By Maddie Cahill
I recently saw a fantastic documentary called “The Cove”. The documentary explores the annual dolphin slaughter in the Taiji, Japan. Close to 23,000 bottlenose and risso’s dolphins are slaughtered each year in this secretive cove. A few of the more beautiful dolphins are selected and kept alive only to be sold to aquariums and dolphinariums around the world. The rest of the dolphins are slaughtered and sold for meat. Interestingly enough, dolphin meat is so high in mercury that it is extremely dangerous to eat. A lot of times the dolphin meat is then mislabeled and sold as whale meat. As I understand it, it is a small number of Japanese fishermen that profit from this practice. The fishermen claim that the annual dolphin slaughter is tradition. The documentary really opens up a discussion about animal rights, as well as the issue of national health. The documentary is geared toward possibly sparking a change in Japan’s whaling policy. Japan is known to be the most powerful holdout on the worldwide ban of whaling. Dolphins are some of the most intelligent animals, and we are probably just scratching the surface in understanding just how smart they are. Has anyone seen “The Cove”? What are your thoughts on whaling?
8 comments:
I think that this documentary brings up a really interesting subject of environmentalism, old world culture, and globalization. I think that sometimes the western world creates an agenda of spreading their own views to other countries. American's have many traditions of pollution, hunting, and other looked down upon "traditions". Our ideas about what is acceptable in our nation is sometimes spread to other in a very imperialistic way. I am not saying by any means that this slaughter of dolphins is right or justified, but our culture seems to overlook our own issues and guilt others.
andrew sieving
NO, I have not seen this movie and frankly I actually had no idea dolphins were even being killed for commercial reasons. However, I looked into this movie a bit and found that almost an astonishing 3,000 dolphins are killed in Taiji and that's only 10% of Japan's total dolphin slaughter. So why? Money of course. It sickens me to think that our world would and will do anything to make money, for neither the food nor the entertainment are something of a necessity to Japan or the rest of the world. I know I must sound a little absurd, but this whole thing is incredibly ridiculous if you ask me. However, I think it's quite ignorant of our world when we get so caught up on such issues as this, one after the other, forgetting the big picture. It is so typical of the media and us to find some new problem, make a huge issue, pull in support, fight, and then quickly move on to the next problem as the initial interest is lost. To me it feels as if these things are merely something to talk of and fill the news with, rather than actually act on. Killing dolphins is only one of a billion things our world is at fault for, if were not blaming Japan tomorrow, its Brazil the next and ourselves soon after. What's important is that we take a look at the big picture and find a way of ending the bad morals that often take over. We need to carefully respect every part of our world, understanding that we all exist within it as a single body.
I have not seen this documentary but it sounds very interesting. It brings up the debate of when environment becomes more important than tradition. How do we separate our personal wants and beliefs and what is truly the right action to take. Most of the western world would believe this is a truly horrible act that takes place. How ever if we going to attack Japan than we also need to look at our own actions in America and figure out how we can lead by example. Hopefully we can reach a point where money and tradition become less important and trying to save our environment and animals becomes more important .
I spent spring semester in Australia and spent about a month in Tasmania, the southern island state closest to the Antarctic waters where most Japanese whaling occurs. Have you seen the show whale wars? I was in Hobart, Tasmania when the activist group lead by activist Paul Watson was quarantined for allegedly ramming a Japanese Whaling ship. Both boats in the confrontation were docked in quarantine but the saddest part of the whole ordeal is that the Sea Sheppard campaign is the only group trying to stop whaling.
There is an international agreement not to kill whales for the sale of their meat, but as usual no international means of enforcement. Japanese whale ships whale under a loop hole by claiming that they are doing it for scientific research. Maybe they are doing something scientific, but it also is a fact ( from my Japanese friend who was on the trip with me) that whale meat is considered a delicacy, and is a sign of wealth in Japan. The part of this ordeal that tugs at my heart strings the most is the time when they hunt for whales is when the mothers are migrating North, to the Northwest and Northeast water of Australia to birth and raise the calf’s, so the not only are they effecting populations of whales from directly killing, they are also creating a breeding restriction by hunting. Whales are very particular about the place they birth/raise their young. Paul Watson and his crew are the only people in the Antarctic/Australian waters who are directly stopping the sale of the meat
( they throw stink bombs onto the ship to taint the meat so it cannot be sold.
I agree that it can be seen as just another thing to place blame somewhere else but it is a problem. I truly believe that waiting for the governments to pass federal law is going to take to long, so if everyone does what they can to live more sustainable ( ie. not consume whale or dolphin meat), find at least one organization to passionately support (like organizations who try to stop the act) with either money or time volunteer, the world could make a huge difference.
I just got back from a semester in Tasmania and the guys from Whale Wars that attack Japanese whaling ships port their ship the "Steve Irwin" there pretty often. I thought what they were doing was pretty interesting and admirable, but talking to them they seemed fairly uneducated about the whole situation. They were more interested in personal fame than trying to save the whales. Does anyone know any organizations that are actually invested and interested in saving these marine mammals from hunting?
Sam Cimino
Many interesting issues have been raised here. I agree strongly with Andrew's comment regarding Americans' hypocrisy, as well as the original author's concern about mercury levels in dolphin meat, (and the emotional component of dolphin killing does catch one's attention), but here is what came to my mind: while the slaughter of cute marine mammals is heartbreaking, we shouldn't let images of cute bottlenosed dolphins frolicking in the waves cloud our judgment. Why is there so little coverage of other species that have been or are being over-fished? Are the populations of dolphins even being decimated by the Japanese? Are they actually in danger of extirpation? What about all the other not-so-cute and not-so-smart marine life that has been permanently damaged due to over-fishing? I suppose the plight of the homely cod would not make such a popular documentary.
This is a tough topic to address because there are so many issues and different viewpoints that are involved.
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