Captivity and Shark Fins

Days in Taiji

Day 2: Captivity and Shark Fins

These have been the two most exhausting days of my life thus far, and it is only just past mid-day. Though a great cause for celebration as the banger boats and the harpoon ship came back unsuccessful the first day and today the water was too choppy to set sail we still stood by to see the captive dolphins captured recently and a year ago.

Up at four again, spotted a female Silka deer on the way, and watched the boats in the harbour, thankfully the wind was strong enough to make the water choppy thus impossible to spot white caps from cetaceans. All the boats stayed in today, the only activity seen from Mountain Pass were molesters going to the captive pens for feeding. The dolphins were tossed a few fish each only after they were forced to jump up and touch their nose to a pole. Non-human animals do not perform tricks of their own free will. It is slavery. It is barbaric.

Top of the Cliffs

Because the drive did not go out we were able to make it to the Katsuura fish market just around the corner from our hotel. Though I am glad to document what we found I wish beyond hope that I had not seen it all. Walking past hundreds of dead yellow-fin tuna, swordfish, and mackerels that were only an hour earlier swimming freely in the ocean was devastating enough. When I rounded a corner I saw a massive pile of slate-blue and white fins all jumbled together in a corner. Grabbing Peter I pointed in it’s direction. As each Cove Guardian walked over I saw faces drop at realising what it was. A pile of shark fins, the equivalent of at least 300 sharks. There was not a single body at the market and these were freshly cut. Shark finning in one of the most brutal industries. Sharks are caught, have their fins and tail hacked off while still alive (hammer head sharks aslo have their “hammers” hacked off), then, finless, are dumped back into the ocean to suffocate or bleed out. Whichever comes first, but the murderers don’t care, shark fin is much too valuable to actually stay ON the shark.  

We checked on Ringi and the others at the Whale Museum then popped into a souvenir shop in the same parking lot. Along side hundreds of whale and dolphin figurines, posters, books, and toys there was a massive cooler the length of the store filled with whale meat. It is sick, beyond sick. I am thankful to be looking through a lens while I am here so I do not need to live in reality entirely.

One more stop at the Dolphin resort to check on those prisoners. It is a concentration camp, there is no other way to describe that place. There is one dolphin in the foremost pen that has been sick for some time. Today he/she was spy-hopping (bobbing up and down vertically). This is a common behaviour that animals develop when kept in confined spaces. Animals on factory farms, fur farms, any aquarium, marine park, or zoo, any animal kept in a cage develops neurotic tendencies. The dolphins in the central pen (where tourists comes to get a kick out of grabbing and molesting the bodies of dolphins) found a stick they were able to toss around in the air and catch with eachother. The rest simple found pieces of plastic and shopping bags to play with. Two individuals had pastic bags wrapped around their snouts and one had a bag stuck to their dorsal fin.

The sick dolphin was then molested into a corner of the pen by four trainers while a fifth gave it an injection and sprayed antiseptic of some sort on his/her tail flukes. This dolphin is so stressed out that with the repetitive spy hopping the tail is being constantly rubbed against the bottom of the nets, where it has rubbed away the first outer layer of skin exposing pale grey flesh and the tips of the tail have been worn away with a constant flow of blood being extremely visible. Every day we will be returning and watching, just hoping that one day we will arrive to seeing only three dolphins in that pen with no explanation as to where the fourth, sick, dolphin disappeared to.

The best you can do help is to stop supporting all fisheries, all industries that exploit the earth. You may think that if you won’t buy dolphin and whale meat that you don’t support the slaughter and insanity but everything is intertwined. If you go to a dolphinarium, aquarium, marine park, or swim-with-the-dolphin program you are contributing. If you are buying any marine life you are contributing to the mass over-fishing of the oceans, which not only greedily take ‘food” for humyns but whose nets also kill on average 12-15 MILLION dolphins annually. If you eat other livestock you are still contributing to the fishing industry as the majority of factory farmed animals are fed fish meal (approx. 1/3 of all the world’s fishing stock is used for this, as well as used for domestic pet food and other materials).

Go vegan. For the planet, the animals, and yourself.

For photos and videos go to http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/cove-guardian-reports/ and follow @seashepherd on twitter for instant updates. We will not be releasing photos individually, all information can be seen through Sea Shepherd first. To become involved with the Cove Guardian campaign contact coveguardian@seashepherd.org for more information. Donations are always welcome and needed.

All together now!

- Adrienne

Taiji: Day One with the Dolphins

Day one reports:

Up at four o’clock to meet Rosie and Peter we headed to the look out on Mountain Pass to watch the boats go out for the drive. We had the brief interview with the local and rather cheerful (with slight frustrated undertones) police. The police headed off but we met them two more times that day. By six they were all out of the harbour (twelve banger boats and one harpoon vessel) so we headed to higher grown to watch them motor out, expecting to be sat watching for several more hours before seeing them come across the horizon line once more. Not half an hour later the alarm was raised that the boats could be seen. They were in the typical “V” formation of a drive, and white caps from terrified dolphins breaking the surface were spotted between the boats.

We raced to Glenda’s Hill in a matter of  minutes, climbing the best stair workout I’ve ever seen in just about five minutes with wheezing and gasping being heard all over the hill. With our team split in two we had fantastic vantage points to monitor the drive. We had a perfect view right into the Cove and the banger boats would have driven the pod directly in front of us.

We watched the pod struggle for three incredibly strenuous hours until they finally made their escape! We could tell the molesters were getting frustrated and angry with not being able to capture the pod. At first only five boats were in formation around the dolphins, but soon they called in the other seven to help. Still no success. Every few minutes we would see a white cap and one or two of the boats would give a great puff of black smoke and dive towards the newly spotted pod. By ten the boats were back into the harbour with many disgruntled molesters milling about.

We were still waiting on the harpoon vessel to return, as in Taiji the quota for drive hunt cetaceans is 2165 per season, the quota for harpoon kills is 509, we needed to be sure they came back empty handed as well. Thankfully both their deck and the ropes trailing behind them were empty (the vessel is too small to hold larger cetaceans so they will simply tie their tails to ropes and attach them to the back of the ship).

 This place is too beautiful to be so full of hate.

While waiting for the harpoon vessel to come in Rosie introduced us to the dolphins being kept at the “Whale Museum”, where you can buy whale and dolphin meat and pat a dolphin at the same time. We are banned from entering the Museum but are able to see the dolphins from the exterior. One bottlenose, donned Ringi, is in a small tank with another, as well as a smaller pacific white sided dolphin. This particular dolphin day after day floats listlessly in one corner of the tank moving only when forced to jump through hoops for the few fish a day allowed to him/her. The clicks I could hear coming from all the tanks were my first hearing dolphins, my first were the depressed monotonous chirps as they occasionally swam to the reaching hands of the museum guests, begging to be fed.

Afterwards we paid a visit to the dolphins captured last year that are being trained by even more molesters at the Dolphin Resort. And these ones really do molest them, the fishermen just hack them apart. These dolphins are kept in group of three to five adults (I’ve seen two juveniles as well) in pens that are no more than five by five metres surface area and approx 2 metres deep. All of these dolphins constantly jump, flip, skyhop, or simply swim in continuous circles from stress and boredom. The police were called shortly to complain about where we parked. Two dolphins were able to escape on the 22^nd of september but can be seen every single day circling the pens and communicating with their family members. No cetacean will leave a family member behind, an example of altruism most humans should pay heed to.

One more trip to the harbour to check on the captive dolphins there (where they begin being “trained”, ( read: forced to do tricks for food, very little food). The fishermen/molesters stood watching us for some time until they gave up and most of the cars in the lot drove away. When the harpoon vessel did come in the police were called once more as the three molesters were too afraid to come down the dock while we four women were standing there with our cameras clicking away. After some time we and the police left, with the main officer shouting, “Please make me relax!” as he had been spending most of his day chasing pointless complaints about us around Taiji.

The amount of money the Japanese government is spending on such increased security will show its toll pretty soon, and if not then they’re in some serious denial.

The best you can do help is to stop supporting all fisheries, all industries that exploit the earth. You may think that if you won’t buy dolphin and whale meat that you don’t support the slaughter and insanity but everything is intertwined. If you go to a dolphinarium, aquarium, marine park, or swim-with-the-dolphin program you are contributing. If you are buying any marine life you are contributing to the mass over-fishing of the oceans, which not only greedily take ‘food” for humyns but whose nets also kill on average 12-15 MILLION dolphins annually. If you eat other livestock you are still contributing to the fishing industry as the majority of factory farmed animals are fed fish meal (approx. 1/3 of all the world’s fishing stock is used for this, as well as used for domestic pet food and other materials).

Go vegan. For the planet, the animals, and yourself.

For photos and videos go to http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/cove-guardian-reports/ and follow @seashepherd on twitter for instant updates. We will not be releasing photos individually, all information can be seen through Sea Shepherd first. To become involved with the Cove Guardian campaign contact coveguardian@seashepherd.org for more information. Donations are always welcome and needed.

All together now!

- Adrienne

Arrival in Taiji

Arrival  (22/09/11)

My arrival into Osaka was uneventful though my flight sickness was nothing to get excited over. Once through customs (without them even opening my bag or asking me to take off my backpack!) I wandered around the Kansai airport asking about trains and looking for wifi signals as Marley and Carisa (two fellow Cove Guardians, Canadians, and just plain awesome friends) were not meant to arrive until 9:30, three hours after me.

After a kafuffle with luggage being left behind in Shanghai we all headed to the airport hotel, promptly leaving after seeing the price per person and settled into the comfy aqua cushions in the Kansai departure terminal. The police did a quick whip round collecting passport numbers, names, and reasons for being in Japan. With them out of the picture we only had the cleaning crew and a few other stranded patrons for company. The others were able to sleep for some of the night but I remained awake, too wired to do anything else. After a nine hour flight with zero sleep and almost 30 hours of zero food I should have been exhausted!

Marley being the assertive and persuasive person she is managed to get us a route to Ki-Katsuura when I had failed miserably to communicate where I needed to go just hours earlier. Three trains and a bus ride later through gorgeous Japanese countryside we arrived at our destination. An eerie feeling came over me when we drove past the whale statues at the entrance of Taiji, as though I was on the set of a horror film.

Marley looking out the train window over the ocean in Japan

Once meeting Rosie (Sea Shepherd member and all around passionate person) at the hotel we headed out to find a room, being refused from one we tried another who attempted to refuse us but were able to call out his lies. The information desk at the station had called ahead for us earlier and were told there were plenty of rooms left, but little did he know the persons in question were SSCS supporters!

We settled in well after a quick explore in search of food and video taping the strangest moth that looked and behaved exactly like a hummingbird, though only an inch long he was very convincing.

I spent the remainder of the evening simply preparing mentally for what I might see the next morning, but nothing could have helped and nothing will ever remove what I’ve seen.

On the way to Katsuura

The best you can do help is to stop supporting all fisheries, all industries that exploit the earth. You may think that if you won’t buy dolphin and whale meat that you don’t support the slaughter and insanity but everything is intertwined. If you go to a dolphinarium, aquarium, marine park, or swim-with-the-dolphin program you are contributing. If you are buying any marine life you are contributing to the mass over-fishing of the oceans, which not only greedily take ‘food” for humyns but whose nets also kill on average 12-15 MILLION dolphins annually. If you eat other livestock you are still contributing to the fishing industry as the majority of factory farmed animals are fed fish meal (approx. 1/3 of all the world’s fishing stock is used for this, as well as used for domestic pet food and other materials).

Go vegan. For the planet, the animals, and yourself.

For photos and videos go to http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/cove-guardian-reports/ and follow @seashepherd on twitter for instant updates. We will not be releasing photos individually, all information can be seen through Sea Shepherd first. To become involved with the Cove Guardian campaign contact coveguardian@seashepherd.org for more information. Donations are always welcome and needed.

For the natural world,

Adrienne