Sea Shepherd Cove Guardians generously share their image of dolphin capture. Please notice the babies.
“When the buying stops, the killing [and stealing] can too.”
As I said in my most recent article, “Not Your Dolphins, Taiji,” the Dolphins that swim by Taiji, Japan do not belong to them. They are merely passersby.
Each time I see a new livestream of a dolphin drive, captive selection, or slaughter, I keep saying to myself, "this is the cruelest most barbaric thing I've ever seen a ‘human’ do to another sentient creature," and each time, it gets worse.
I said it the first time I watched the “monsters disguised as humans” spend over five hours driving in a tiny pod of six or seven Risso's dolphins. I said it again the next time I saw them torture a beautiful large pod a pilot whales, I said it again when they spent another four or five hours driving in another very small pod of about five to 10 Risso’s dolphins, and I say it again NOW just hours after the horrific torture and stealing of innocent lives from a beautiful superpod of intelligent, family-oriented bottlenose dolphins.
The saying I began this piece with, "When the buying stops, the killing, (and stealing) can too" really refers, in this case, to marine-mammal amusement parks, dolphinaria, swim-with-dolphin resorts, the International Marine Animal Trainers Association, traveling dolphin shows, and any other place that exhibits live or dead dolphins; because every time a person buys a ticket to one of these places, it is a sign of approval that captivity is OK, that stealing is OK, that killing is OK.
But, it is NOT OK!
To even begin to imagine what these dolphins have been put through, imagine being forced to run the marathon of your life, then imagine being forced into a tiny, unfamiliar “box,” while still being terrorized.
Now imagine your child being ripped from your arms.
You are starving, dehydrated and thirsty, stressed out, and unsure of what your fate is. You have been held against your will for five days.
Can you imagine that level of terror?
Can you imagine that level of fear?
Can you imagine the horrific feeling it is to have your child taken from you?
This JUST happened. Somewhere around 300 dolphins were driven into the cove, many of whom were displaying signs and symptoms of capture myopathy, stress, terror, exhaustion, and disorientation.
But is it any wonder?
One hundred of them were stolen, 100 babies, juveniles, sisters, mothers, daughters, sons, and cousins were stolen.
They may never recover from the devastation brought onto them from these monsters. Their losses can never be recouped.
How do you recover from the loss of a child? A sister? A mother? And terrorized beyond belief! Our grief for them doesn't even touch the surface.
Family is EVERYTHING to a dolphin. Their mentality is singularly oriented to family, and this was demonstrated when one lone dolphin managed to escape the nets during all this brutality. Yet he did not flee the scene. No, he stayed right by the cove, with his family members trapped inside the nets.
A dolphin is not whole without his family.
And what these “monsters” did over the last several days was steal. They stole from the dolphins, both physically and emotionally.
They tore babies from their mothers, they ripped families apart, and they did so callously, while laughing about it.
One of the most gut-wrenching parts of this five-day horror show was those last 15 or 20 minutes, when the banger boats came back to the cove and pushed the remaining pod members out to sea.
This, at least for me, was when the tears wouldn’t stop, and thinking about it now makes me cry.
What made it so difficult was that after five days of starvation, dehydration, terror, plundering, having everything taken away from them, they were still terrorized and still had to run the race of their lives. But, not because they wanted to, but because there were no options left, they were forced to.
There is NO MERCY in forcing them out the way they do. They must now learn how to leave their stolen family members behind. Their resilience, their ability to swim yet another marathon at the end of this whole ordeal, is beyond comprehension. Their wills to live, must be stronger than imaginable.
However, we will never truly know what fate lies ahead for these innocent, beautiful Dolphins.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop here. At other times of the year, when dolphins are not being terrorized in the small cove of Taiji, they are killed and hunted offshore, where the carnage cannot be seen; and the International Whaling Commission does nothing to stop this.
And while SeaWorld falters because of its orcas, it doesn't seem like dolphins and dolphinaria are befalling the same fate, with more and more being built all the time across international borders.
To the Pod: I am so so sorry. This should not have been your fate. Please know that the "monsters" of Taiji do not represent all of mankind. They absolutely do not!
It is important to recognize that this can be stopped. But it must be stopped from within. The people of Japan can empower themselves to end this thievery, this cruelty, this blatant disregard for life.
We must end this now, end captivity forever. For, when the buying of tickets stops, the stealing, and killing can too.
To help, you can tweet from these “Dolphin Angel” tweetsheets and acquire Japanese followers.
You can help Dolphin Project Cove Monitors and Sea Shepherd Cove Guardians
For more information on their cruelty: In Taiji, it’s OK to kill a whale, but touch is a twig, end up in jail.
Planet Experts: http://www.planetexperts.com/author/danahunnes/
Follow Dana Ellis Hunnes on Twitter: www.twitter.com/recipe4surviva