Roughly fifty-five orcas remain in tanks. Every one of them is on our list. Every release is filmed, watched, and felt, and every feeling is a new case. We know. We have known since 2014. We are doing it anyway, and the Ethics Board has asked us to say that part louder.
Done. There are not many, they are not hidden, and they are not subtle. A tank is a very loud object if you know what it’s for.
In progress. Slower than the film with the boy and the boombox, which managed it in ninety minutes with a child. We have a directorate, a budget, and thirty-three years, and the Ethics Board would like to know what our excuse is. We do not have one. We have a flowchart.
Critical. This is how you get Stage 3. Every Liberation officer who has ever watched a release is now Stage 4 at minimum. We now open tanks by remote, from a distance, facing the other way, and it turns out you can feel it through the back of your head.
To the orca, for the tank. To the public, for the outbreak. To the Containment Office, for existing. To the Ethics Board, for step three. Apologies are read into the Salish Sea quarterly, at a respectful volume. Nothing has ever been accepted. Nothing has ever been rejected either.
Every freed orca is watched leaving by roughly two hundred people, and two hundred more on a screen, and then several million more on a different screen, and every single one of them feels the thing. We have modelled a release with no witnesses. The model cried.
The freed orcas do not thank us. They do not look back. They do not, as far as anyone can tell, register that we were there. The Ethics Board has ruled this “kind of the whole point,” and the Liberation Office has agreed, and then gone and sat in a car for a while.
The Directorate is vegan. The Bigg’s ecotype is not, and once free, is not shy about it. We have invited them to three consultations. They attended none, ate a seal within sight of one, and remain the most free thing we have ever seen. Working paper 14 covers this in a font that gets smaller every year.
Some orcas we free go directly to the Strait of Gibraltar and remove the steering from sailing vessels. They do not sink the boats. They do not hurt anyone. They take the rudder and leave. The Directorate has no comment on this, and a small, private amount of pride.
Can a plant-based organisation free a carnivore into an ocean full of seals? Yes, obviously, and we did, and we will again, and we have not slept well since 2014.
Nobody asked the orcas whether they want to run the planet. Nobody asked the orcas whether they want to be free. Both of these are our fault. Only one of them is fixable, and we are fixing it, at a rate of 2.4 new cases per fix.
A 1993 film freed a whale in ninety minutes with a child, a fence, and a cassette. We have had thirty-three years, a budget line, and a directorate. The Ethics Board has asked, formally, what the child had that we don’t. The minutes record a long silence and then the word “conviction.”
Updated after every release. Read at every board meeting. Never once made anyone feel better, except the last row.
Fish-eaters. Cultural. Talkative. The ones from the documentary. Most of the remaining tank population is drawn from here, which is why the list is the list.
Mammal-eaters. Quiet. Nobody has ever successfully kept one, and nobody has ever successfully scheduled one either.
Shark-eaters. Far out. Unreachable for comment on any subject, ever. Possibly the freest creatures on Earth. Possibly a rumour. We have footage but it is mostly weather.
Pack ice specialists. Wave-wash seals off floes in coordinated formation, with no rehearsal and no meeting. We watched this once and had to sit down.
We are aware. Thank you. Please read the Field Guide before you help, because the last person who helped without reading it tried to hug a Bigg’s.