corky. It was the latest in a series of protests timed to coincide with the release of "Free Willy," a movie about a boy who tries to free an orca whale at a Seattle park.
White sneaked into the San Diego park and chained himself to a handrail next to Corky's tank. He stayed there for several minutes before being unchained and escorted out of the park, officials said.
"It didn't happen during the show, so he didn't cause that much of a commotion," said Jim Antrim, general curator for the park. "I don't think most of the people even noticed."
In the past week, protesters have unfurled banners at several locations across the country, including the scoreboard at Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards. They are demanding that Corky, a 28-year-old female orca, be freed.
"I think the message that Sea World is trying to sell is that no animal is too big or too beautiful or too free that we can't reduce them to begging handouts from us," White said last week. Sea World officials said Corky, who has depended on human care since 1969, would not survive in the wild.
The National Aquarium in Baltimore has been the target of occasional protests by White and other animal-rights activists. White's actions have had little or no effect on attendance and on how the parks are run, an unidentified official with the National Aquarium told The Washington Post for a story Sunday.
White said he considers the capture and use of marine mammals to be slavery because the animals are intelligent. He disavows violence but says he will break laws to protect animals.
One of his more daring missions came this spring, after White heard that more than 40 dolphins had been rounded up for sale to theme parks around the world.
He flew to Tokyo and took a ferry to Iki Island, where the dolphins were being kept in a cove, he said. After a short swim, he said, he cut the nets and at least some of the dolphins swam free.
In 1981, White joined the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group of self-described radical environmentalists. For the next eight years, he and the other crew members of the Sea Shepherd ship harassed whale boats, cut drift nets that snare dolphins and, on one occasion, rammed a whaling ship.
White later formed the Dolphin Rescue Brigade to fight the captivity of whales and dolphins. Four years ago, group members, comparing themselves to abolitionists, tried to stop the National Aquarium in Baltimore from capturing six wild bottlenose dolphins.
by CNB