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Agni, the White Light.
On July 13 we arrived to Kerch to help a sick dolphin, of which we were informed by a witness. The local area is a sand spit, separated from land by a creek, passing into a long canal with arm, shooting out to the shore. That’s where the dolphin got stuck.
A young common dolphin, female, later named Agni, was limply logging at the surface and didn’t let us get any closer. After we spent some time monitoring her condition and consulting with a medical adviser, we finally decided to take action.
In cooperation with assistants from GIMS (State Inspectorate for Small Vessels) we carefully captured Agni to carry out the necessary medical procedures – injections of antibiotics and stimulants, that were supposed to ease her condition.
Agni had an insanely gorgeous face and a meaningful look in her eyes. In her endlessly sorrowful eyes. She was a little annoyed with us and made a few click-sounds, but she stoically endured the painful injections. After that, we let her free and she went aside. We made it through the night side by side. Agni was laying at the surface near the shore, while or teammates succeeded one another, taking turns and falling asleep right on the ground by the campfire. Some of us could get no sleep at all. We listened to the quiet breathing sounds of the dolphin, that spread around in complete silence, although the silence didn’t last forever – from time to time the peace was ruined by the deafening noise coming from the construction site of Kerch bridge. Frightful, heavy, disturbing and rhythmic sounds that seemed too loud despite the fact, that we were dozens of kilometers away from the construction. It is dread to think of what was happening underwater, even when above the surface the feeling of stress and discomfort surrounded us. Agni and her doomed look completed that feeling as nothing else could.
July 14. As it seemed, Agni felt a bit better by the morning: she was more active and ate the fish we offered her. At the appropriate moment, we got into the water and she didn’t resist as it happened before. Despite she was still nervous and resent, she let us carry her to a shallow area, where we did all necessary procedures. After that we offered Agni some fresh mackerel (which local fishermen reluctantly gave us) and she ate it.
We wanted to believe that her condition would improve due to injections, but the dolphin was still exhausted; at some point Agni got too close to the bridge that divides the canal into two parts, and the powerful stream started pulling the dolphin further into the canal. We had to step back, because the stream was too strong and we couldn’t do anything. We were by Agni’s side, watching every move; held her in our arms in dirty red water; after a few disgruntled twitches of her pectoral fins we also learned about her dislike of tickling. Once we carried her closer to the shore to give her water and prevent dehydration.
Soon the MES (Ministry of Emergency Situations) joined us to get the dolphin back to the beginning of the canal, where Agni felt more comfortable, as the stream there was slower and she could drift in the water without wasting much energy. However, not much time had elapsed before Agni once again swam under the bridge and was dragged by the stream down the canal. No services agreed to help once again, because as they said, it was pointless. While we had a fight with no end with government agencies to get the permission to remove Agni from natural habitat in order to provide a better medical treatment and examination, the dolphin got to the very end of the canal, right in dense thickets of reeds. It had got too dark before we could try to get her out, so we stayed nearby for a night to continue as soon as the sun rises.
July 15. If despair was a living creature, it would be a dolphin.
Agni was drifting in the furthest point of the canal – the bog – with her nose pointed to the impassable wall of reeds.
In the darkness, we were holding her, knee-deep in the quagmire, scratching our legs on sharp reeds, trying to get the animal to the deeper area as careful as possible. Agni made quiet noises, while looking at one face, then another and another. There’s no words that can describe what did her eyes express.
It was necessary to take dolphin’s blood for analysis to understand what was the issue with Agni’s health; whether it was Merbillirus – a plague of cetaceans, of which we have often been talking. It is a terrible disease, which the Black Sea dolphins (in particular, porpoises and common dolphin) are very vulnerable to, and as a result, exhausted animals get close to the shore to spend their last moments of life. The virus has occurred through arbitrary mutations, as a result of human agricultural activities. Livestock wastes, effluents from industrial farms and chemical water pollution all lead to an outbreak of disease that persisted in sleep mode. Weak animals became the main target of this virus.
Ulcers were inside Agni’s mouth. In case with common dolphins, measles is often accompanied by ulcers in the mouth and on the inner side of the cheeks. Time was running out.
We needed to transfer her to a safer place, hidden place from the eyes, where it would be possible to engage in her medical treatment fully. But neither in the canal, nor in the swamp, nor on the beach it was possible to be done. From the very first day, it was necessary to immediately get the dolphin out of natural habitat and transfer to a better place for treatment, and we continued to fight in this direction.
Meanwhile, the regulatory authorities continued to lead an exciting game of shifting responsibility to each other, scoring as if it was a gambling match. The permission to catch Agni was not given, as well as any explanation of what kind of chaos is happening between the instances. No one remembered about the dolphin at the moment, and even if they did, they treated it scornfully, day by day. Who needs problems, when the life of a dolphin is at stake, dozens of which are washing ashore dead every day?
We sincerely do not understand what in this world can be more important than life? A person lives in a web of his own invented frames, obligations, regulations and papers. What all this have to do with the creature, which struggled trying to survive?
"Do you get paid for what you do?" - we have repeatedly heard this question in our address. - "If no, then why are you doing this?" You would go home and sleep in the warmth and coziness, not on the ground”.
Noisy exhalation, quiet clicking sounds, she looks at us from the bottom up. She waved her pectoral fin, laid down on the team member’s knee as we were sitting with her in the water.
She did not look down, but her heart was pounding.
From the very first minute of this story, we were sure that they would let us take her and get busy with her rehabilitation. But now, when we were convinced of the opposite, it became clear that there were very few chances, and there were no other options but to drag her from the bog, that we were in, to the sea and monitor her condition there.
The stream in the canal got stronger, while the sea was quiet and calm.
We carefully moved her through the sand spit to the beach. Caught in a more or less pure sea water compared to the canal, Agni got a little excited and made quite strong attempts to move on her own, despite the fact that she was absolutely exhausted before. We approached her in the water, did the injections and procedures again, and then decided to not hold her back any longer, as she began to waste her last strength. We let her go. At first she stayed close by, but after a while people at the beach frightened her with their eager desire to make a selfie with a dying animal at any cost. Then she sped up and quickly moved 300 meters away from the shore.
The rest of the day we spent at the sand spit, ready to take action at any moment, but soon the ripples appeared on the surface of the water, and we lost sight of Agni. For the night we returned home (because pets must be fed too), absolutely exhausted, depressed and morally destroyed, and we could only pray that she was all right, that she would get better,
We were ready to rush back at any second. An observer remained on the spot, who informed us about what was happening on the shore, but he never saw the dolphin.
July 16. Two members of the team returned to the site and spent the whole day searching for Agni along the spit and the nearby bays, but there were no traces of her. As usually, we spent the night right on the beach under the stars.
July 17. At dawn, the search continued. By noon, the storm had risen in the sea, which suppressed us even more and almost killed the last hope of seeing Agni. But in the afternoon we received a call and were told that she had been seen in the bay, in the water area of an abandoned iron ore manufactory. This place stuck in our minds since the days that we spent together with Agni in the canal, as this landscape could be seen from there - destroyed towers, rusty cranes, peaks piercing the sky. The unabated rhythmic sounds of the apocalypse were coming from the side of the bridge construction. The whole horizon line is an endless fleet of seine-boats and dry cargo ships. And wherever you look near the shore - nets, nets, nets ...
Where could a dolphin go?
The human race doesn’t allow others not only to live, but to die in peace as well. But we, for sure, believed in Agni, and believed that she would pull through.
We rushed on the call to the place where she was seen for the last time. As if in some movie they saw her fin in the gap between the garages and ran to the water: she swam 30 meters away from the shore,
people tried to catch up with her. She swam away from them so abruptly, that the hope rose - maybe everything was not in vain, and it she got better? Strong waves swept over to the shore, but she vigorously swam away from the people, without even giving them a chance to come closer to herself. One of the team members tried to swim to her, but she got out of sight.
The storm once again blocked us from entering into the water. Our own boat was not with us - all this time it was on the replacement, as the previous one had serious flaws. We were absolutely shackled. The services, which had boats, refused to go out to search for a dolphin. Once again we had to wait and hope for a miracle.
July 18. Agni died.
We got a call about a dead common dolphin’s body, washed ashore in a place not far away from the point of our last meeting. Already knowing everything in advance, already seeing her face right in front of our eyes, we immediately arrived at the site.
All standard manipulations with the body - morphometric measurements and sampling for further studies – were made.
It can’t be put into words. Such dear and fathomless, but already empty eyes. Our beloved, fragile creature, whose heart has just been beating under our palms, now looks like a fake, toy model. A creature, whose life ended after all, despite all the toil.
It's still hard to believe that this is not a dream.
Agni explained and clearly showed us what she really needed, she showed us the right way - the most urgent of all that needs to be done as soon as possible. Thank her for that. We will try to continue to do everything possible for other poor souls.
We knew that our work, "The Sea of Voices”, would very soon reveal a sad and terrible reality, from which it is impossible to divert attention. This reality is somehow imprinted in the mind with an indelible freeze-frame, you can’t escape from it even in a dream. It became obvious that until we had a place, where the victims of anthropogenic destruction can be recovered, gain strength, get a full-fledged complex help from doctors and biologists, stories like this will be repeated. When the media reports that "the services rescued a sick dolphin: they took him out of the beach and released back into the open sea”, this is not a rescue. This is an execution.
Every life is worth fighting for.
No one deserves to be left to die.
No one deserves the label of a living dead, who doesn’t have any single chance to live just because no one even wants to try to fight for it. The label given a priori.
We’re starting our serious work on creating the rescue and rehabilitation center for marine animals. We invite everyone, who can help us, to participate in this project.
All the money i get from my art is used to develop these activities.
Our little girl, swim to the world without pain, and forgive us for not helping you in time.
From the first and until the last moment we believed, that she will survive. For 5 days she fought for a chance to live. We were with her and tried to do as much as we could…
We will never forget you. Thank you for everything you taught us. We wish you could be here with us. 18.07.17¬
we are - serenesea.org
On July 13 we arrived to Kerch to help a sick dolphin, of which we were informed by a witness. The local area is a sand spit, separated from land by a creek, passing into a long canal with arm, shooting out to the shore. That’s where the dolphin got stuck.
A young common dolphin, female, later named Agni, was limply logging at the surface and didn’t let us get any closer. After we spent some time monitoring her condition and consulting with a medical adviser, we finally decided to take action.
In cooperation with assistants from GIMS (State Inspectorate for Small Vessels) we carefully captured Agni to carry out the necessary medical procedures – injections of antibiotics and stimulants, that were supposed to ease her condition.
Agni had an insanely gorgeous face and a meaningful look in her eyes. In her endlessly sorrowful eyes. She was a little annoyed with us and made a few click-sounds, but she stoically endured the painful injections. After that, we let her free and she went aside. We made it through the night side by side. Agni was laying at the surface near the shore, while or teammates succeeded one another, taking turns and falling asleep right on the ground by the campfire. Some of us could get no sleep at all. We listened to the quiet breathing sounds of the dolphin, that spread around in complete silence, although the silence didn’t last forever – from time to time the peace was ruined by the deafening noise coming from the construction site of Kerch bridge. Frightful, heavy, disturbing and rhythmic sounds that seemed too loud despite the fact, that we were dozens of kilometers away from the construction. It is dread to think of what was happening underwater, even when above the surface the feeling of stress and discomfort surrounded us. Agni and her doomed look completed that feeling as nothing else could.
July 14. As it seemed, Agni felt a bit better by the morning: she was more active and ate the fish we offered her. At the appropriate moment, we got into the water and she didn’t resist as it happened before. Despite she was still nervous and resent, she let us carry her to a shallow area, where we did all necessary procedures. After that we offered Agni some fresh mackerel (which local fishermen reluctantly gave us) and she ate it.
We wanted to believe that her condition would improve due to injections, but the dolphin was still exhausted; at some point Agni got too close to the bridge that divides the canal into two parts, and the powerful stream started pulling the dolphin further into the canal. We had to step back, because the stream was too strong and we couldn’t do anything. We were by Agni’s side, watching every move; held her in our arms in dirty red water; after a few disgruntled twitches of her pectoral fins we also learned about her dislike of tickling. Once we carried her closer to the shore to give her water and prevent dehydration.
Soon the MES (Ministry of Emergency Situations) joined us to get the dolphin back to the beginning of the canal, where Agni felt more comfortable, as the stream there was slower and she could drift in the water without wasting much energy. However, not much time had elapsed before Agni once again swam under the bridge and was dragged by the stream down the canal. No services agreed to help once again, because as they said, it was pointless. While we had a fight with no end with government agencies to get the permission to remove Agni from natural habitat in order to provide a better medical treatment and examination, the dolphin got to the very end of the canal, right in dense thickets of reeds. It had got too dark before we could try to get her out, so we stayed nearby for a night to continue as soon as the sun rises.
July 15. If despair was a living creature, it would be a dolphin.
Agni was drifting in the furthest point of the canal – the bog – with her nose pointed to the impassable wall of reeds.
In the darkness, we were holding her, knee-deep in the quagmire, scratching our legs on sharp reeds, trying to get the animal to the deeper area as careful as possible. Agni made quiet noises, while looking at one face, then another and another. There’s no words that can describe what did her eyes express.
It was necessary to take dolphin’s blood for analysis to understand what was the issue with Agni’s health; whether it was Merbillirus – a plague of cetaceans, of which we have often been talking. It is a terrible disease, which the Black Sea dolphins (in particular, porpoises and common dolphin) are very vulnerable to, and as a result, exhausted animals get close to the shore to spend their last moments of life. The virus has occurred through arbitrary mutations, as a result of human agricultural activities. Livestock wastes, effluents from industrial farms and chemical water pollution all lead to an outbreak of disease that persisted in sleep mode. Weak animals became the main target of this virus.
Ulcers were inside Agni’s mouth. In case with common dolphins, measles is often accompanied by ulcers in the mouth and on the inner side of the cheeks. Time was running out.
We needed to transfer her to a safer place, hidden place from the eyes, where it would be possible to engage in her medical treatment fully. But neither in the canal, nor in the swamp, nor on the beach it was possible to be done. From the very first day, it was necessary to immediately get the dolphin out of natural habitat and transfer to a better place for treatment, and we continued to fight in this direction.
Meanwhile, the regulatory authorities continued to lead an exciting game of shifting responsibility to each other, scoring as if it was a gambling match. The permission to catch Agni was not given, as well as any explanation of what kind of chaos is happening between the instances. No one remembered about the dolphin at the moment, and even if they did, they treated it scornfully, day by day. Who needs problems, when the life of a dolphin is at stake, dozens of which are washing ashore dead every day?
We sincerely do not understand what in this world can be more important than life? A person lives in a web of his own invented frames, obligations, regulations and papers. What all this have to do with the creature, which struggled trying to survive?
"Do you get paid for what you do?" - we have repeatedly heard this question in our address. - "If no, then why are you doing this?" You would go home and sleep in the warmth and coziness, not on the ground”.
Noisy exhalation, quiet clicking sounds, she looks at us from the bottom up. She waved her pectoral fin, laid down on the team member’s knee as we were sitting with her in the water.
She did not look down, but her heart was pounding.
From the very first minute of this story, we were sure that they would let us take her and get busy with her rehabilitation. But now, when we were convinced of the opposite, it became clear that there were very few chances, and there were no other options but to drag her from the bog, that we were in, to the sea and monitor her condition there.
The stream in the canal got stronger, while the sea was quiet and calm.
We carefully moved her through the sand spit to the beach. Caught in a more or less pure sea water compared to the canal, Agni got a little excited and made quite strong attempts to move on her own, despite the fact that she was absolutely exhausted before. We approached her in the water, did the injections and procedures again, and then decided to not hold her back any longer, as she began to waste her last strength. We let her go. At first she stayed close by, but after a while people at the beach frightened her with their eager desire to make a selfie with a dying animal at any cost. Then she sped up and quickly moved 300 meters away from the shore.
The rest of the day we spent at the sand spit, ready to take action at any moment, but soon the ripples appeared on the surface of the water, and we lost sight of Agni. For the night we returned home (because pets must be fed too), absolutely exhausted, depressed and morally destroyed, and we could only pray that she was all right, that she would get better,
We were ready to rush back at any second. An observer remained on the spot, who informed us about what was happening on the shore, but he never saw the dolphin.
July 16. Two members of the team returned to the site and spent the whole day searching for Agni along the spit and the nearby bays, but there were no traces of her. As usually, we spent the night right on the beach under the stars.
July 17. At dawn, the search continued. By noon, the storm had risen in the sea, which suppressed us even more and almost killed the last hope of seeing Agni. But in the afternoon we received a call and were told that she had been seen in the bay, in the water area of an abandoned iron ore manufactory. This place stuck in our minds since the days that we spent together with Agni in the canal, as this landscape could be seen from there - destroyed towers, rusty cranes, peaks piercing the sky. The unabated rhythmic sounds of the apocalypse were coming from the side of the bridge construction. The whole horizon line is an endless fleet of seine-boats and dry cargo ships. And wherever you look near the shore - nets, nets, nets ...
Where could a dolphin go?
The human race doesn’t allow others not only to live, but to die in peace as well. But we, for sure, believed in Agni, and believed that she would pull through.
We rushed on the call to the place where she was seen for the last time. As if in some movie they saw her fin in the gap between the garages and ran to the water: she swam 30 meters away from the shore,
people tried to catch up with her. She swam away from them so abruptly, that the hope rose - maybe everything was not in vain, and it she got better? Strong waves swept over to the shore, but she vigorously swam away from the people, without even giving them a chance to come closer to herself. One of the team members tried to swim to her, but she got out of sight.
The storm once again blocked us from entering into the water. Our own boat was not with us - all this time it was on the replacement, as the previous one had serious flaws. We were absolutely shackled. The services, which had boats, refused to go out to search for a dolphin. Once again we had to wait and hope for a miracle.
July 18. Agni died.
We got a call about a dead common dolphin’s body, washed ashore in a place not far away from the point of our last meeting. Already knowing everything in advance, already seeing her face right in front of our eyes, we immediately arrived at the site.
All standard manipulations with the body - morphometric measurements and sampling for further studies – were made.
It can’t be put into words. Such dear and fathomless, but already empty eyes. Our beloved, fragile creature, whose heart has just been beating under our palms, now looks like a fake, toy model. A creature, whose life ended after all, despite all the toil.
It's still hard to believe that this is not a dream.
Agni explained and clearly showed us what she really needed, she showed us the right way - the most urgent of all that needs to be done as soon as possible. Thank her for that. We will try to continue to do everything possible for other poor souls.
We knew that our work, "The Sea of Voices”, would very soon reveal a sad and terrible reality, from which it is impossible to divert attention. This reality is somehow imprinted in the mind with an indelible freeze-frame, you can’t escape from it even in a dream. It became obvious that until we had a place, where the victims of anthropogenic destruction can be recovered, gain strength, get a full-fledged complex help from doctors and biologists, stories like this will be repeated. When the media reports that "the services rescued a sick dolphin: they took him out of the beach and released back into the open sea”, this is not a rescue. This is an execution.
Every life is worth fighting for.
No one deserves to be left to die.
No one deserves the label of a living dead, who doesn’t have any single chance to live just because no one even wants to try to fight for it. The label given a priori.
We’re starting our serious work on creating the rescue and rehabilitation center for marine animals. We invite everyone, who can help us, to participate in this project.
All the money i get from my art is used to develop these activities.
Our little girl, swim to the world without pain, and forgive us for not helping you in time.
From the first and until the last moment we believed, that she will survive. For 5 days she fought for a chance to live. We were with her and tried to do as much as we could…
We will never forget you. Thank you for everything you taught us. We wish you could be here with us. 18.07.17¬
we are - serenesea.org
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 661px
File Size 149.8 kB
This truly breaks my heart. I can't read even a sentence without tears welling up in my eyes. Now, I am not an advocate for captivity by any means, but a large part of me is forced to imagine what I might have been able to do for this sweet dolphin if she wasn't left out in the open world. The anti-captivity argument starts to break apart when you see what a disgusting mess we've made of the natural world. Oh yes, animals should be free, but free into a horrific world of pollution and nets because we as humans just absolutely refuse to reasonably regulate ourselves? I can't see how that's somehow any better.
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