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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2006

Marine mammal exhibitors join protest against Japanese coastal dolphin killing

 

More than 60 organizations demonstrated outside Japanese embassies and consulates in 32 cities against "traditional" coastal whaling on September 20, 2006, the second annual Japan Dolphin Day declared and coordinated by Ric O'Barry of One Voice. Most notoriously practiced at Taiji, the coastal whaling method consists of driving dolphins into shallow bays from which they cannot escape and then hacking them to death en massé, after some are selected for live capture and sale to swim-with-dolphins attractions and exhibition parks.

 

The so-called "drive fisheries" have been protested for more than 30 years by marine mammal advocates including Sakei Hemmi of the Elsa Nature Conservancy/Japan, film maker Hardin Jones, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson, and Steve Sipman, who invented the name "Animal Liberation Front" in connection with releasing two dolphins from a Hawaiian laboratory in 1976. The Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums and the American Zoo & Aquarium Association finally issued statements of objection to the "drive fisheries" in March 2004, as did the World Association of Zoos & Aquariums in June 2006.

 

"The Japanese dolphin drive hunts are an abominable violation of any standard of animal welfare," said New York Aquarium marine mammal research director Diana Reiss in a September 21, 2006 media statement, announcing "a new campaign to end the drive hunts." A supporting statement came from Emory University neuroscientist Lori Marino.

 

Responded O'Barry, after thanking activist groups for their support, "I am very happy that the captivity industry is getting involved. If the industry started policing itself, that would be helpful. It could change the economics of the dolphin drive. A dead dolphin is worth $600; a live show dolphin is worth $ 100,000.

 

"These corporations make hundreds of millions of dollars displaying wildlife, including dolphins," O'Barry fumed. "The Wildlife Conservation Society," which operates the New York Aquarium and the four major New York City zoos, "has enough money and clout to stop the dolphin slaughter, and the related dolphin captures, any time they want to," O'Barry contended in a series of e-mails to ANIMAL PEOPLE.