Taiji is a picturesque fishing town on Japan's Kii Peninsula. It is also the site of one of Japan's annual dolphin slaughters, that occurs during a six-month hunting season. Twenty-six of the town's 500 fishermen will catch up to 2,300 dolphins, which is just more than one-tenth the national quota.
Outside the whaling museum in Taiji.
(Robert Gilhooly/GlobalPost)
Some of the dolphins caught, including the misleadingly named pilot whales, will end up in the freezers and fridges of the town's only supermarket, where a 200-gram block of the meat is priced at about $13. Other, more prized varieties, such as the better-known bottlenose dolphin, are sold to aquariums and dolphinariums in Japan and China and are reported to fetch as much as $150,000 per head.
Although there are several other catch sites around Japan, the international spotlight has fallen on Taiji mainly due to the release of the documentary film “The Cove,” which shows in graphic detail the notoriously brutal catch-and-slaughter method that is practiced by fishermen in Taiji and their efforts to cover it up
There is an actual outlet in the cove that they use specifically for killing the dolphins, they kill so many the water in that area runs red.
Mothers watch their young slaughtered, and vice versa, some try to escape, but end up dying. They make it over the nets, only to die, from injuries inflicted by the fishermen.
These once so happy animals, now live in fear.
These animals will put themselves in danger to fight off a shark for us, now isn't it time we helped them?
