Follow the Money: Captivity and the Dolphin Slaughter

Follow the Money: Captivity and the Dolphin Slaughter

by Ric O'Barry

Campaign Director

Save Japan Dolphins

Earth Island Institute

Our friend, author and activist Leah Lemieux, gets right to the heart of the problem of captivity for dolphins in her new video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/delfinusdelphis#p/a/u/0/_A0C2RFpmiY

Too often, people go to dolphin shows or swim-with-dolphins programs in many areas of the world and don't realize that the process of capturing and training dolphins is deeply invasive and cruel to these free-roaming animals.  Even the best of aquariums lose dolphins on a regular basis.  Only through unregulated capture places like Taiji or the Solomon Islands or Cuba or the Black Sea are aquariums able to keep dolphins on display, because they die too fast to maintain the dolphin shows and swims.  Even aquariums that are able to breed dolphins in captivity are hardly blameless -- they are bringing dolphins into captivity that will never have freedom, under conditions that cannot possibly mimic the natural habitat.  And only a couple of species are successfully bred in captivity in reality.  The rest have to come from the wild.

A number of aquariums in the United States now claim that they do not ever get dolphins from dolphin drive hunts like that found in Taiji.  This is indeed true -- now.  But it is misleading.

To begin with, many of the aquariums in the United States have indeed ripped off dolphins from dolphin drive hunts in Taiji in the past.  We have the records to prove it.  They are being very cynical in their claims that they do not engage in getting Taiji dolphins now.  

Furthermore, it was not due to any environmental concern for the drive hunts that US aquariums ended the practice of sourcing dolphins from Taiji.  In 1993, the Vallejo, CA Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (as it is called now) sought several dolphins from Taiji via the US National Marine Fisheries Service.  Earth Island Institute sent a letter to US NMFS opposing the imports, noting that these imports would violate import provisions of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act.  US NMFS finally agreed with our interpretation of the law, and since then, no US aquarium has been able to get dolphins from Taiji, because it is illegal.

The Taiji Whale Museum, which oversees the capture of wild dolphins with the town of Taiji and the dolphin killers, is a member of the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA).

JAZA in turn is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.  So guess what?  The dolphins in Taiji are being slaughtered and captured for captivity by institutions which work together as colleagues in the business with all US zoos and aquariums.

The US aquariums are conducting a snow job on the public when they express no involvement in the butchery in Taiji.  They were involved in the past, and their global organization is involved now, and they have so far refused to take any action to stop it.

Go to our action page to ask WAZA to take action to protect dolphins in Taiji:

http://savejapandolphins.org/take-action/help-spread-the-word

 

 

Photography of Dolphin "education" at the Taiji Whale Museum by Leah Lemieux.