Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

THE SECRET TO LIVING IS GIVING
He knew he had to stop them. With a mere $800 in his pocket, Sam LaBudde drove across the Mexican
border, stood on the fishing docks of Ensenada, and waited for his opportunity. Toting a video camera to
get some “home movies” of his excursion, he posed as a naive American tourist and offered his services
as a deckhand or engineer to each captain who docked his boat in the harbor.
He was hired on the Maria Luisa as a temporary crew member, and as the Panamanian tuna boat pulled
away from the Mexican coast, LaBudde began to secretly film the activities of the crew. He knew that if
he were discovered his life would be in jeopardy.
Finally it happened: they were surrounded. A whole school of dolphins, known to many as “water
people,” began jumping and chattering near the Maria Luisa. Their friendly nature had drawn them
to the boat; little did they know that they were also being drawn to their death. The fishermen trailed
the dolphins because they knew that yellowfin tuna usually swim below the playful creatures. With
coldblooded calculation, they lay their nets in the path of the dolphins, not noticing or even caring what
happened to them.
Over the course of five hours, LaBudde’s video recorded the horror. One after another, dolphins
became entangled in the nets, unable to free themselves and come to the surface for the oxygen they
needed to stay alive.
At one point the captain bellowed, “How many in the net!?” As LaBudde swung to capture the slaughter
on video, he heard a crew member yell, “About fifty!” The captain ordered the crew to haul in their
catch. Numerous dolphins lay strangled and lifeless on the slippery deck as the crew separated them
from the tuna and discarded their sleek, gray bodies. Eventually, the corpses of these magnificent
animals were tossed overboard as casually as sacks of garbage.
LaBudde’s footage gave clear-cut evidence of what others had claimed for years: that hundreds of dolphins
were regularly being killed in a single day’s fishing expedition. In the previous 10 years alone, an estimated
six million dolphins had been killed. Edited down to an 11-minute format, LaBudde’s video stunned
viewers with the heart-wrenching reality of what we were doing to these intelligent and affectionate beings
with whom we share our planet. One by one, outraged consumers across the nation stopped buying tuna,
launching a boycott that only gained speed as media attention became more pointed.
Just four years after LaBudde first captured the tragedy on film, in 1991 the world’s largest tuna canner,
Starkist, announced that it would no longer pack tuna caught in purse seine nets. Chicken of the Sea and
Bumble Bee Foods followed suit, issuing similar statements just hours later. LaBudde’s day on the Maria
Luisa has served as a catalyst for major reform in the American tuna industry, saving countless dolphin
lives and undoubtedly helping to restore some balance to the marine ecosystem.
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