{"id":760611,"date":"2020-05-24T08:17:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-24T12:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760611"},"modified":"2020-05-24T08:17:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-24T12:17:55","slug":"redemption-the-fight-to-free-smooshi-the-worlds-most-famous-captive-walrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760611","title":{"rendered":"REDEMPTION: The Fight to Free Smooshi, the World\u2019s Most Famous Captive Walrus"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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According to Demers, employees were tasked with drugging anxious animals with valium and human antidepressants, and left to languish in cages and shallow pool.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

KATE BRIQUELET:<\/strong> In happier times, Phil Demers and Smooshi the walrus snuggled in the summer sun or frolicked together down a snow-covered slide. The 800-pound flippered orphan would bark and lumber into the room when Demers sing-songed her name. Smooshi took a shine to Demers, who believes she viewed him as her mother.<\/p>\n

But this interspecies love story ground to a halt in 2012, when Demers left his 12-year post at Marineland, the Canadian amusement park that keeps whales, dolphins, sea lions\u2014and now apparently one remaining walrus, Smooshi\u2014for aquatic performances. Demers says he quit in protest of the Niagara Falls attraction\u2019s treatment of animals.<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old former animal trainer has been at war with the tourist empire ever since. Marineland filed a $1.5-million lawsuit accusing him of a plot to kidnap Smooshi, a case that resulted in Demers countersuing the park\u2019s rock-ribbed Slovenian proprietor, the late John Holer.<\/p>\n

That legal battle continues, and is just one part of Demers\u2019 story told in the new documentary The Walrus and the Whistleblower… The documentary was an official selection of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and is currently seeking a home for U.S. and worldwide distribution…<\/p>\n

At the outset of the film, Demers says, \u201cWhistleblower? I blew whistles for years at Marineland but it was to tell the dolphins to come back to the stage and get their fish.\u201d Initially he figured the animal-rights protesters he encountered simply didn\u2019t understand his special bond with Smooshi and the other walruses, which included Zeus, Buttercup, Apollo and Sonja. (All but Smooshi have died in the past few years, and Demers told The Daily Beast this week her whereabouts aren\u2019t known to him.)<\/p>\n

Demers would join the ranks of anti-captivity activists years later. \u201cThere\u2019s a walrus back there. Her name is Smooshi\u2026 and I gotta get her out of there,\u201d he declares at one demonstration outside the 1,000-acre sea and land mammal menagerie… The protests at Marineland began to swell even before the groundbreaking 2013 documentary Blackfish, which depicted the troubling treatment of orcas living inside SeaWorld amusement parks in America…<\/p>\n

The Walrus and the Whistleblower incorporates horror stories not dissimilar to those told in Blackfish, though it\u2019s not the main focus of the character-driven feature. One former Marineland trainer even suggests in the film the Canadian park was worse than SeaWorld\u2014likening it to the \u201cWild Wild West\u201d when it came to animal protocols.<\/p>\n

In the documentary, he speaks about baby walruses delivered to Marineland under cover of darkness, unannounced to staff before their arrival. (Some of them, he says in the film, were captured in Russia by operators who storm beaches, induce panic and corral the calves, sometimes slaughtering their mothers.)<\/p>\n

According to Demers, employees were tasked with drugging anxious animals with valium and even slipping human antidepressants inside their food. He claims that when the walruses and other animals weren\u2019t performing, they were left to languish in their cages, made up of 6- to 7-foot platforms and a shallow pool. \u201cThere comes a point where you used to make sense of things,\u201d he says in the film. \u201cYou can\u2019t no more. The excuses are gone”.\u00a0 SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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