For all its natural charms, this town Taiji of 3,500 people is inextricably linked with something much less palatable: the systematic slaughter of thousands of dolphins for their meat.
After years of operating with near-impunity, Taiji’s hunters are the reluctant subjects of a new U.S. documentary that has sparked an international campaign to end the carnage in this isolated, picturesque corner of western Japan.
Every year thousands of dolphins and small whales are killed between October and March in Japan's fishing villages, according to animal rights activists.
Its hero is Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer for the 1960s TV show Flipper, who has conducted a 15-year crusade to put an end to the slaughter in Taiji. “I’ve been working with dolphins for most of my life,” he said. “I watched them give birth. I’ve nursed them back to health. When I see what happens in this cove in Taiji, I want to do something about it.”
He has witnessed fishermen pursuing pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles together beneath the water to scare their prey and disrupt their sonar.
The animals are herded into a large cove, where they are kept overnight before being dragged into a neighboring inlet to be slaughtered, out of sight, as the shallow water turns a deep shade of red. “It is Dante’s Inferno for dolphins,” O’Barry said.
Of the 13,067 dolphins caught in Japan in 2007, only 1,623 came from Wakayama prefecture, where the town is located. Hunters in Iwate prefecture were much busier, killing more than 10,000 dolphins, according to the Fisheries Research Agency. But as the birthplace of Japan’s whaling industry and the only place where dolphins are still harpooned close to the shore, Taiji is an obvious target for protesters. Coastal whaling began here in the early 1600s but fell victim to the 1986 global ban on commercial whaling, which does not cover dolphins.
Please sign this petition...thank you! In this petition, they boycott purchasing Japanese automobiles till the end this brutal killing of dolphins & whales in Japan.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/35/save-the-dolphins-in-japan/
