HOW THE DOLPHINS BEING MASSACRED TO SATISFY A FOOD FETISH ARE POISONING THE JAPANESE WHO EAT THEN the heart of a Japanese nature reserve, a horror story is unfolding. Over the coming months, thousands of dolphins - some only a few days old - will be hacked to death. Hundreds more will be sold into captivity, where they will die lingering deaths from stress and disease. The dolphins are captured and slaughtered just off the southern Japanese fishing village of Taiji. Every autumn, tens of thousands of the creatures gather there to feast on the abundant fish. And once they have eaten their fill, one of the worlds greatest wildlife spectacles unfolds as the dolphins socialise and play. How the dolphins being massacred to satisfy a food fetish are poisoning the Japanese who eat them By DANNY PENMAN UPDATED: 12:08 EST, 5 September 2009 252View comments At the heart of a Japanese nature reserve, a horror story is unfolding. Over the coming months, thousands of dolphins - some only a few days old - will be hacked to death. Hundreds more will be sold into captivity, where they will die lingering deaths from stress and disease. The dolphins are captured and slaughtered just off the southern Japanese fishing village of Taiji. Every autumn, tens of thousands of the creatures gather there to feast on the abundant fish. And once they have eaten their fill, one of the worlds greatest wildlife spectacles unfolds as the dolphins socialise and play. Wholesale slaughter: Japanese fisherman haul slaughtered dolphins from the bloodied water in Taiji Cove+5 Wholesale slaughter: Japanese fisherman haul slaughtered dolphins from the bloodied water in Taiji Cove Massacre: Japanese fishermen use a sickle to drag dead dolphins into their boat+5 Massacre: Japanese fishermen use a sickle to drag dead dolphins into their boat Thousands of the creatures can be seen leaping through the air playing the dolphin equivalent of tag. As far as the eye can see, dolphins race this way and that, blowing huge plumes of seawater into the air - just for the fun of it. If you are lucky enough to be on a boat, the creatures will ride your bow wave or even leap straight over the top of you. But Japanese fishermen see this event rather differently. For them, the dolphins are a source of cheap meat - and pests to be exterminated. And they kill them with a ferocity seen nowhere else on earth. As soon as the fishermen see a pod of dolphins, they launch an armada of small boats to capture the creatures. The fishermen first confuse and terrify the animals by banging steel pipes suspended in the sea. This disrupts the dolphins delicate sonar, which they use to see their watery world. This wall of sound acts as an acoustic net - and once ensnared in this invisible trap, the dolphins find it virtually impossible to escape. Feeding this toxic meat to children is morally repugnant The fishermen then drive the hapless creatures towards a rocky cove. Once inside, nets are strung across the entrance to prevent their escape. The terrified animals are then left overnight trapped in the tiny inlet. The fishermen claim this makes the dolphins flesh softer, sweeter, tastier. At dawn the next morning, traders arrive from all over the world to buy dolphins they can train for aquaria. A particularly cute creature can fetch £100,000. But once the buyers have chosen their specimens, the rest are slaughtered. The fishermen begin slashing at the animals with gutting knives and impale them with sharpened poles. The terrified animals thrash around in the water - turning it a bright frothy red. Agonised sounds fill the air as mother dolphins call out to their young and try desperately to protect them. When the petrified animals have been weakened by blood-loss and pain, they are hauled aboard the fishing boats. Here, the lucky ones have their throats cut. Others have their spinal cords slashed open to paralyse them. Many more are simply left to drown. Such horrific scenes are seen every few days during the six-month dolphinhunting season, according to Ric OBarry, head of the international Save Japan Dolphins Coalition and trainer of Flipper, star of the Seventies TV series. Every year, the fishermen try to provoke us so that the government has an excuse to deport us, he says. They will often torture animals in front of us. A few years ago, one fisherman held up a baby dolphin in front of my face and sliced its head off. Other witnesses to the slaughter describe equally horrific scenes. Mandy-Rae Cruikshank, seven times world free-diving champion, saw the cull two years ago while making a documentary. She was stunned by the brutality she witnessed when a pod of 40 dolphins was herded into the Taiji killing cove. They separated the babies - some were only as big as my arm - and then they began to kill them, says Ms Cruikshank. The emerald water in front of us began to turn red. One dolphin had been stabbed and tried to escape the killing cove by leaping over two nets. Blood was streaming from it. We saw its final breaths - it was impossible not to cry. Then something even more barbaric occurred. Ms Cruikshank was forced to watch helplessly as the fishermen turned their attention to the young dolphins. The babies were led out to sea and were either killed or left to die of starvation, she says. It was awful to watch. Awful. In The Cove, a documentary about the cull to be released in UK cinemas next month, Ms Cruikshank tells of the countless times that dolphins have rescued drowning sailors and surfers. They are the only creatures who regularly risk their own lives to save humans from certain death. One celebrated case involved the rescue of surfer Todd Endris in Monterey Bay, California, in 2007. A 15ft Great White shark attacked him, ripping the skin off his back like a banana peel, he said. Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211311/Massacre-dolphins-How-dolphins-massacred-satisfy-food-fetish-poisoning-Japanese-eat-them.html#ixzz2rZSUVlEf Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 05:02:00 +0000
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