Hong Kong Airlines Brags About Shipping Kidnapped Cove Dolphins
Perhaps we should cut Hong Kong Airlines some slack?
By their own admission, they’re new members in the dolphin do-badding club. Maybe they simply forgot to read the handbook distributed to all inductees?
If they had, they surely would have seen a long list of do-nots, namely: if you’re gonna profit from transporting live dolphins, don’t brag about it in a corporate memo or take a photograph of the displaced mammals suffering in the well of a noisy airplane!
According to China Daily, the airline was paid $109,600 to transport five live dolphins (seen above) from Japan to Vietnam on January 16.
Animal rights activists say it is "almost definite" that the cetaceans were captured in Taiji’s notorious killing Cove.
“It is the first time for Hong Kong Airlines to fly this kind of large live animal in its history,” reads an internal memo that was sent to China Daily by an employee. "Based on the experience we have obtained this time, Hong Kong Airlines cargo will develop this business onwards.”
The image was not snapped by a disgusted airline employee moonlighting as as a kind-hearted animal activist.
Rather, it was taken by an proud employee and then sent around internally, along with the memo, to congratulate all those involved for generating the company a profit.
“They should be ashamed of themselves, crowing about how much money they’ve made out of the sheer misery they’ve put these dolphins through,” said Janet Walker, head of the Hong Kong Dolphinwatch.
The assessment of Mark Berman, the director of Ric O’Barry’s Earth Island Institute, was even more piercing.
“Hong Kong Airlines should be boycotted for this inhumane, money-grabbing contract to traffic in dolphins that may come from a deplorable and inhumane capture from the Taiji cove,” he said.
According to China Daily, the dolphins in this photo were flown from Osaka to Hanoi, with a two-hour refueling stop at Hong Kong International Airport. This means that the travel time was at least seven hours.
The destination for these dolphins is most likely one of many Vietnamese theme parks that, like Sea World, stage sea life performances.
Transporting dolphins in the air is a hellacious experience for the planet’s second smartest mammal. The dolphins in this photo are most likely sedated, but no drug could completely wash away the noise of a roaring jet engine. Think about how grueling this would be for a species that communicates by sonar? And then there’s the ride itself: if you’ve only ever lived under water, how horrifying would air turbulence feel?
When contacted by China Daily, airline officials said they were working on collecting the facts before formulating a response.
I wouldn't hold my breath for a retort that includes any of these phrases: "we’re sorry," "we apologize for coming across as money-grubbing soulless profiteers," "we promise to never do it again," "we were totally wrong," or “this was definitely a one-time event.”
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