An Activists Journey

Since Martyn began his epic journey, 75% of the landscapes and soundscapes that he’s recorded have vanished, been silenced, or suffered significant degradation. Since the age of 8 years old, he has been an activist. Fighting to safeguard the natural world. This episode will take us from Vegas to Africa, into Montana then onto Taiji, to the Vatican and into Gadami.

www.thelisteningplanet.com

Transcript

Martyn
Host
00:01
This is Martin Stewart, with a life in sound from the Listening Planet. 

Amanda
Host
00:14
Today is episode three, and some of what we're going to talk about today is going to be upsetting. When I was younger, martin, I remember calling these your sad sounds, but what they are are the sounds of the activist work that you have done your entire life and career. We could argue, and I think what's important for people who are listening to this is lots of people talk about you often as the sound recordist, martin Stewart, and then as the activist, martin Stewart. Actually, they're both completely intertwined and there's no real separation between the two. And where I'd like to begin is where I often like to start, which is at the very beginning, and I know that you were about eight years old, in Bell Broughton, I believe, with your older brother, alan, and can you take us back to that point in your life, martin, when this journey for you began? 

Martyn
Host
01:14
As I said in the previous episodes, my brother was my kind of guide into nature and he did everything beautiful with nature. He articulated it really well and he told the story that I wanted to read basically and be involved in, and we used to walk for miles. He was always walking the woods and one particular time he asked me if I wanted to go with him down to Bell Broughton because he was involved in a fox hunting episode and he wanted to show me what it was about and I had no idea. He gave me a kind of brief explanation what to expect. But when we ended up down in Bell Broughton, which was just the other side of Franklin Beaches, basically there were a bunch of um, I'm going to say toffs, because that's how I kind of describe them all on horseback with red coats, on black kind of safety hats, with a pack of dogs chasing foxes and there were about maybe 20 other people trying to sabotage the hunt. So we got to the stage where the dogs had got the smell of the fox and they were after it and our job was to try and interact and stop the dogs from ripping the fox apart so they would sprinkle pepper on the trail. They would do all sorts of stuff. 

02:49
There was some naughty stuff as well, which I was too young to understand. But I remember getting whipped by one of these guys on horseback you know, get away, you little pleb, that kind of stuff and cut me right across the back of the neck and I just saw it all and it was just something I'd never, ever seen. I'd seen a horse collapse on the front of my street, a rag and bum and whipping a horse because it was exhausted and couldn't get up and pull his cart on it anymore. But this was something else. This was an assault on nature, this was an assault on a wild animal and it was embedded in me for years to come. Basically, that thing stood with me the imagery, the sounds, the screaming, the snarling of dogs. I only ever knew a dog could be a pet. I didn't know dogs were used to go and rip animals apart. The snarling of dogs. I only ever knew a dog could be a pet. 

03:45
I didn't know dogs were used to go and rip animals apart. So in my younger days, in my teens, I joined some organisations that were against hunting. I used to wear a shirt called for fox sake, stop hunting, and I was proud of wearing that thing, and I used to give money to the, the league against fox hunting, and so on, and I think years later in my life fox hunting was banned in the united kingdom, but there's still loopholes that allow these people to still go out and hunt foxes with dogs. So that was my introduction into animal activism at the age of eight years of age. 

Amanda
Host
04:32
And do you think that you I know we're going to come, we're going to touch on this a few times actually but do you think the word activism has changed over the last 60 years, since you were eight till now, in your mind in terms of what it means to you? 

Martyn
Host
04:50
I think it's lost its definition now. I think there's uh, there's a lot of people in present day that have turned a lot of people against the positivity, and I when I say that I mean there are animal activists that will walk into a supermarket and shame people for buying meat from the counter, and I never believe that that's the way forward. Education is the key with everything, not force, not preaching at people. Educate people in what they're doing. I mean, if you go back to when I was younger, I didn't become vegan or vegetarian until I was 39, 40, and in those 40 years, in those 20 years, my brother was, um, he was vegetarian, and he used to say to me many, many times I don't understand how you love animals so much and you eat them. And I used to just bury my head, you know I'd scoff it, you know, because I I didn't associate me with the animals that I was recording. I just didn't have that connection. 

06:00
I don't want to digress too much on that, but what they do today is they shame people as activists or glue themselves to concrete walls or signs and all that sort of stuff and sit in roads and block traffic. That gets you nowhere. It doesn't get anywhere. I don't call myself vegan simply because I think veganism has delivered a different definition to the word. It means a bunch of people that don't really understand the true meaning of being vegan. There's a different definition to it now, and there's a different bunch of activists that find that getting into the papers is the best way to do. That is with aggravation and upsetting people, and you're never going to deliver your message that way but it's interesting, isn't it, that your activism was all. 

Amanda
Host
06:54
When you talk about education, that's the role of you. Where you were, the sound recorders came in, so everything your activism was all about you bringing back proof and evidence and sound, and often filming alongside the sound to show people the atrocities that were actually taking place. That action could then follow, and, martin, you touched in episode one about the work that you did in south korea. Um, you also touched on the work in the pool, and we're going to delve into a few of these. I mean, there are so many, but we've purposely chosen just a few for today. And actually, where I'd really like to start is the work that you've been doing for a long time now with Safari Club International, and I think you've been doing that for probably about 10 years already. So can you talk to us a bit about what that work entails, what motivated you to get involved and where that's led you? 

Martyn
Host
07:49
safari club international uh, a hunting organization that goes out and obliterates everything that I love, and so I've always been against hunting. It's abusive, it's cruel, it's brutal. Many animals get injured, shot, not killed, and they crawl through their environment bleeding to death and suffering in some of the worst pain you could ever imagine. So I went to Las Vegas back in 2014 and went undercover, and by this time as well and we'll touch on MGM I was banned from MGM in Las Vegas for stuff that I did in the Mirage Hotel, trying to expose the so-called secret garden where they kept dolphins in without shade and 110 degrees heat. So we'll go back to that one. But I got banned from all MGM hotels on the Vegas Strip. 

08:59
So the Safari Club International were holding their conference at Mandalay Bay, which was also MGM. So I had to grow a beard and take my, because face recognition was very apparent in Vegas, they could spot you straight away as soon as you walked through the door and I wore a cap and I put on camouflage trousers and I went in there looking like a hunter and I was offered so much stuff you know as a hunter by outfitters that wanted you to go anywhere across the world to shoot animals and it was staggering. I mean, some of the examples I can give you still blow my mind today. There's so many outfitters there that sell these packages hunting packages and safaris. There's one hunting organization that asked me what did I shoot? You know what was my favorite animal to go and shoot? And, of course, I pretended that I shot water buffalo. And he said to me have you ever shot a giraffe? I said no, I've never shot a giraffe. He said oh my god, you guys shoot a giraffe. I watched them drop to the floor like a sack of shit. 

10:18
So he pulls me into his little cubicle thing, sits me down and starts pouring gin and tonics and we're talking about shooting the big five, which is normally the zebra, the wildebeest, the water buffalo, the lion, the rhino. You know all these beautiful animals. So he offered me 2014 prices to shoot a giraffe, to shoot a zebra, a male lion, a water buffalo, as many jackals as I wanted. And then he said to me and I'll give you two kafas. Now there's a lot of people who don't know what kafas are. Kafas is a derogatory term that South Africans give to black people and of course, I knew this because I'd worked in South Africa a lot of times and my question back to him was two kafas In a questioning manner, and he thought I was in a bargaining tone and he said, ok, well, let's make it four, but don't shoot them before you get your gear out. And this was $114,000, this package was to go and shoot all these animals and four black guys. 

Amanda
Host
11:44
And didn't you tell me if I'm wrong on this, martin, but didn't you capture all of this on tape? 

Martyn
Host
11:48
I was recording all this stuff. I recorded all of this and later on giving it to a friend of mine in London, eduardo, that are trying to get this hunting trophy hunting band passed through government at the moment and it's in the balance. But these recordings that I made in Las Vegas are used to fight against this industry. But what amazed me probably the most was the Saturday night there was a fundraising event where you sat down and had dinner and you had an auction and you bid on various bits and pieces. So I'd done a lot of work for a rehab place in Seattle called Paws and there was 500 people who'd turn up and sit at 40 tables and I'd do videos and shows, beautiful releases and raccoons and possums and birds and all that stuff and I put this beautiful video together. I did it like for four years and out of 500 people we raised $990,000, which was great. You know it was all that money was able to go back into the rehab place. What 500 people raised in the mandalay bay the safari club international was a hundred million dollars to go shooting on all these packages. One of the winners of the raffle paid 350 000 to go and shoot an endangered rhino in Namibia and the bidding was insane. So I saw polar bear, brown bear, zebra, gorilla, rhino all these animals chucked into packages and then sold off to all these people. And I'll say this thing here. This one's pretty relevant to what I'm saying. 

13:48
I sat with a guy in a sports jacket and a dickie bow I think they call them bow ties in America and we were having a beer together and he said to me where's your favorite place to hunt? And I said Africa and he said that, yeah, it's the best place to hunt. And I said africa and he said that, um, yeah, it's the. It's the best place in the world to go. 

14:09
I feel like my primal self. I have control over the animals and what I've done is I've been down there so many times now if I walk into the bush, I can take a gun with a couple of cartridges in there, and the animals give me respect. They know I'm there, so they stay away. So one day I was stalking a cat and I could see it in the tree and I started to get a hard on. So I went behind the tree and I jerked off and I came back and shot the cat and I'm standing there with my beer and trying to agree with him as exasperated. That name was put around and at the same time there was a guy who went and shot Cecil the lion, which was in the news. It's pretty disgusting. 

Amanda
Host
15:00
When you were doing, when you went on to cover and you were collecting these recordings and clearly putting yourself in an incredibly dangerous situation. We're going to get to far more dangerous situations. What did you hope that those recordings would achieve, and how controversial is it to expose those recordings? 

Martyn
Host
15:20
Well, your life's in danger, for sure, because there are so many millions of people who go out hunting around this planet and they have a mentality that I could never understand. But you see, I've been recording all kinds of animal sounds. Without the animals, there's nothing for me to go and do, and their environments are important for them to live in so that they can live in harmony and peace. You know, we get something that disrupts us. We can't live properly. It's the same as the environment, the same as the animals. So it's, it's a duty bound with me that you go and do something to help the voiceless, because they don't have a voice, to help the voiceless, because they don't have a voice, they don't have chance to vote for this, that and the other to keep them safe. And you went back to the activism point earlier on. I don't agree with current activists that that demonize you know meat eaters and so on, and hunters. 

16:19
It's not the way you should do that, but there has to be a message that's put across to show people in a better way that. Do you think this is right? Do you think that's wrong? And let people be to decide, not to force people into it. 

16:38
I went into vegetarianism and the words that my brother went through my head activated when I was sitting watching Michael Parkinson, who was a talk show host in the UK on television, talking to Linda and Paul McCartney all those years ago and said how did you become vegetarian? And Paul said you know, we were on the farm in the Mullican Tire in Scotland and Linda had made some leg of lamb and she brought it to the table and outside the window was all the spring lambs bouncing around and we looked out the window and oh wow, that's really cool, you know. And then he looks down at the table and looks out the window again and said what are we doing? And straight away I said we've got to gotta stop eating meat. So we made a pact that when the freezer was empty we would stop eating meat. We wouldn't buy them anymore. Next night we made pork chops and I said why have we got to wait to the fridge to be empty? Let's give everything to the neighbor and let's start now now and that was the power of planting seeds. 

17:48
That's that's to me, I think. If you can convert or influence one in a hundred people, it's a success rate it's hard with activism, though, martin. 

Amanda
Host
17:59
I mean. Even the fact that we're doing this episode is difficult, because a lot of people don't want to talk about this part of your work and find it very so. Much of what you do is inspiring. It makes people fall in love with the planet. The reason we've called these your sad sounds is because putting them out to the world is difficult. Right, people still want to be reminded of joy and possibility, and yet the stories that we're going to hear today, they're hard, they're, they're hard, and you have to. You have to have a different stomach to hear them and to want to hear them and to decide what action you're going to take about them. And I'm going to move on to another story, which is I'd love you to talk about the, the work you did with the wolf and coyote culling in salmon, idaho so that was a difficult one too. 

Martyn
Host
18:49
The well they're all difficult, the again I wear an earring and I you know I try not to look like a tree hogger or you know smoke a joint and go around, you know peacemount and all that stuff. But I knew of these various hunting organizations that wanted to go out and obliterate wolf packs and coyote packs across North America because their excuse is that wolf will kill elk and the reason they don't want them to kill the elk is because they want the hunter to shoot the elk. They want the don't want them to kill the elk is because they want the hunter to shoot the elk. They want the elk left for them to shoot, which is crazy stuff. So I was, um, I was a member of the coyote group in california, two lovely ladies who pushed many bits of legislation to try to curb hunting and the obliteration of coyotes and wolves. 

19:49
So I read about this hunting competition that was down in Salmon, idaho, and I got my plane, went to Montana and I hired a car and I drove down to Idaho through these beautiful mountains and I turned up as Eric Stewart and I had my badge and stuff and I pretended that I worked for the Shooting Times. That was a magazine in Scotland and I thought, well, if I use that, they can Google it and see the shooting times exist and who's coming over to do. There's a Brit coming over talking about hunting. And I said the winner of the competition would get a alarm call thing. So I donated this thing so I could get into the competition and they accepted me in and they were talking about the greenies. They called you know the goodies, the goody two-shoes greenies and agitators. And so they fully accepted me as Eric Stewart from the shooting times, except for two hunters that were there. They believed they knew who I was. 

21:07
And when I went to registration on the Friday night, the object was to turn up on Saturday morning, hunt coyotes and wolves until four o'clock Sunday afternoon and then the competition was over and then the weigh-in started. I turned up. I couldn't get my earring out, my ear. I turned up, I couldn't get my earring out, my ear. And this guy says that what kind of a hunter wears an earring? 

Amanda
Host
21:37
It's the earring that gave you away. 

Martyn
Host
21:39
It was giving me away. So I went back to the hotel room after I'd registered and I literally pulled it out my ear and had to get a bandage and bleed my ear away. But these two guys followed me. When I went to the coffee shop they came in. I was sitting at the table inside the coffee shop and they came, sat at the table, turned the chairs and started staring at me and then started to agitate what are you here for? We know what you're here for. You're trying to film this stuff that's going on. We know who you are. You know all that intimidation crap. 

22:17
And I went off with this hunting party and this one guy and his mate shot 14 coyote and it was freezing cold snow everywhere. So the dead bodies froze up as they chucked them into the back of the truck. And when four o'clock came on the sunday, they held the weighing competition and they had a forklift truck, raised up the forks and they had a weighing machine and they would hook it a hook into the body of the coyote and put it onto the weight to see how heavy it was, and the object was to get as many female coyotes as possible because they breed, so let's obliterate those. 

23:08
And if you got a wolf you won. Won, you know, because that that was the prize of everything. So one guy turned up at 10 past four with 10 coyotes in the back of his truck and they wouldn't admit him into the competition because he missed the deadline by 10 minutes and he said that his grandpa was too slow behind the wheel to get back and had already shot four, but they hadn't killed them and they had to let them go in the hills so they obviously bled to death. Then I filmed it all. I recorded it all and I gave this to various organizations that were trying to ban. I gave it to the coyote people trying to ban the hunting and that was turned over, I think the next year they didn't allow any permits to go hunting because what they do is they hunt on BLM lands, public lands, and the argument was you can't give out permits for public lands like that. If it's private land, the owner of the land can do what the hell they want, but not on these public lands. So we got that hunting banned for the following year, but on the way out to go back up to Montana, these two guys followed me and tried to take me off the road on the way back and they promised that they were going to sort me out. 

24:31
So the hotel I remember having torches shining against my bedroom window and all kinds of ways to try and intimidate me. I don't realize the full extent of stuff until I come home. That that's how stupid I am. I. If I let all that bother me, I'd never get anything done. Same as like Vegas. 

24:54
Same as the you know, you go into Safari Club International and there's always that suspect that they know you're not a hunter. I mean, I don't look like a hunter, I don't talk like a hunter. And when I go to a function where they're raising money and I'm not eating the meat that's on the table, you know, and I'm I'm eating the potatoes, then there's something's going on and you're having to think all the time in front. You know, I don't feel very well, I don't feel like eating tonight, you know, and just drink the beer do you? 

Amanda
Host
25:29
um, I I'm going to move back to a story that we talked about in the first episode, which is the dolphins in Japan, and I know this is a project that you worked on for about four years, I believe, but ended up making you banned from Japan for the last ten and I think your ban is just about to end and I know that you talked about it briefly, martin, in the first episode, but very briefly and I know that you had a very close relationship with Rico Barry, who was the trainer of Hit Flipper, if anyone doesn't know, but also with Louis, who was the director of the Cove, and I would like you to talk a bit about how do you get involved in that project it was such a significant part of your life and and also to explain some of the outcomes about what has happened since then japan was. 

Martyn
Host
26:23
Uh, I I was asked um by I think it was the BBC or somebody about recording things underwater or it was a surfing organisation that were doing a project, which they didn't tell me where it was. You know, they kept it all secret and I gave them some information about sound devices recorders and waterproof housing and certain hydrophones and there's a guy up in Vancouver, I think, or in Seattle, that makes these hydrophones and they use these hydrophones in the end. But what happened was, I think, 2009,. The movie the Cove was made and I put two and two together and that's what they wanted the recording stuff for. 

27:16
And I watched the film and I think my jaw dropped. It was about a guy, rick O'Barry, who you touched on, who trained flipper and there was actually probably five or six flippers because they kept dying and what happened with one of the dolphins? One of the dolphins committed suicide in Rico Barry's arms and she took a last breath and she just dropped down to the bottom of the ocean. And dolphins can commit suicide. They can give up. They're the only animal that can actually do that. So I believe, and I saw the film and I said to my wife that I want to go to Japan. I want to go to Taiji, and she thought I was crazy, but she supported me in everything I did. So I got on the plane and I flew to Osaka and I drove down to this place in Japan called Taiji and I stayed outside. 

Amanda
Host
28:18
Martha, did you get in touch with Riko before you went to Japan? 

Martyn
Host
28:20
Not Riko at that time. 

Amanda
Host
28:23
Yeah. 

Martyn
Host
28:24
I went as an independent. There was a group called Sea Shepherd that were down there and they were agitating the town. They were doing things that I didn't agree with, but they were westerners and I kind of found a little bit of solitude with them, somebody to speak. But I saw what was going on for myself. I was reliving this, this nightmare that you'd seen in the film. It was almost like being on the film set itself. 

28:53
And the first time I was there they corralled 60 dolphins into this place, this infamous place called the Cove. They take 12 or 13 boats out into international waters, they find the pods of dolphins and they use these long poles they call sanding rods and they circle the pod of dolphins and they bang the sanding rods with a hammer and they push towards where they want them to go. And then trainers come from the local dolphin resort and they pick the dolphins that looked like flipper, the ones that they think they can train, and then they took the rest of the dolphins into this cove and slaughtered them. Now you couldn't see how they slaughtered them. You knew how they did it through the cove. It was an open spearing stuff. But the more people that turned up to try and witness this, the more secretive the Japanese became, and so they started to use tarpaulin to hide behind and ropes and pull them like curtains. And a couple of guys and myself, the next time we went to Japan, we jumped the razor ribbon. So there was razor ribbon, it was a national park but you were blocked off from going in to see it and we took short straws and we went in and we filmed what was going on inside there while the fishermen were down in the town, and then from it cameras were put into the rocks and we filmed how the dolphins were being killed. They were pushing these spikes at the side of their blowholes, paralyzing them. They were saying that they killed them instant, instantaneously. But they were then plugging up their blowholes to stop the blood from pouring into the water to alarm everybody that was watching. They could see the sea was red, so they didn't want that, so they tried to disguise it by stopping the blood from flowing through the blowholes themselves. But what the film showed when we got the film back was that dolphins were got the film back was that dolphins were going through agony for 25 to 40 minutes, suffering, flipping over, paralyzed, going insane and then eventually dying drowning and my name got tied to a lot of that stuff and they claimed that I was the fifth time I went down there. 

31:29
I went to Osaka Airport and they knew who I was and they took me into an interview room and they told me that I wasn't allowed to go in. I was a member of Sea Shepherd, which I wasn't. Sea Shepherd had given everybody a bad name there. I told them that I was independent but my name was associated to a lot of films that were going around at the time and they locked me up for three, four days pending appeal. But what they did was they locked me in a cell that had the lock on the inside so I could lock the door and the cameras and the audio that they were listening to. All the switches were on the inside of my cell room so I turned off the cameras and I turned off the audio and I interviewed myself and did a live broadcast back to London back to. 

32:23
Facebook and I was telling them I had no food, I had water in the tap, there was no bedding, there was freezing cold in there and there was this big campaign for Release Martin Stewart going around Facebook and they expelled me from the country. But instead of putting me on the plane back to Seattle, they sent me the long way to Taiwan. So they did the biggest amount of inconvenience you could possibly get and then sent me that way. 

Amanda
Host
32:56
Explain that to me a bit more, Martin. So was your sound recording equipment in the cell with you. 

Martyn
Host
33:01
I had my own stuff with me. 

Amanda
Host
33:03
You used the cell recording equipment. 

Martyn
Host
33:05
No, I used my stuff, but I turned their stuff off Okay. 

33:09
So they'd left you with left you, they left me, and then they're banging the door, trying to get in, telling tell me to get in, and I I blocked out the window. I had a laptop case which I stuck against the window and taped it around so that they couldn't see. And they're banging and banging. Open the door, open the door and I did this interview and then I pulled everything down and I pretended I went to sleep so they did not take your recording equipment away from you the moment, because they they hadn't arrested me. 

33:40
I was allowed to still have all my stuff with me, so I just did a live and they had internet, which was crazy. It was just stupid. But that was visit 5, visit 4, visit 3 I'd filmed everything and I recorded everything while I was there and the Yakuza were present. They were always around the place. The Dolphin Resort everybody and the beautiful Martin explain who the Yakuza are. Resort everybody. 

Amanda
Host
34:11
And the beautiful Martin explain who the Yakuza are. 

Martyn
Host
34:14
The Yakuza are the Japanese mafia that controlled the dolphin slaughter, the dolphin trade. They would get $120,000 to $150,000 every trained dolphin, so it was in their interest to keep this dolphin market going. But a beautiful young Japanese woman who I befriended there, her father told her to tell me not to come back into Japan because the Yakuza put you on the list Because I'd filmed a guy taking a piss on the dock and that was something that you couldn't have done and I put some music to it and it was just out of frustration. Basically I shouldn't have done it, but I'm glad I did it in the end. It was just me being stupid at the time and it pissed them off. 

35:08
But this one particular time I was down at the dolphin resort and I was filming these captive dolphins and I'd recorded their sounds in the pens and a black sedan turned up with tinted windows and I had my monopod and my camera and my recording gear and there was this entryway to the road and I saw these two guys get out and they had chains with sticks on them. I thought I've had it here. So I thought I'm going to use my monopod and fight my way through these people and as I was walking down the alleyway, two people came out the resort and they got back into the car and put their middle finger up and when I told the police about it the next day they said we've told you. You know, yakuza, you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be doing that. This is dangerous, this is. There was a few nice coppers who were on your side and they didn't want to. They didn't want the trouble, but they had to protect the people that were around there and consequently, some years later, sea Shepherd, who were the dominant force there, got taken off. They dropped the campaign and they wouldn't go back down again. But Rick O'Barry's dolphin project still go down there and cover the cove itself and they'll tell you whether there's a blue or a red cove going on. 

36:29
Some of the sounds that I recorded down there Amanda was out wrenching to listen to an animal suffering and being slaughtered and recording those sounds. I sent those sounds to a marine biologist in Australia in Byron Bay, and she had been studying dolphin calls vocalizations and she'd never seen signature calls like that on a spectrogram. It was all utter confusion. I always said that I would go back. I always said that I had a promise. I had a commitment that I should go there and fight for these animals, but they took 10 years of that away from me by expelling me and who knows, you know, one day and how did you? 

Amanda
Host
37:20
There's so many questions I have to ask about this one period in your life. First, tell me how did the connection with Rico then happen, and also I'd love you to then talk about the relationship you then built with Louis, who was actually the director of the Cove, the original film that you'd seen that inspired this journey. 

Martyn
Host
37:39
Louis and a guy called Fisher Stevens directed the Cove. 

37:44
I worked with Fisher Stevens later on in the Faroe Islands. The same kind of thing where they corral pilot whales and they bring them into the fields and slaughter them again, and I worked on that for a week or so, a week or ten days. Louis contacted me to do a project at the Vatican. He'd bought out a film called Racing Extinction and the idea was to shine these beautiful images on the Vatican itself. He'd already done it in the film Racing Extinction and so the idea was to come up with all these endangered animals which I'd recorded, all these species, and I provided probably 90% of the sounds that were. These images were projected onto the Vatican itself and the Pope was there and the audience was something like a billion people and apparently the Pope had tears down his cheeks watching the show. I didn't get to go. I saw it live on the internet. 

Amanda
Host
38:56
What I find hard, martin, is that that project Racing Extinction was so beautiful and the whole aim was to bring a message of hope to the Vatican. When you're encountering these I mean truly the worst moments of humanity, I think at times how do you still find hope? And because activism is about hope, activism is trying to create a better existence in a better world, and yet so often it could be tainted with the wrong messages. But how do you keep hopeful or remain hopeful when you're in the middle of these projects? 

Martyn
Host
39:36
I think you've always got to have hope, you? Um, as you know, I have this cancer riddle in my body and if I don't maintain hope, I might as well just give in now. And the thing with the environment and the animal kingdom. If I didn't have the hope, I'd have thrown it in ages ago, if I'd have thought it was inevitable that everything's coming to an end and everything kind of shows you that's the way things are going. But if we don't have hope, we've got nothing. If I don't have hope, I've got nothing. 

Amanda
Host
40:15
I mean you often talk to me and to others about how you felt your entire life's work has always been about giving a voice to the voiceless and, in so doing, creating more ambassadors and advocates for the planet, and sometimes that's with sounds that are beautiful and relaxing and calming, and sometimes that's with the work you're doing here, where you're enabling a picture to be told and truth to be told, really to hopefully bring on more people on board. And you also talk so beautifully, martin, about all the incredible people who you've supported on this mission. 

40:53
A lot of your work has been supporting other organizations really out there in the field, and your sounds have become an incredibly important part of them, being able to prove the message and get more people on board to create more change right. 

Martyn
Host
41:05
So I guess that's also where the hope comes from well, man is the reason why we're in this much trouble but man is salvation. 

41:15
He can change this, this all the. You can't be bitter about it. You, you just can't. You, you can't have that negativity. Does it kill me inside you, god? Yeah, of course it does, it's. 

41:29
I think some of the things I've I've done, you know and there's hundreds and hundreds of things that I've I've done that have upset me if I hadn't had the camera so I could look through the lens instead of looking it. You know, live without a viewfinder. I don't know how many times I went on these places. I've watched bears being drilled for bile. I've seen bears shot in habitats. Eastern Washington, I went with a bunch of dogs that shot a bear and they took the gallbladder out of it and they're selling them off to China, you know, because of medicinal reasons, and the inside of me just destroys and I feel that when I get home to my sanctuary, that's the time when I collapse and I think is everything going to finish if hope is not there. Everybody throws a towel, everybody does, and that maintains my strength, I think, if you can live the starfish analogy, you know, there's a guy walking along the beach and there's a million starfish that are washed up and he's picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. 

42:45
And there's a million starfish that are washed up. And he's picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. And the guy walks along to him and says what are you doing? He said I'm trying to save these starfish. He said, but there's a million. What? What's your purpose? And he held one up and he said well, this one matters that joke, that jokes me every time. 

Amanda
Host
43:04
You told me that one it's the uh it's something I live by I'll tell you what I think is also important for me about the way that you describe a lot of these um stories to other people is you don't victimize martin and yes, you are angry at the fishermen in japan who are this but you don't victimise populations like some people do, you don't? 

Martyn
Host
43:28
I did. Your activism is I did, yeah, I did, I did, I absolutely did. I thought every Japanese was, you know, the worst you could ever wish to meet. I think hunting is on a kind of demise. I was talking to a fish and wildlife guy, a friend of mine, who I report to when I see things around here and we become good friends, and he told me that hunting permits were down in the last five years and that makes me hopeful. You know that maybe hunters are going changing their guns for binoculars and shooting with cameras instead of guns, changing their guns for binoculars and shooting with cameras instead of guns. You just have to have that belief that you can change just that wee bit. You know, if you just veer off the direction you're in and change it, go the scenic route which is more beautiful, then you know there's hope, there's always hope. 

Amanda
Host
44:27
I'm going to bring you back to finish off one part of the dolphin story and I'm going to take you to Las Vegas. And how did you end up there and what was the mission that you were on? 

Martyn
Host
44:37
Well, we go back to Rick O'Barry again. He's such a fabulous human being. His idea of trying to stop stuff in Taiji was based on science. Rick tried to use Taiji as an argument against eating dolphin meat because of the content of mercury in it and trying to educate the Japanese people not to eat it because it was bad for you. And there was a point in time that he managed to get the dolphin meat banned in school so kids weren't eating dolphin meat. And I believed everything he did. He's a great guy and we became friends. We still like each other's stuff on facebook and you know I send him a message of good health now and again. 

45:28
So he was going to Las Vegas to protest against the captivity of dolphins in the Mirage Hotel on the Strip and, if I go back a year or so beforehand I was working out in the Mojave Desert recording soundscapes and I was staying in the Mirage Hotel. I found out there was this thing called Secret Garden at the back. I thought, what's this about? And then the dolphins. There were like nine or ten dolphins in this pool in full blaring sunshine, 110 degrees, and they couldn't dive deep enough to get out of the sun, and every dolphin had this pox on their back and they were going insane and they were having trainers broadcasting lies to the public about how happy they were. They were having to give them toys, they were having to give them all kinds of stuff to stop them going insane. 

Amanda
Host
46:25
Martin, can you explain because you've told me this before why? What is it that's so damaging for dolphins when they're in such a small space and a lot of it's also sound, right. 

Martyn
Host
46:38
Well, if you think that a dolphin can swim 70 to 100 miles a day and then you stick them in a concrete pool, you know the size of equivalent of like us sitting in a bath in the house. All the time they echolocate, find fish and they find direction and they know which direction they're going by echolocation and I've recorded a lot of a lot of dolphin sounds and it's amazing. So what it's like for a dolphin to be in captivity is like standing in front of a mirror in a room surrounded by mirrors, watching your reflection all day long, and it's confusing. They have what they call stereotypical displays and they get very disturbed by it. And then captivity you're listening. They're very cute with their ears and their hearing and you've got filtration systems as noisy as hell. You stick a microphone in there. You hear this drone. It's like listening to that. It's like listening to a volcano going off all day long in their lives. 

47:39
And they're the only animal, the only zoo animal, that is fed for making tricks. They don't feed them at certain times of the day. They only get fed if they do a trick for people, so it's a kind of blackmail for them. They have to do it, otherwise they don't get fed. And I've seen it In the sea world. I've been in a covered sea world, I've gone to marine world down here in Miami. I've seen the state that these animals are in and they only last like seven, eight years in captivity. And they claim this place in the Mirage Hotel in Vegas. They tell you these idiots, tell the public we only feed our dolphins restaurant quality fish. What the hell does that mean? So we are humbled the fact that these dolphins are being fed restaurant quality fish rather than catching their own in the ocean on their magnificent journey they make. 

48:34
So I filmed these dolphins in the Mirage Hotel and I filmed the pox and I recorded their the trainer's sound bites of all these ridiculous statements, their trainer's soundbites of all these ridiculous statements. And I put the film together and there was a guy in a band His name was Matt Sorum and he posted it and I posted it. It had a million hits and I said we need to get these dolphins out of the Mirage Hotel. So all these activists were banging the switchboard of the Mirage you need to get these dolphins out, get them out of the way, and all that stuff. So there was an organisation that was Freedom Mirage Dolphins and I supplied the girl who ran the thing with a camera so she could go into the secret garden to take pictures and keep it updated and keep the momentum going. 

49:26
When I came home a week later, my phone rang and there was a blocked number and I picked the phone up. Hi, you come back to Vegas again. We're going to stick you in the desert. And I just laughed. I thought, who's this? And then I got threats that they were going to kill me. So I called the operator up and the operator did a trace and said there's no fixed abode. You can't, we can't work out where it came from, but it came out of Vegas. 

49:57
So like a fool or maybe just the way I am I went back to Vegas to see Rick at a protest and I checked into the Mirage Hotel and I put my stuff in the bedroom and within five minutes the door was banging away. I thought that's not room service at all, that's something different. And I looked through the spy hole and there were three guys there with wires sticking out their necks and in their ears, tattoos. I opened the door, they put their foot in the door and they said get your stuff together, you're out of here. I said what's it about? They said you know what it's about and they read the riot act at me. They were telling me I couldn't go to any MGM hotel on the strip. I would be done for trespassing if I was doing this. And I went to the elevators and they pushed the B button instead of the ground floor. 

50:54
And I thought, oh my God, I've seen these films where they take them into the basement and they go and pulverize you. And then the door opened on the ground floor and they marched me to the doorway and I went down the drive and the guy was following me behind and I went next door because I had to go and find a hotel to stay. And I went into Treasure Island and this guy's following me in and I thought, oh my God, is this an MGM? They're going to grab me. So I ended up in a RAS. But what I did is I circled around the fruit machines and went behind the guy who was following me. I went boo, and he said we're going to get you. So I saw Rick on the night and we talked about all kinds of stuff and guess what? Those dolphins are still in the Mirage. No, they're still there. 

51:48
So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the awareness is the thing that has to keep going. You still have to have this thing ticking around. You have to be able to be in people's faces about what's happening around the world. My sound does that, my activism does that, but it's not enough. But I hope it turns into something better. The thing is, with all this stuff, you're amazing, you are. I talk to you like I've been talking to you forever and I've seen a change in you, the way that you are. You're somebody who is very special and close and I love you dearly. But I've seen a change from what I've spoken to you about that. If you mirror that with other people and you get a chance to talk to and educate about the silly little things that you know is important to me, then there's the hope for change. 

Amanda
Host
52:54
I strongly believe that yeah, I believe it too, martin. I know one of the other organizations and people that you've been working with is jane goodall and, very specifically, the Gadame Festival, and I believe that you were there in 2014. Yes, can you explain to us what the festival is, how often it happens and, again, why you were there. 

Martyn
Host
53:18
Well, I met Jane through these three elephants in Seattle Woodland Zoo and we tried to get them relocated and sent down to a place called Paws in California to let them roam hundreds of acres, you know, rather than being stuck behind an electric fence. And I communicated back and forth with Jane, and she's a dear soul, she's one of the most beautiful people on the planet. So Gadamai I went down to Gadamai with a friend of mine from South Africa, beautiful soul, and we went on this trip from Kathmandu down to the Indian border, basically to a place called Gadamai, which is an area and a temple that worshipped the goddess Gadamai. And I found out that there was this sacrifice that happened every five years and there were people like Joanna Lumley that were leading the call to get it stopped, and Jane was one of those people too, and there were other activists that were involved. So I stayed at Jane Goodall's institution. Nikki and me we were probably one or two of the only white people that were down there and the strangest looks you've ever seen on the planet. We were looked at as aliens and they would hold Nikki's face and slap her face to see if she was real, and they'd come into my face and slap her. 

55:01
So we got the plane from Kathmandu and we flew down to Gadamai and we made the long journey to this horrific festival where people bring all kinds of animals to sacrifice for this goddess lambs sheep to cattle, and they have a service from the high priest from the dawn. 

55:32
So when the first light comes up, the sacrifice begins and they get a call from the goddess to commence slaughter. They take them into this paddock, all these confused animals standing close together. They can't move and then warriors that are blessed by the high priest take out their sharpened machetes and they decapitate all these animals in front of everyone and the public. Stand on the wall of the paddock all the way around cheering, and these animals stand on the wall of the paddock all the way around cheering, and these animals dropped to the floor. I recorded it, I filmed it and my film was used to try and stop the 2020 or 2019 sacrifice, and jane goodall did a talk on it and she thanked me for the content that that I've done. And then the priests had agreed to stop slaughtering animals and using fruit and vegetables to sacrifice instead, but but 2019 turned round and they ended up slaughtering more animals. 

Amanda
Host
56:49
So it's on go In 2014, I know that there were 200,000 animals that were slaughtered 200,000. And then the festival happens every five years, so the next time it's scheduled to happen is 2024. 

Martyn
Host
57:00
2024. If I have my health, I will go. I will have a I have a common duty to do there. If I make a promise about something, I feel like I always have to fulfill that and part of what I realize. 

Amanda
Host
57:18
When you talk about education, martin, it's not just education to people like us. 

57:22
It's also education to people who've been doing, who've been holding these festivals for generations and generations and and helping other people to also understand that there must be another way and you can imagine why, when something is baked into their religion and into their way of life and into everything that they know, what we think is an atrocity for them is just something that they've always known, and an education feels like such an incredibly important part of that for both sides, both for people who have the power to change it, but also the people who are actually enabling it well, there's a manipulation going on. 

Martyn
Host
58:02
The people who bring their animals it's probably all they've got in the world, you know. They're on poverty stricken and they they bring doves as a sacrifice, thinking that they're going to get a better life, and of course that never happens. And when you connect with those kind of people and they understand that I'm not getting what I think I've been promised I was going to get, I've seen. I've seen a change there's, there's been a change in gadamai and I think if you do it right, we go back to the activists that would turn up and throw paint everywhere and scream. And you know, for a meat eater to be told you you can't eat meat makes them want to eat the meat. We have this stubbornness inside us and if you don't do the education right, you'll never get anywhere. 

58:54
And I saw a change in people. There's a beautiful guy called John who helped me and Nikki when we were down there and I think without his help we'd have been slaughtered for sure, we'd have been knifed, because there was a lot of aggression towards us, because these people out in the country had never seen a white guy and there was this fear, you know. And I get asked why would you put yourself in so much danger for there? Because it's worth it. Because if it means in 2024 there's 50 000 animals being killed, that's 150 000 less than 2014. 

Amanda
Host
59:35
I want to talk about um and maybe we also close it here as well, martin that I still to this day think one of your greatest forms of activism is actually the work that you're continuing to do now. So there's the really dark stories that many people are just not going to want to or be able to listen to, but I've seen so many people I include my son in this that when he came to Florida and you taught him how to do sound recording, and I remember him coming back from the marshland that one day and by the beach, and him saying to me mum, I'll never, I'll never hear the same way again, like the way he thought about the natural world. After just a few hours was completely transformed. And I think that every single thing that you do is a form of activism, whether it's the very simplest one, which is getting people to listen differently and more intently and more acutely. 

01:00:33
You talk all the time about how the natural world is speaking to us all the time that we just have ceased to listen to it all the way through to the work you've done in South Korea or Namibia, or the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, I feel as though everything it's almost where we started, that the activism and the sound recording for you are one and the same. It's almost just varying scales of activism. It's the I want to inspire everybody, and then there's the other, which is I need to go and intervene and I need to go and impact the change directly. And I'd love you to maybe think about one thing. If there's one thing that you'd still like to achieve on this journey of yours to give that voice to the voiceless, to use the skill and gift that you've had in your life to try and enable change and enact change what would it be? 

Martyn
Host
01:01:29
to have the gift of life, to be able to keep going. If I can still breathe and function, I would use my energy to carry on the things I've been doing. There's a ritual I've done for years on end and it's simple I brush, brush my teeth, I throw water in my face before I go to bed and I look in the mirror and I say is there anything else you could do today which would make it better? And the answer is always yes. You've just experienced another journey on the Listening Planet podcast. Dive deeper into the world of natural sounds by connecting with us online. Visit our website or follow us on social media. Let the symphony of nature surround you wherever you go. Happy listening.