In Taiji, Japan, people are hired to kill thousands of dolphins in a place called "The Cove." They boast about the experience they have in dolphin killing. They laugh and smile at every new wounded or killed dolphin.
Dolphins in Japan have a migratory route that they have used for thousands of years. A line of ships waits for the dolphins to come by, putting long metal poles in the water and hitting it with hammers. The noise vibrates through the water, and makes a wall of sound, which the dolphins are sensative to. The dolphins are hearded to the cove using this method, then the fisherman seal off the cove with nets.
The next day, dolphin trainers are lined up on the shore of the cove. They wade into the water, and pick out specific dolphins that they can sell to different marine parks and swim with the dolphins programs all across the world. Taiji is the largest supplier of these dolphins. Each dolphin may sell for up to 150,000 dollars. The money is split between the Taiji Whale Museum, the town, and the fisherman.
Anyone in Taiji can watch all of this happening from the road. But what they cant see, is the slaughter of the unselected dolphins that are bought and sold for their meat. All of the slaughtering is done in a part of the cove that is restricted to public access. Anyone who tresspasses, could be arrested. Police in Japan can keep you in jail for, (I think), up to 20 years without a sentence.
The dolphin drives begin in September and go all the way through March. Just think, 6 months of daily slaughtering. For 6 moths, people will go out and harpoon trapped dolphins. Some say it's not even for the money. Just like hunting in the U.S., it's all about the sport, all about the thrill of the kill. An estimated 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan during these hunting seasons. Imagine a different race than the human being, taking 23,000 people from September until March, and slaughtering them without a second thought.
The International Whaling Commission is the only organization recognized by the United Nations that discusses the killing and hunting of whales and dolphins. The IWC banned commercial whaling in the year of 1986. In 1987, Japan trippled the kills of dolphins and porpoises and started a lethal research program on large whales. Japan does not consider dolphins and porpoises whales, even though they are. SIZE DOESNT MATTER, JAPAN! If saving cetacian species depends on the IWC, then there is no hope for whales and dolphins alike.
There are many cases all around the world in which dolphins have saved the lives of humans. In Greece, if you killed a dolphin, you were punished with death because they were such a protected and loved species. When you consider the fact that dolphins are very intelligent, and can interact positively with humans in the wild, it makes you wonder why Japan would have such a cold heart and thoughtlessly slaughter thousands of these gentle animals.
Dolphins are a lot like humans; they can sense situaions around them. They know when something is dangerous, or lethal. They have the knowledge to process information just as we do.
There is such a large media cover-up about the Taiji dolphin slaughtering, that many other parts of Japan do not know about it. People in Japan are oblivious to what Taiji is doing. When poeple in other parts of Japan were confronted about it, they found it unbelievable, and were shocked that people could do something like that.
The reason for the media cover-up: dolphin meat is very heavily laced with mercury, which is Earth's most toxic, non-radioactive element. Humans and dolphins eat on the same level of the food chain. Each time a mercury-poisoned animal is eaten by another, the toxicity of the mercury is increased ten-fold. (ex. plankton to tiny fish, tiny fish to bigger fish, bigger fish to even larger fish, and then larger fish to dolphin.) How toxic do you think the dolphin is now? The answer is very. The recommended level of mercury in seafood in Japan is 0.4 ppm. A tested piece of dolphin meat, purchased from a market in Taiji, had a level of 2000 ppm. Some people who buy their fish meat from markets do not know that they are eating toxic dolphin meat. The labels on the packages say it is whale meat, which is wrong. The reason they do not label the meat correctly is because the dolphin meat would sell for much less. People think that they are buying whale meat from the southern hemisphere, but in truth they are buying toxic dolphin meat from Taiji.
Many children near Taiji that are exposed to the dolphin meat and mercury have been poisoned. Some are deformed from birth because their mothers ate dolphin meat while pregnant. These children can not see, they can not hold their heads up, they can not walk or talk. Would you want your child do be disabled because of something they ate? Because of something that was incorrectly labeled and shouldnt have been on the market to begin with?
A sea of clear blue water, turns vibrant red as the blood of dolphins and porpoises seeps from their wounds. Please, help these animals by donating to an animal-related charity, like WWF, or going to oceanicpreservationsociety.com and find out what you can do to help.
Resources: The Cove, a documentary.
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