Ravers Kill Dolphins in Captivity

Switzerland is home to a dolphinarium called Connyland. The only dolphinarium left in the country, in fact. Recently they hosted a rave on their grounds for whatever insane reason.

Animal activists warned that the loud music would pose a threat to the cetaceans’ sensitive hearing and immune systems, yet the park allowed the rave to occur anyway. Shortly thereafter two of their dolphins died slow and painful deaths.

Keeper Nadja Gasser recounted the event:

The death was very drawn out and painful. The death went on for over an hour. It was horrendous. I have not been able to sleep since. He was drifting under the water and was clearly in trouble and so we jumped into the water. We tried to hold him. He was shaking all over and was foaming at the mouth. Eventually we got him out of the water. His tongue was hanging out. He could hardly breath. He was given adrenalin, but it didn’t help. After an hour the dolphin died.

An investigation is underway, but everything points to narcotics being ingested by the dolphins. Narcotics which were thrown into their enclosure during the rave.

There is a petition at change.org demanding the closure of Connyland. I encourage you to read the petition letter and support it with your signature.

Blood in Taiji

Through no fault of their own—and certainly for no lack of effort—it appears that Sea Shepherd is unable to successfully protect dolphins in Taiji. Cove Guardian leader Rosie Kunneke reports:

This week was a brutal, cruel, and saddening week in the horrible little town of Taiji. Three pods, approximately 28-31 dolphins in total, of beautiful Risso’s dolphins were senselessly murdered in the Cove. Two of the pods had babies and juveniles amongst them. After killing the pod members, the dolphin killers took the babies way out to sea likely wanting us to believe that they were releasing them while they were probably murdering them out of sight. Either way, the babies will die without their mothers and pod members because they will succumb to a slow death by starvation or fall victim to predators.

In Antarctic waters Sea Shepherd has some authority to disrupt the murderous plans of Japanese whalers. However, in Taiji they have no jurisdiction to act aggressively.

Their presence there is a thorn in the side of those in the dolphin-captivity industry and their reports back to the world are invaluable. Moreover, while present there is pressure on the Japanese government while the world watches over their shoulder as they hideously slaughter pod after pod of cetaceans.

But in the end this is the extent of what Sea Shepherd can do without significant repercussions to those watching over the cove. It must be devastatingly heartbreaking for the Cove Guardians. They are forced to fight through what they’re seeing every day.

Be brave, Cove Guardians. We’re behind you.

The Superiority of Animals

Animals never cease to amaze me. The East Coast’s earthquake a couple weeks back was shocking to humans, who weren’t aware of the event until the earth began to shake beneath their feet. Animals in the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C, however, showed signs of premonition according to Dr. Don Moore, the zoo’s associate director for animal care sciences. He noted:

Red ruffed lemurs sounded a distinct high-pitched barking about 15 minutes before the quake, and then again after the shaking stopped…And just before the quake, the zoo’s flock of 64 flamingoes gathered close together in a “tight, flocking behavior”…We have a rock hyrax whose favorite food is grapes. He had all night to eat those grapes, but didn’t.

Debates about whether or not it’s okay to abuse, enslave, or murder animals typically focus on intelligence and pain. But animals are far more complex then most humans will admit. So while fishermen in Taiji are committing genocide on the second smartest mammal on earth, they’re also slaughtering animals who have powers and senses far greater than humans.

How did we get to be the “smartest” race on the planet? We certainly don’t deserve that quality.

The Annual Slaughter in Taiji Begins Today

And so it begins. Another massacre of cetaceans in the waters of Taiji, Japan. Blood for industry. But Take Part has an action page for The Cove which outlines 5 things you can do to help fight the genocide.

Slaughter Time in the Faeroe Islands

While winter is the season for illegal whaling in Antarctic waters, summer marks a time when animal genocide is at its worst. Citizens of the Faeroe Islands participate in an annual ritual they call “Grindadráp.” Animal rights activists call it “The Grind,” and for good reason.

And what’s particularly bizarre about this ritual is that it isn’t conducted by a team of hunters. The entire community is involved, even children. It’s like a day at the park where families get together and await the arrival of the herded whales so they can (as Sea Shepherd notes) “bludgeon, spear, slash, and scissor them to a slow death as the water turns red with their innocent blood.”

Photo: Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The short of The Grind is that pilot whales are surrounded by boats and herded into a bay, where the slaughter begins. Hooks are shoved into the animals’ blow holes so they can be dragged into shallow water or on shore. Then knives are used to slice the cetaceans from their head to their blowholes, partially severing their heads.

It is at this time they are left to finish dying in a row of bodies of other murdered cetaceans from their pod. And if a pilot whale is pregnant, the fetus is cut out of the mother’s womb so the baby, too, can die on land with the rest of its pod.

Sea Shepherd Captain Locky McLean notes:

The Faeroes say they have a traditional right to massacre entire pods of whales. But no human being has the right to torture and slaughter another sentient being. What the Faeroese call a ‘right,’ we call a travesty. This is like being asked to respect Ted Bundy or Charles Manson, and Sea Shepherd has no intention of respecting the rights of cruel psychopaths. You don’t try to talk to a psychopath, you try to stop them before they kill again.

You can read more about The Grind in posts that I’ve written and visit Sea Shepherd’s Grind Stop campaign site to learn how they’re involved.

Last year Sea Shepherd also collaborated with the Brigitte Bardot Foundation on a campaign in France called Stop the Grind which was essentially a mass media blitz to garner attention for the cause. Peter Hammarstedt even went undercover as a Swedish film student in the Faeroe Islands and was chased out of the country by Faeroese hunters. Their intention was violence and Peter would have suffered. Fortunately he escaped unscathed.

But last fall Sea Shepherd began ramping up for this season of genocide, and have a rock solid plan in place to fight the atrocities. It’s a preemptive strike which aims to stop the hunters before they can even begin.

The Steve Irwin and Brigitte Bardot vessels will be in the area creating loud noises under water to deter cetaceans from traveling in the area where Faeroese hunters are lying in wait.

And should cetaceans find themselves captive to these barbarians, Sea Shepherd intends to document their slaughter with cameras. They will share these images and videos with the world to help garner support for the campaign against the ritual.

Cathay Pacific Airlines Transports Dolphins from Taiji

First dolphins are brutally murdered in Taiji while they are “cherry picked” for ideal slave-trade candidates. The survivors are transported to aquariums and comparable facilities where they are most often tortured and/or demoralized.

One of the ways they are transported is via airplane. And one of the companies who transports them is Cathay Pacific airlines.

A great way to protest wrongdoings in the world is to boycott corporations who support those iniquities. If you are a traveler and wish to ensure your travel budget isn’t falling into the hands of companies who contribute to the cetacean genocide in Taiji, you will want to avoid Cathay Pacific airlines and their affiliates.

Cathay Pacific lists the following companies as their codeshare partners:

• American Airlines
• British Airways
• Comair
• Dragonair
• Finnair
• Japan Airlines
• LAN
• Mexicana
• Qantas

And they list the following as bilateral business partners:

• Air Pacific
• Air China
• Malaysia Airlines
• Philippine Airlines
• SNCF (French rail operator)
• Vietnam Airlines
• WestJet

You can also contact Cathay Pacific airlines to let them know you will not be patronizing them because of their contribution to the slaughters in Taiji. While their actions are legal, they are immoral. And that’s all that matters.

Murder, Murder, Murder in Taiji

Man, it just never fucking ends. Report after report about cetaceans being frightened into the cove before being brutally slaughtered by cowardly men. In today’s report from the Cove Guardians:

The pilot whales in the Cove did not quietly go to their deaths. They fought as best they could, churning up the water and dashing on the rocks. Ultimately though, 22 to 25 of them were pushed into the killing Cove…Those pilot whales not killed today had to swim in the blood of their family members and listen to their death cries. They will die in the early light tomorrow.

There’s the unfathomable events of World War II in which millions of Jews were being herded into makeshift prisons, watching and listening to their friends and family members being slaughtered without any means to escape or defend themselves. There’s the horrific enormity of bodies stacking up at rivers’ ends in Rwanda during the massacre of 800,000 people from Hutu/Tutsi tribes in 1994.

People rise up and protest these macabre occurrences; at a minimum they lament them, even from afar. But when the same thing happens to dolphins—debatably the second-smartest animals on earth—few people seem to give a shit. Well there are masses of people who care, but either not enough or not the right people to make a difference.

It must be exhausting for Sea Shepherd’s Cove Guardians to witness this genocide day after day. They are living at the forefront of a disassembly line. And while they’re making a difference and putting the murderers in the spotlight, the butchery continues. Even amid the aftermath of Japan’s recent natural disasters:

We have been asked why we are making noise about whales and dolphins when there is so much human misery in Japan at the moment. The better question to ask is why the Japanese government is allowing this slaughter to happen. Why is the government allowing these two dozen individuals in Taiji to bring shame and dishonor to the entire nation when there is so much misery here already?

Fuck, Taiji—enough already. It’s not worth the money you’re making. Face your conscience and move on to something productive. Something beautiful. Anything.

Sea Shepherd Crew in Taiji Missing After Earthquake

The entire Sea Shepherd crew working to save dolphins in Taiji is missing. Sea Shepherd has repeatedly attempted to make contact but have not yet heard from any of them. They reported having seen the water recede so they were definitely in the area when the tsunami hit.

The missing cove guardians are Scott West, Mike Vos, Tarah Millen, Carisa Webster, Marley Daviduk, and Brian Barnes. With 1,000+ dead in the wake of today’s tsunami, I hope they were among those who escaped unscathed.

Taiji Mayor and Sea Shepherd Set to Meet

Taiji’s mayor, Kazutaka Sangen, has finally agreed to sit down with Sea Shepherd to talk about their annual cetacean hunt in “the cove.” They are scheduled express their opinions, debate about the the genocide, and respond to pre-submitted questions. They are also opening the meeting to the media, which is likely to garner quite a bit of attention.

There is no word, however, if Ric O’Barry (world-famous dolphin advocate and star of The Cove) will be present. That would be appropriate, of course. But Sea Shepherd is an excellent group to be at the table, so the talk will be in good hands I’m sure.

As the recipient of an abundance of negative, international media-attention, I’m sure Taiji is looking for a way out of the hot spot. So the meeting may be Taiji’s way of pretending to play nicely with others. But I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. At least until we see what happens during that meeting.

Give ‘em hell, Sea Shepherd. Give ‘em hell.

Report from Taiji by Sea Shepherd’s Michael Dalton

Michael Dalton is one of a team of Sea Shepherd activists attempting to save cetaceans in Taiji, shed light about its slaughters to the world, or both. His account of recent activities in the cove is eerie, as he describes hiding in wait for the hunters. Though he does denote some positive notes:

Shortly before 8:00am the boats returned back from the same easterly direction. This time not in single file but in a long arc of eight evenly spaced boats, slowly driving forward, herding a pod of terrified dolphins or small whales toward their doom. The only noise was the droning of the engines from the distance. Two of the larger boats in the fleet charged ahead to set up positions near the entrance to The Cove, ready to ensure that their quarry did not escape. The dolphins must have gone deep and shifted direction, because within a few minutes all boats broke formation and headed back out to sea. This was a great day for the dolphins with none being caught.

Michael also reports on some surprising news, which is hopefully more factual than hopeful:

Taiji is not a town prospering from the sale and slaughter of dolphins; instead it too is slowly dying. The lifeblood ebbing slowly out of it by the refusal of younger fishermen to participate in the killings and the profits going to those in higher authority who know only greed without compassion.

Read the full report at Counterpunch.