Waves are smashing against the breakwater behind the Shedd Aquarium and it’s threatening rain as a small cell of demonstrators gathers for its usual Sunday protest against the museum. The group carts out signs and poles and rests them on a narrow section of sidewalk backing up to the Oceanarium, the $45-million home of the Shedd’s marine mammals. “Oceanarium My Ass,” reads the T-shirt worn by Steve Hindi, the 39-year-old leader of the group, the Chicago Animal Rights Coalition (CHARC, pronounced “shark”).
“I’d request that you stay off the grass,” says the guard.
With that, the trainer launches the show. The dolphins (marine biologists call them “lags,” for their species name Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) have learned to do various tricks on the basis of hand signals, and as the lead trainer talks on–touching on cetacean facts and on the research the Shedd is doing on the animals–the dolphins do their stuff. In pairs they leap into the air, walk backward along the surface of the water–called “skywalking”–and propel themselves through the water on their backs, using their tails as flippers. The dolphins synchronize their motions in exact tandem, much to the delight of the crowd, and the Oceanarium is filled with popping flashes.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The flashes signal the group of teenagers standing on the grass outside, part of the CHARC group, to start tossing inflated plastic porpoises high in the air, mimicking the jumps of the real dolphins. “Now this is the way to get our message across,” says Hindi to his younger brother and aide-de-camp Greg. The rain is coming down in torrents (even the videotaping security guard has run for cover), and though the protesters are sopping wet they manage to manipulate the toy dolphins like puppets in an especially impressive version of skywalking. Inside, the dolphin show comes to an end with the announcer underlining the need to preserve the environment where the whales and dolphins normally live.
CHARC’s principal problem with the Shedd concerns the restricted environment of the aquarium. “You take dolphins that travel 100 miles a day in pods, with their own children, and now they are going to spend the rest of their lives in a concrete coffin, eating dead fish and swimming in circles,” says Hindi. “The Oceanarium is a chlorinated toilet bowl compared to where the whales come from, and now they’re swimming in circles, too, or they just lay there.”
