Sponsors

Nature Network OrcaLive Project is produced and managed with support from the following organizations:
[Technical]
J-Stream Inc.
http://www.stream.co.jp/english/index.html
[Technical]
Dreambird Inc.
[Research]
OSS (Orcalab Support Society)


OrcaLive operated with the sponsorship of NTT DATA from the years 2000 to 2005. Allow us to take the opportunity here to express our deepest gratitude for six key years of support.








"Apollo, this is Houston. How are things?"

TV broadcasts from the Apollo spacecraft when I was a grade school student.
They were sending us reality beyond our reach that transcended time and space--the future.
That was about the same time that Dr. Spong left the aquarium for Hanson Island to embark on research of orca in the wild.

Thirty years have passed, and we have reached that "future."
With the aid of the communications technology that supported the Apollo missions, we watch orca in the wild and hear their calls. This too is reality beyond our reach. The extent too which I would be moved by gazing at a screen not much larger than a postage stamp was unimaginable.
A true picture of orca in the wild--Dr. Spong's thirty-year pursuit and something still not fully obtainable, and we are experiencing part of it simultaneously.
I log on to the computer at Cracroft Island, where the observation cameras are located. I hit the command key and about a second later type appears on my screen... a moment when I feel the distance to the future.

I am truly grateful to have encountered Dr. Spong and to have assisted in this great achievement.

Seiji Inagaki

Dreambird Inc

http://dreambird.co.jp (Japanese only)









"From Hanson Island on a stormy night, Paul."

A casual remark in an e-mail from Dr. Spong one winter day years ago made a strong impression. I suddenly felt something very alive in the connection between the computer terminal at Johnstone Strait and mine. I had not yet been to Johnstone Strait at the time; the orcas and Dr. Spong existed as inhabitants of videos and books. Then all of a sudden I felt the reality of their existence in the same dimension as mine.
If there were media that made one aware that you share the same time as Johnstone Strait, for instance, even though you are not physically there, you would perceive--not theoretically, but physically--the connection between the far away world and the world around you. I comprehended this through my body. The sense of continuity I intuitively felt then--between the world the orcas live in and the world I live in--was in essence the same thing I felt later upon visiting Johnstone Strait in the flesh.

Yoshihiko Nagatsuka
OSS (Orcalab Support Society)

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/oss/web/ (Japanese only)