Photo Credit : Mike Lorden

I recently returned to the United States from Japan, and while my body is now thousands of miles away from Taiji and the Cove, my thoughts remain with the dolphins and the daily horrors  occurring there.  The killings that took place on the last days of my visit haunt me, but it is in loving memory of those whose lives were lost or shattered that I share their tragic story.

During the early morning of Saturday, December 4th, a pod of over 100 migrating dolphins were ruthlessly hunted down and corralled into the Cove by Taiji fishermen. I watched from the shore as several of the dolphins got caught up in nets, their heads struggling desperately to come up for air, only to be pushed under by the fishermen trying to drown them.  I can still hear the sounds of blowholes spouting rapidly in distress as many were forced to listen to the anguished cries of their family members being killed. And I’ll never forget the sight of a lone baby swimming in isolation from the others in search of his mother. Forty-three dolphins were slaughtered before the fishermen decided to call it a day and leave the others to await their gruesome fate the next morning. Their trauma and terror as they swam close together, entrapped all night in the cove, is unimaginable.

We rose before dawn on Sunday to be at the Cove before the fishermen. After daybreak, it soon became clear why some dolphins had been spared the day before. Accompanying the fishermen, a group of trainers had come to select dolphins for captivity. Witnessing the selection process was sickening, as five trainers would wrestle down each dolphin for harsh examination. They would even ride them to see how they responded.  In the end, six dolphins had been chosen for a life of performance, never to be among their families again. For 36 others, death was their fate, and I listened and watched as they had stakes driven into their backs, and their bodies thrashed about violently in the waters for minutes on end.
Not all of the remaining dolphins were killed, with approximately 25 being released back to sea.  As they swam away the baby was among them, lagging far behind and certain to die of starvation without his mother. I felt I should be grateful that their lives had been spared, but I thought only of the shock and suffering these sensitive beings had just endured. How would they ever recover, and what kind of lives would they be returning to?

While the story of these dolphins in the Cove is no different than the many thousands who have come before, and, sadly, for the multitude who will come after, stories like theirs must be told until the day when all dolphins can swim free from harm.  Please help that day arrive by continuing to tell this story.

Photo Credit : Mia Kiander

Standing atop a promontory in Taiji, Japan, I’m enduring an agonizing wait to see if today will bring another merciless slaughter of dolphins. I’ve been in Taiji for four days now and have witnessed over 60 dolphins lose their lives at the hands of the Taiji fishermen. On November 29th, a large pod of more than 50 spotted dolphins were killed, while a pod of 10 risso’s dolphins were destroyed the following day. On both occasions, babies were among the victims. I am deeply troubled that almost a year after The Cove won the Academy Award for Best Documentary the fishermen have employed a new killing method that reduces the flow of blood into the cove’s waters. They have also perfected the transfer of dead and dying bodies under blue tarpaulins so that the bodies are rarely seen as they are moved to and from the grisly gutting barge and butcher house.

On previous days, I’ve watched as so-called “banger” boats round up the dolphins at sea by creating a wall of sound with incessant banging on metal pipes, which drives the dolphins into the cove. Once the net has been dropped, they are then driven farther into the cove and up onto the rocky beach beyond public sight for slaughter. In some instances, as with the pod of risso’s dolphins I observed, the pod gets separated in such a way that some dolphins are slaughtered well before others, and those awaiting their gruesome end must listen as their family members are murdered. The scene is a profound horror, and one can only imagine the terror, pain, and fear that these highly intelligent and sentient beings must be experiencing as they are hunted down and their lives extinguished.

Currently there are 50-60 captured dolphins being held in small pens to be trained for a life in captivity. They can spend months in these pens swimming in mindless circles, undergoing daily “training” sessions, in which they learn that food now comes from a human, and only after performing a meaningless trick like jumping in the air, touching a ball with their nose, or waving their fin. I cannot express how desperately sad and disturbing it is to see these incredible beings, who were living free and wild only days and weeks before, suffer such degradation and exploitation in this way. Their lives have been shattered, their freedom and families lost, and now their dignity taken too. It is heartbreaking and shameful.

As for the fate of the dolphins this day, I am happy to report that due to bad weather, they managed to get away and escape the hunters’ conniving trap. For all the dolphins who won’t be as lucky as these were, please take action to help them.

IDA Activists in Action!

Last Thursday, marine mammal activists from all over the world, in over 55 locations, stood together in protest of the Japanese government’s support of the slaughter of dolphins and sale of live dolphins for the public display industry. Events took place at Japanese Consulates and Embassies, sending a resounding message to the Japanese government and a public purposefully kept in the dark that killing dolphins and sentencing the rest to a life of captivity is shameful. How the Japanese government can knowingly allow the human consumption of dolphin meat that contains dangerous levels of mercury and other industrial pollutants is beyond reason. Or how dolphins are mercilessly captured and shipped as cargo all over the world in order to perform demeaning circus-style tricks for food in grossly unnatural, artificial, and highly confined environments.

There is hope for dolphins and other cetaceans through public education and growing interest in finally bringing to an end the appalling dolphin roundups in Japan

Stay tuned for more updates. And if you haven’t already done so, please watch Oscar Award-Winning Documentary, The Cove and Animal Planet’s Blood Dolphins.

The proposal would have allowed countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland, who never stopped killing whales in the first place, to continue killing them, with the endorsement of the IWC.  Thanks to pressure from IDA and whale supporters worldwide, we stood firmly unified, demanding real protection from hunting for whales. The world listened. And they agreed.

Although we prevailed in maintaining the global ban on commercial whaling, other significant pressures continue to harm whales and threaten their existence.  Starvation, increasing predation by orcas, migration through industrial polluted waters, oil spills, military sonar, and commercial fishing operations are among the many obstacles threatening their survival today.  The central location of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, is home to an endangered sperm whale population. In 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicated the population would not be able to withstand a loss of three additional whales due to man.  Last week, the first dead sperm whale was found floating 77 miles south of the sunken rig.

Please enjoy the victory – and take pride in the part you played preserving the moratorium on commercial whaling. Stay tuned for upcoming alerts to further protect marine mammals and their habitats. Next time we ask you to send a letter or fax, remember this – it can work. Every fax and e-mail you sent made this victory possible.

This is an incredible opportunity to maximize the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition’s (SJDC) efforts to stop the slaughter and urge Ms. Mizuho Fukushima, Japan’s new Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety to make public the health risks associated with eating dolphin meat and institute a ban on it’s sale without delay.

With The Cove set to be released in Japan this year, the primary goal of the SJDC will be to use the film as a medium to convince the Japanese public to oppose the cruel hunt and sale of dolphin meat throughout their country. So far, only 600 out of 126,000 million people in Japan have seen the film and those who did were completely outraged.

Our aim is to prevent the Japanese government from issuing 23,000 permits this fall and with the likelihood that dolphins will continue to be tainted with mercury and other harmful chemicals in the future, an end to the dolphin hunt once and for all.

We couldn’t buy better exposure for our campaign to stop the slaughter, consumption, and live capture of dolphins in Japan. A billion people, including media outlets around the world, are slated to tune into the event that will undoubtedly create a surge of pressure directed at the Japan Fisheries Agency to stop allowing dolphins to be slaughtered, and their mercury-laden meat to be eaten by Japanese citizens.

We are so thrilled that The Cove will be released this year in Japan, because combined with the exposure through the Oscars, the Japanese government will no longer be able hide the issues behind media blackouts.

Whether The Cove wins Best Documentary or not, this is a critical victory for getting the information to the Japanese public!

IDA is delighted to report The Cove is now an official runner for an Oscar award for Best Documentary!  As a result, we can expect the next month leading up to, and including, the March 7th Oscar presentations to expose billions of people around the world to the Save Japan Dolphin Coalition’s passionate work to stopping the cruel capture, slaughter, and consumption of dolphins in Japan. The global spotlight on The Cove will also bring necessary pressure on the Japan Fisheries Agency to make public the calamitous health risks, including mercury poisoning, associated with eating dolphin meat. This is especially true for residents in Taiji, the small fishing village where the documentary is based, and the focus of our greatest efforts to ending the slaughter.  University of Hokkaido Professor Tetsuya Endo just revealed the alarming results of a study that conclude residents in Taiji have 10 times higher mercury levels than average Japanese citizens.

The government in Japan will not be able to shield the fact that it has been allowing the poisoning of Japanese people who readily eat contaminated dolphin meat to occur. Moreover, it will no longer be able to cover up the barbaric dolphin slaughter with routine media blackouts on the issue. We hope to use the momentum of the Oscar Award nomination and potential victory to enlighten the public in Japan, so the hunting and consumption of mercury-contaminated dolphins will end, once and for all.

Special thanks to The Cove filmmaking crew, including Director Louis Psihoyos, Executive Producer Jim Clark, Producer Fisher Stevens, and the Oceanic Preservation Society for creating a winning documentary!