dolphin slaughtering

[tropicana]

Sadly, this is just one of the many helpless animals that humans kill , to make money.
In Canada, its the innocent seal pups in the Maritimes.
In Japan, its the docile dolphins.
Heart-wrenching to view the pics, so i didn't provide any here, but this will make you sad.

In Japan, fishermen round up and slaughter hundreds and even thousands of dolphins and other small whales each year.

In the small fishing village of Taiji, entire schools of dolphins are driven into a hidden cove after a prolonged chase. Once trapped inside the cove, the fishermen kill the dolphins, slashing their throats with knives or stabbing them with spears. The water turns red with their blood, and the air fills with their screams.


This brutal massacre — the largest scale dolphin kill in the world — goes on for six months of every year. Even more scandalous, members of the international dolphin display industry take advantage of the dolphin slaughter to obtain some few, show-quality dolphins for use in captive dolphin shows and dolphin swim programs.

It is commonly assumed that Japanese fishermen hunt dolphins to supply a small minority of Japanese people with dolphin meat. But unlike the expensive whale meat, dolphin meat is not considered a delicacy in Japan, and the real reason the Japanese government issues permits to kill dolphins by the thousands every year has nothing to do with food culture. It has to do with pest control. As shocking as it sounds, some Japanese government officials view dolphins as pests to be eradicated in huge numbers. During a meeting at Taiji City Hall, the fishermen of Taiji admitted this to us. "We don’t kill the dolphins primarily for their meat. We kill them as a form of pest control," they told us. In other words, killing the competition is their way of preserving the ocean’s fish for themselves.

Most likely in order to push the food culture issue even further, the Japanese government recently introduced pilot whale meat to children's school lunch programs, despite the fact that the meat is tainted with mercury and not fit for human consumption. The Japanese government and the dolphin hunters do not warn the Japanese people of this danger, although the dolphin meat should be labeled as toxic. Much of the tainted dolphin meat ends up as counterfeit whale meat in Tokyo and other large cities.

Science has established that dolphins are highly intelligent and complex marine mammals. How can "pest control" on dolphins continue with so little opposition from the Japanese people and the outside world? The answer is secrecy. Since we first traveled to Japan in 2003 to document the dolphin hunt and expose it to the world, the fishermen have become increasingly paranoid about being photographed and filmed. Today, they hide the dolphin slaughter behind barbed wire, ropes and tarpaulin. Killing the dolphins before daylight breaks, they station guards at the mouth of the killing cove to ensure that no one witnesses the blood bath.

The fishermen say they kill the dolphins "quickly and humanely." That's an outright lie. The methods used to kill the dolphins are so savage, it's hard to believe it unless you witness it for yourself. And once you've seen it, the images and sounds of the screaming dolphins never go away. The fishermen know that the world will be outraged when the truth gets out. And so, guided by their government, they hide behind phrases such as "food culture" and "tradition." They even once told us they are proud of what they do. If they had told us they were having fun while killing dolphins, we would have believed them. We have heard them laugh out loud as they were throwing spears at the dolphins and hauling them ashore with ropes, or dragging still live dolphins by their tail flukes to be slaughtered. If they were really proud of this, then why do they go to such extreme measures hiding it? Why won’t they even let their own people know about the hunt? We asked them this once, and the answer was: "It is none of their business." But it is their business. The Japanese people have every right to know about the dolphin slaughter. And they have a right to know about the mercury-poisoned dolphin meat that is being fed to their children.

-justin-

[Miss Mary]

I will be unable to watch a video of these despicable acts of cruelty. There is no just cause to harm an animal like this. Dolphins are such gentle and intelligent creatures.

I will never understand man's need to harm others - people, children, animals. I watched a few segments recently on Animal Planet, about what humane cops see in Detroit. The house they pulled up to, to find a bloody and shivering bait dog on the front porch, just broke my heart. It was limping and the owners claimed it was a stray they don't know how it got there. Long story short, they took lots of pics, repaired the dog's injuries and it went on to be adopted into a good home.

I wish these dolphins would be left alone.

I'd like to hunt these fisherman and harm them, see how they like it.

[Aslkahuna]

Last year, Hayden Panitierre was part of a protest group who rode surfboards into the cove to interfere with the slaughter and she was assaulted by the fishermen (not seriously but assaulted nevertheless) and then arrested when she came ashore though later released. The Japanese have identity issues in cases like this. On the one side you have the very sophisticated city dwellers who are as modern as anyone else and then you have the very traditional country dwellers who brook no interference with tradition nor their livelihood. Such is the case with the fishermen. To make matters worse, the government tends to be conservative and tradition bound regardless of whether or not the radition is good or bad. The occasional racial outbursts against the US by government officials as well as the continued refusal to accept blame and apologize for Japanese excess during WWII is all part of this mind set. Individually, they are fine people-collectively they still have the capability of scaring the crap out of other Asians.

Steve

[HurricaneBill]

Last year, Hayden Panitierre was part of a protest group who rode surfboards into the cove to interfere with the slaughter and she was assaulted by the fishermen (not seriously but assaulted nevertheless) and then arrested when she came ashore though later released. The Japanese have identity issues in cases like this. On the one side you have the very sophisticated city dwellers who are as modern as anyone else and then you have the very traditional country dwellers who brook no interference with tradition nor their livelihood. Such is the case with the fishermen. To make matters worse, the government tends to be conservative and tradition bound regardless of whether or not the radition is good or bad. The occasional racial outbursts against the US by government officials as well as the continued refusal to accept blame and apologize for Japanese excess during WWII is all part of this mind set. Individually, they are fine people-collectively they still have the capability of scaring the crap out of other Asians.

Steve

Not to mention Japan has a reputation for being xenophobic.