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Have you ever been to a marine park and seen a dolphin or whale and fell in love with that adorable creature? How would you feel if you found out that those creatures you love were being killed? This will make you sick to your stomach.
September 1st marked the beginning of the annual six-month dolphin-killing and whale-killing season in Taiji, Japan. The city, whose horrors were documented by the Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove, has announced that it will continue to slay these innocent dolphins annually.
The Cove, which came out in 2009, documented the killings of these marine mammals. This movie brought world-wide attention to Taiji. The film showed that pods of bottlenose dolphins and black whales were being trapped and then killed on the shore. The filmmakers used hidden cameras both on shore and in the water to capture graphic images and video.
People from Taiji stress that this is a 400-year-old tradition. Local government officials said that they want to strengthen the practice and make it bigger. They plan to turn their whole town into an amusement park. Yes, an amusement park.
As reported in Newser, Taiji already has detailed plans to split the cove and turn it into a park. The project will be completed in five years. The plan is to divide the park so that there can be parts where patrons can hunt whales and dolphins and other areas where patrons can swim and watch the dolphins near the shore while eating dolphin meat.
The extra dolphins captured will be sold to amusement and marine parks. Activists have been working hard to try to bring more attention to this issue. Many groups will have flash mobs in Tokyo in the next week. One known Japanese activist group, called Flippers Japan, has already invited people to partake in a flash mob in Tokyo. One anti-captivity group called Freedom Blue is trying to convince airline carriers to stop transporting dolphins to marine parks. According to Yahoo news, 34 major international airlines have signed up, including British Airways, Japan Airlines, Thai, Iberia, Emirates, Delta, and American Airlines.
When asked about this whole situation, Namena Bojang responded, “I feel like Japan’s mass killing of dolphins is inhumane and the people in relation to the murders are numb to the affects that these killings could have on the environment. This is an unnecessary action that some Japanese officials are performing and I believe that someone must step in to correct this unfortunate situation.”
“This is just insane,” Diaesha Summerhill said. “Dolphins are supposed to be free.”
Jade Chambers disagrees. She said, “I think that people shouldn’t judge them if it’s part of their culture. I don’t like the idea of it, but you can’t do anything about it.”
“If they’ve been doing this for years, then they shouldn’t be judged by others,” Armon Mobasher stated. “There is a fine line between something being part of your culture and it being inhumane. Just because it’s not part of our culture doesn’t mean it’s not part of somebody else’s, and they shouldn’t be judged for that. You have to ask yourself: do they judge us for our obscene traditions?”
