Death Reigns in Taiji: ‘They Were Listening to Their Family Die’
After roughly a week and a half of bloodless waters, death has returned to the notorious inlet in Taiji, Japan.
These animals are self-aware, they are extremely intelligent, and they must have been completely terrified, they were witnessing and listening to their family die
SaveJapanDolphins is reporting that seven Risso’s dolphins were slaughtered today in the infamous Cove. This brings 2012’s kill count to roughly 153 dolphins, according to Ceta-base.com. Put differently, that’s more than six dead cetaceans per day.
Tia Butt, a Cove Monitor for Ric O’Barry’s The Dolphin Project, describes the killings in vivid, sad detail:
The most upsetting and shocking thing was that these dolphins went through this ordeal while the rest of their family was being killed. I was listening to dolphins dying, while the others were being taken away for captivity. These animals are self-aware, they are extremely intelligent, and they must have been completely terrified witnessing and listening to their family die. They were doomed to a sea pen in Taiji, and whichever ones survive this ordeal will then be trained for a life to entertain the public.
As portrayed in the Oscar-winning film The Cove, Taiji fishermen lure dolphins into the waters of a secret inlet and weed out the ones worth selling to aquariums both in Japan and around the world. The rest are systematically harpooned and then butchered, their toxic meat sold in supermarkets.
Local officials and fishermen vehemently defend the 50-year-old drive hunt. About 1,500 to 2,000 dolphins are killed in the cove each year as part of the country’s 20,000-dolphin quota.
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