The Fate of Dolphins

Taiji, Japan. It is a little town, but holds a big secret, if you travel through Taiji, you will assume this town loves dolphins. They have a Taiji whale museum. But actually a National Park, the dolphin worst nightmare, 100’s 1000’s of dolphins are slaughtered there in Wakayama prefecture, a wildlife protection area in Japan, Taiji. The dolphin smile is a greatest nature deception, you always see dolphin as they are smiling, but you need to understand why captivity doesn’t work, a dolphin group travels 40 miles a day, socializing, dolphins are acoustic creatures, that’s their primary sense, the best, they can know a lot through sound, they can see your heartbeat, your bones, they can even see if you are pregnant like a sonographer, they know a lot through sound.

A dolphin kept in a concrete tank or a stadium surrounded by screaming people, when they first bring dolphins to Baltimore aquarium, they found out dolphins were dying, they cannot keep them alive, finally they found out the filtration system was making a lot of noise, it is the stress that kills them. So they are very sensitive to sound, that is their primary sense and that’s their downfall in Taiji. There is migrating routes which dolphins is using from 1000’s of years, the fisherman from Taiji surrounds these migrating routes in their boats and put the poles down in the water, and they start banging the poles with hammers, and they create a wall of sound, which frightens the dolphins, and they are slowly driven to the shore by these boats creating a wall of sound around them. Once they are into lagoon, they seal it and go home. There dolphin trainers will be lined up, selecting the one they need for their aquarium, according to Ric O’barry, Earth Island Institute, they are looking for young female, like he did in 60’s for his show on TV, popularly known as Flipper. Some dolphins are even flown to different parts of the world for the aquariums. Taiji is the largest supplier of dolphins to marine parks and swim with dolphin programs around the world. Each dolphin sells for upto $150,000, the Taiji whale museum brokers the deals, with the town and fisherman sharing the profits. The dolphin drives begin in September and go through March. The dolphins which are not selected for aquariums are taken into a destination, cove, where they are slaughtered for meat. An estimated 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan each year. Here in Taiji, if you visit the aquarium you can see the dolphins and whales in a water park, and right there you can eat the dolphin and whale meat which is served in aquarium. Fisherman gets $600 for a dead dolphin and $150,000 for a live show dolphin that keeps this industry going.

There are lots of groups here in Japan World Wildlife fund, Green Peace, International fund for Animal Welfare, they all make hundreds of millions of dollars between them. There is one organization whose sole purpose is to protect whales and dolphins, the International Whaling Commission, but for some reason dolphin and porpoises are not in the endangered protected list. Dolphins are whales, size doesn’t matter.

According to Michael Illiff, the institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, dolphins and porpoises are not included in the list as IWC clearly has a monetary interest in leaving those up.

Joji Morishita is deputy delegate of Japan to IWC meetings; he has a tough job to do, as in every IWC meeting he has to explain to the world about Japan whaling policy. A complicated subject, at least for Japan. According to him, this issue is driven through emotions; it is very unrealistic to make this specie of whales as special. Finland accused japan that they use underwater sound to herd dolphins where they are gathered together for aquariums and the left were killed for their meat. Japan responded that this was an issue of small cetaceans, of which it believes IWC doesn’t have competency.

According to Captain Paul Watson, President, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Co-founder, Green Peace, IWC is an only whaling commission which is officially recognized by the United Nations, it is basically a toothless organization, but it is the only organization which does exist. IWC banned commercial whaling in 1986.

One year later, Japan responded by tripling its kills of dolphins and porpoises and starting lethal research programs on large whales. There is a clause in IWC declaration that allows nation to take whales for science. And Japan is taking advantage of that clause; currently Japan has extensive research programs to hide their mischief that involves killing Milky Whales, Fin Whales, Sea Whales, Hump bag whales according to Doug DE Master, P.H.D, U.S Deputy Commissioner for the IWC. According to Monaco, every scientific catch is a dark spot of IWC commission. They are talking about 1000 whales which they show they catch for scientific purposes, not talking about 23,000 whales they catch for aquariums and meat. Actually Japan is trying to legitimize their captivity programs through certain clauses and mandates of IWC, and every other country other than Japan clearly said NO, for capturing any kind of whales. As we say, all social change come from the passion of individuals, these delegations never really accomplish anything year after year. In Greek era, it was punishable to harm a dolphin, they were protected because there are lot of stories in the history that dolphin saved a life of a human.

Taking pictures in Taiji of captured dolphins is illegal, they fear cameras, journalist from all around the world of National Geographic, BBC, and Time Magazine got their camera broken when they tried to take pictures of Taiji dolphin captured sights, it is illegal there. If you try to film in Taiji, they try to make you angry by harming dolphins in front of you, which makes you angry, and the only way to get out of Taiji is to hit them, as you hit them, you can get arrested for assault.

In 2003, Paul Watson, President, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Co-founder, Green Peace, sent a crew to Taiji to get evidence of mass dolphin slaughter. They cut the nets, and released few dolphins, but soon they were arrested on charges of entering restricted area.

In Taiji, the secret cove is a natural fortress, surrounded by steep cliffs, there are several tunnels through which you can get there, high fences surrounded by razor ribbons, there is a lagoon where all the secret business happens, you can look into it from tsunami park, and the safest time to go to tsunami park is when no dolphins are around at that time no guards are around.

Ric O’barry and his friends tried to expose this slaughtering, for that they took help of some of their friends by hiding HD cameras in a mold of artificial rocks like the one in Taijis. They needed special group of people to make this possible, highly qualified with special set of skills, and they started to set up a team, Simon Hutchins, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he has military experience, he created all these weird gadgets, to hide high definition cameras and microphones . Joe Chisholm, Boulder, Colorado, deals in incognito’s ways to use military grade thermal cameras, but they needed to take some aerial footage so they decided to take a remote controlled helicopter with them. They decided to take unmanned drone with HD camera attached to it, they actually named it Cathy. The reason for using it is even if they get caught, everybody loves the whale shaped balloon, even the police, and they will have an aerial footage. They used sound devices to hear the captured dolphins in the lagoon. Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, Kirk-Krack, Vancouver, B.C., a world class free divers for placing the cameras.

The moment Ric O’barry landed in japan with so many black suitcases, it was noted, and they had an escort who was following them to their hotel and spying on them. They took a trip to Taiji capture grounds, according to Mandy, you can see the blood coming out of the lagoon, and you can see dolphin babies separated from their parents who are being slaughtered. Mandy and her husband were overwhelmed, and they tried to walk down the path towards the killing lagoon, but some people came and stopped them from entering the restricted zone. One of the dolphin trying to get away from the killing lagoons, and swimming towards to the shore, and she actually made up through couple of nets, and every time she flipped her fins up, you can see lots of blood coming out of it. And you can see last couple of breaths she took and descended into the water.

It is actually done by the small group of people; most of the population in Taiji doesn’t know this is going on. Fishermen here who do this will tell you that this is our tradition, this is our culture. They say, you don’t understand why you eat cows, and why do we eat dolphins. That is a big lie, Ric conducted survey in other Japan cities and asked people if they know 23,000 Dolphins are killed every year in Japan, most of the people were astonished that people eat dolphins, the question arises if so many people doesn’t know about this, how it can be their culture. People in Osaka, Tokyo thinks if this happens, it has to be an issue, and they think if this happens then it is a media cover up. The reason for this is that dolphin meat has very high percentage of mercury, which is the most toxic, and non-radioactive element on Earth. Mercury levels in the environment have risen 1 to 3% every year since the Industrial Revolution due to the burning of fossil fuels. According to Roger Payne, P.H.D of Ocean Alliance, says all the fish we love to eat that is a major source of mercury in food, these sources are causing real problems not just for Dolphins but for people as people and dolphin feeds at the same level of food chain as dolphins are swimming in sites laden with toxic dump sites. According to Hideki Moronuki, Deputy Director, Fisheries Agency of Japan, Manager of Cetacean Quotas, it is better to refrain from eating dolphin meat as it has high mercury levels. Tetsuya Endo, PHD of Health Sciences University of Hokkaido says the recommended total level of mercury in seafood in Japan is 0.4 ppm, but the dolphin meat sold mostly contains 2000 ppm of mercury, a very high toxic meat. C. Scott Baker, PHD, specialist in DNA Species Identification, Oregon State University, says that dolphin meat considerably is a less desirable commodity, if it is properly labeled, but the meat is distributed wildly then we recognize, he conducted an experiment to find which kind of meat it is, so the meat labeled as the meat from larger whales is actually high level mercury toxic meat of dolphins sold in the name of meat of larger whales, and the mercury level is much more than world health organization recommendations. By eating dolphins, they are poisoning themselves, and also the people in various countries. Japan had this problem before, in Minamata, that’s where mercury poisoning was first discovered, they call it Minamata disease. The sickness actually broke out in 1956, the most advanced factory in Japan, Chisso Minamata, had been secretly dumping its waste into the bay. For 12 years, the Japanese government and Chisso conspired to cover up the connection. But Minamata disease is not disease, it is the result of this toxicity. The most serious effect for this high level of Mercury toxicity is for pregnant women. The children started to be born deformed and it is going to happen again especially in Taiji. Nobody is really looked into the hospitals of Japan or the records, to see how many people has mercury poisoning, the symptoms are memory loss, loss of hearing, loss of your eyesight to the most adverse that makes you dead, or leave you paralyzed.

According to Hardy Jones, founder of Bluevoice.org concluded that Iki was the destination for dolphins in Japan before Taiji, there they slaughtered 1000’s of dolphins, now Iki doesn’t have any dolphins left. They are wiped out. Irony is Irony, because International Captivity Trade is so lucrative, they can’t escape from the thought of it. But they need dolphins for dolphin parks so they go buy them in Taiji now. When they ask the dolphin fisherman if they can subsidize the money they get from killing dolphins, they say it is not about money, it is about pest control, they have been told by the government that dolphins are eating too much fishes in the ocean. Since 2003, Japan has cited scientific data blaming the decline in global fisheries on dolphins and whales.

Tsukiji Market, Tokyo, the largest fish market in the World, states actually it is the people who are diminishing the ecosystem of the ocean, it is people who are pulling out fishes from the ocean at so higher rate that almost sabotaged the ocean ecosystem. A 2006 report in the journal science predicts a total collapse of the world’s fish stocks within 40 years at the current rate of fishing. 70% of human beings, 7 out 10 people in the world rely on protein coming from the seafood. If we lose access to fish in the sea we will be causing the biggest public health problem humans ever faced in their lifetime. Japanese literally control the world market price in the fish industry. They have buyers of any major port in the world. The Japanese delegation has sought to overturn the IWC ban on commercial whaling since 1986. In recent years, they have recruited a powerful voting bloc of support. John fuller, former IWC Delegate for Antigua and Barbuda, one of the supporter of Japan at IWC states that these supporters have economic interest from Japan as Japan is giving them aids, and helping in industrialization of these poor states. Japanese IWC agency goes to some bankrupt nations and offers them financial support in lieu of supporting them in IWC delegation. This is how whaling in 21st century works. Atherton Martin, Former IWC Representative for Dominica states that Japanese government pays annual fees for participation in International Whaling Commission. It has nothing to do with nutrition, it simply means, you voted for us so we will give you something in return. They made fisheries complexes in Antigua, St. Kitts, Dominica, Martinique, St. Vincent and The Grenadies, Gernada, Barbados, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe and Montserrat, interestingly the fisheries complexes made by japan in these nations are not in use anymore as it has nothing to do with fishing. All these supporters have the same set of fisheries complexes blocks which are abandoned now, a 22 million dollar fisheries complex, which is now used by local merchants to store imported chicken. Even more, the Taiji fisherman tried to propagate this idea by giving dolphin meat free in the schools, the same meat which has high level of mercury. The parents like the idea of getting free lunch, but they never told the parents that this meat contain high level of mercury toxicity. According to one fisherman, the town mayor wants to introduce whales and dolphins harvested in Taiji to school lunch all over the country.

Ric O’barry managed to get the footage of slaughtering of dolphins in Taiji, and showed it to the public at IWC delegation. Hideki Moronuki, Deputy of Fisheries for Japan, was fired in 2008. The sample of his hair tested positive for mercury poisoning. Dolphin has been removed from the school lunch program in Taiji. Dominica recently withdrew from the IWC. Japan has recruited following nations to its whaling agenda:

Cambodia

Ecuador

Eritera

Guinea-Bissau

Kiribati

Laos

Republic of Marshall Islands

The last but not the least the Taiji dolphin slaughter is scheduled to resume every September.

By Gaurav Chauhan