If other intelligent life happens to find us here on earth, we are going to be known as the species that abused and murdered every living thing on our planet!
I was at a RedBox the other day looking to rent a movie while my hubby was at band practice. I had seen just about everything in the RedBox. There was this one particular DVD called “The Cove” that had caught my eye a couple times before, but I always passed it up. That day, I decided to take a closer look. It appeared to be a documentary about something terrible happening to dolphins in Japan. I thought… “eh… why not?” and so I rented it.
I am so glad I watched this by myself because it was horrifying and I was in floods of tears half way through the documentary. This was yet just another part of human behavior that left a permanent mark on me. It traumatized me. It’s been on my mind ever since.
In Taiji Japan, it is regular practice and part of Japanese “culture” (so they claim), to drive dolphins into this particular cove and slaughter them in a very inhumane manner. Dolphins are extremely sensitive to sound. These dolphin “farmers” make intollerable loud noises with large numbers of boats to drive hundreds of dolphins into the cove with nets. Once the dolphins are trapped, they are left there over night. You can hear the dolphins cry out to each other. It’s it’s very disturbing.
All the while, the Japanese men who run this operation try with all their might to keep people out. They will threaten, yell, and some times get violent if you try to photograph or videotape the scene. Many activists who have tried to stop them have been murdered.
The next day, the men come back and herd the dolphins into a tight compacted area at the back of the cove. They have tried to put up barriers to prevent people from seeing what they are doing. The people who filmed “The Cove” exposed the full horror. Next, the men take long poles with spears and hooks and stab at the dolphins repeatedly. Again, you hear the dolphins crying in pain. As the men continue torturing and stabbing the poor defenseless creatures, the cove begins to turn crimson red with blood. It no longer looks like water. It’s a blood bath. The dolphins flip in the air trying to get away. I watched as they struggled to stay afloat for air, would sink down, struggle back to the surface, then disappear into the ocean of blood. Some would just thrash constantly due to the agonizing pain. Some of the men were actually swimming in the blood. I will never forget it. It was like watching some horror film that only a disturbed person would imagine up.
You might think, “well how is that any different then fisherman netting fish?” It is VERY different. Dolphins are said to be one of the most intelligent creatures on earth. They are friendly with humans, they have families, they communicate, they show what can be related to depression in humans, and much more that makes them “sensitive” beings that can suffer just as we do. In my eyes… this is no different then Jewish people being “collected” and slaughtered during the Holocaust for some selfish dillusional man’s ideas. It is equally horrid. Person… or dolphin… the horror that is experienced is the same.
Many of the citizens of Japan claim they do not know about this. I could see how a corupt government might hide that. Taiji has gone out of their way to paint a picture of a town that loves dolphins in a good way. Maybe the people really are fooled? I don’t know, but the word is out and if they don’t do something about it, then the blood is on their hands now. No more excuses. Of course, it seems that the people of Japan are afraid to stand up for what is right. Afraid the people of higher powers will kill them or worse.
The plot of this story does not just end there. There is a long history of a corrupt government, lies, and cover ups. And I am sure you can guess what all this is over… good old fashioned money. The dolphin farmers insist it is their culture and not the money that drives them. That’s a bunch of crap if you ask me.
Dolphin farmers have been caught in some major issues before. Dolphins contain toxic amounts of mercury due to chemical dumping into the oceans. Toxic enough to kill people. But primarilly, they cause mental problems and birth defects. Other dolphin farming operations have been previously shut down because the meat was discovered to be causing widespread illness and death due to the mercury poisoning. There is nothing different about these dolphins. They are just as toxic and deadly. All they did was pick a new place to harvest them.
Knowing that… shouldn’t you ask yourself… “what are they doing with the meat?” Well that would be an excellent question. At one point, they were trying to supply the local schools the meat for their lunch menu. That’s right… SCHOOLS. As in… feeding the toxic mercury filled meat to the CHILDREN. After much protest and with the help of some officials who risked their lives and stood up for the children, they claim to have put a stop to that. However, activists have done DNA testing on the “fish” meat products that are sold in Japanese markets to find that meat labeled as fish products actually contained dolphin. These dolphin murderers are passing the dolphin meat off to unsuspecting people who think they are buying safe fish products. So just how far does this go? How is it getting into the fish products? Just who is really in on this? In the documentary, you can see that it clearly seems that the government is in on it. It wouldn’t suprise me. So not only are all these people promoting the torture of dolphins, but they are poisoning their own people. It seriously has me thinking twice when I open a can of tuna to eat.
What these people don’t seem to realize is that a HUGE part of the problem here is the way in which they kill the dolphins. They literally torture them. They jab hooks into them, slash them open with knives, and let them bleed and drown to death in horrible pain. We fight and protest over the inhumane ways our meat products are raised and killed, why should it stop at dolphins??
If you want to support a cause, this is most certainly a worthy one. More and more people are becoming aware of the situation. Kudos to those who made that documentary possible. They truly risked their lives and their freedom to film it and get it produced. You wouldn’t believe the extremes they went to in order to get this footage. They were absolutely brilliant. If you watch it, you will understand. There is a clip on the official website for the documentary “The Cove”. Visit their website, http://www.thecovemovie.com for more information.
I found this short documentary clip on YouTube about this. Take a look.
This is also happening in other countries. I found this one on YouTube as well. It’s extremely graphic, but shows you how inhumane and purely murderous this process is.
