A horrible day in Taiji

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I just wanted to post this today to let you those who are interested know what happened. You can go here http://nicolemclachlan.wordpress.com/20 ... to-action/ for the video and transcript of what I am going to tell you. First let me say that the girl who filmed and reported this is only 17 years old. She has been a "cove guardian" for several months now and I think she is an amazing girl. She is doing this under the the non profit group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society who some of you may know from the show Whale Wars on Animal Planet. They are trying to help in Taiji as well. I get reports from them on Facebook every day. They go there to watch and to document what happens.
During the hunt five dolphins were driven to beach themselves on some rocks. The fishermen just left them there for an hour suffering, suffocating and cutting themselves on the sharp rocks while they slaughtered the rest of the dolphins. Then the came back and took the half dead dolphins from the rocks, drug them into the slaughter cove among their dead family member and butchered them.
Is this humane???? NO. Im sorry Im pretty upset today and I have sent emails to government officials in Japan and the idiots who harvest their "show" dolphins from the slaughter. If anyone wants to help you can look up "Misty the Dolphin" on facebook or go to savejapandolphins.org also you can find information on seashepherd.org go under "campaigns" and under "dolphins".
Also if anyone is wondering why the ones filming this did not go and try to save the dolphins it is because they would have been arrested for interfering with the fishermen and would have been deported for life. That means they could never come back and we need people there to document what is going on as they try to hide it all from the public. Im sure it must be so hard to prevent yourself from doing something. I have tons of respect for the people that do this.

They feel that it is their tradition and part of their culture. I understand that, however, in some places it used to be tradition to sacrifice virgins. Just because something is a tradition does not mean you need to continue with it especially when a large majority of the public want this tradition to end. The problem is that the younger Japanese generation are not interested in eating whale or dolphin meat and are upset at the fact that the government did nothing to warn them of the dangers of eating it.
I sometimes wonder how much of this meat is just going to waste?...the thought of that makes me even more upset.

The attention paid to this issue is pretty silly. Most of the concern is caused by, "HEY BUT DOLPHINS ARE CUTE! And WE don't eat them!"

At least they're hunting the dolphins. I'd rather have my food "slaughtered in front of its brothers and sisters" than raised physically maimed, genetically manipulated, jammed into a cage with 100 others like it, and never allowed to walk...like American-farmed turkeys, for example.

I'd be more concerned with the mercury levels in the meat.

"Animal rights" is another way of saying "I'm alienated from the natural world".

When I lived in Florida, there was a lake at my apartment complex and my unit was by one of the streams where the ducks regularly waded through. And also fairly regularly, a hawk would come swooping down, pick up one of the ducklings, the ducks would make a big ruckus, and the hawk would plop down on the roof of the building across from mine and get to work tearing apart the live animal and eating it. I had the luck of seeing this happen on multiple occasions (if you ever lived around ducks, you know why I say this was luck).

This kind of stuff is normal. Animals die. If you're concerned about numbers, that is another argument but what you're putting forward is merely a concern of the violence itself and that isn't a problem. If you're concerned about factory farms and what not, there actually is some legitimate research to support that but there's also the matter of not being able to feed everyone in the world and so such measures are necessary because we come first.

The Mercury levels were first uncovered by a Japanese scientist and the conservationist's are using this angle as a strong arm, so to speak. Like I said in one of my other posts. Its not that I have no concern over other issues but right now this is my main issue. I am concerned with the inhumane slaughter of dolphins and whales in Japan and a few other parts of the world. Just like everything else you pick your battles. Also this has nothing to do with how "cute" dolphins are (I dont view dolphins as cute, kittens are cute) it has more to do with the fact that they are self aware in the same way that we and also chimps are. I also feel that if some living being is going to be killed for food that it should be done humanely, this is not the dark ages. I should think that we, as human beings, are intelligent enough to kill our food humanely. Also the majority of large prey animals kill quickly, typically by breaking the neck of their victim. If you watch The Cove you will see that it takes an hour or longer to kill a pod of dolphins (this does not include the entire day the spend roped into the cove and also does not include the terror of the drive itself) and very few of them are offered a quick death. There is a horrible clip in the documentary that shows a dolphin who came over the nets from the killing cove flopping in the water in obvious severe pain and you could see two large stab wounds as it came out of the water several times until finally it went under the water to die. Then there is the video of the guys (dolphins) stuck against the rocks for an hour, cutting themselves and suffocating while their family is being murdered a few yards away from them.
I watched The Cove twice (once by myself and once with my husband). The second time I just could not watch the slaughter toward the end of the movie again. To me its nearly akin to watching children being killed and it was very traumatic for me.
I am well aware that there are people out there who think this is ok or that its silly with all that goes on in the world to worry about dolphins, I just think differently.