Wildlife Matters Investigates the captive Dolphin Trade in this masquerade – wild dolphins sold into captivity.
Whilst we welcome the reductions in drive fishing quotas, meaning fewer dolphins are being slaughtered, the number of dolphins captured for the dolphinarium industry has increased. In this blog, we explore the claim that Dolphinariums are openly doing business with dolphin hunters and helping maintain the dolphin drive hunts.
It’s certainly true that a live dolphin sold to a dolphinarium brings a much higher profit than a dead dolphin sold as meat for the Dolphin hunter.
In Japan’s now ‘infamous’ Taiji Cove, live bottlenose dolphins have been sold for as much as USD 150,000 each. By stark comparison, a ‘meat’ dolphin fetches around $750. The captive industry is driving the dolphin slaughter so that people can ‘see’ captive dolphins performing tricks in theme parks, holiday resorts and hotels. Of course, the Dolphinariums that purchase dolphins from the hunters quickly play the Con-Servation card, claiming they are “saving” the dolphins from slaughter—the hypocrisy of the cruellest kind.
Dolphin Trainers from Dolphinariums have been seen working collaboratively, and even side-by-side, with the dolphin hunters, helping to force the dolphins into shallow water, hauling them ashore and lining them up.
The trainers then inspect the dolphins individually, choosing only the ones that can be used in dolphin shows and captive dolphin swim programs. They are actively looking for young, unblemished dolphins. They will only “save” the ones that can be commercially exploited in the display industry. For those poor Dolphins that are deemed to be too old – too young – or the wrong gender, along with those who have too many blemishes on their bodies – including those with injuries from the capture ‘drive’ it is not worth “saving” and the Dolphinarium trainers simply leave them to be killed for meat by the local fishermen.
Dolphin trainers have been filmed assisting the fishermen in bringing these ‘rejected’ dolphins to be slaughtered. Some of these Trainers have also been recorded using ropes and physical force to separate the babies from their mothers. They then haul the traumatised mothers towards the shallow waters of the rocky beach, where they measure and inspect them whilst their babies cry out with distress – abandoned and helpless. They don’t even bother to examine the very young – these Trainers, driven by the $ know that these baby orphans can’t be used in dolphin shows – so the young Dolphins are always killed!
There is clear evidence that Dolphinariums and Marine parks are cruelly exploiting the dolphins so that they can make huge profits from selling them into a life of captivity.
The horrors of the selection process, which can drag on for several hours, cause extreme trauma and distress to these sentient animals. For many Dolphins, the trauma and shock become too much, and they die from shock, exhaustion or injuries.
Cove Monitors from the Dolphin Project have seen members of the international aquarium and zoo industry get in the water with the dolphin hunters to tie ropes around the dolphins’ tail flukes so that the fishermen could tie the dolphins to their boats.
The fishermen then drag the tied dolphins to the ‘killing cove’ The dolphins are in obvious distress, and many have their ‘blowholes’ submerged beneath the water. The dolphins are so exhausted that they can’t even stay afloat. Some were seen with blood coming out of their blowholes, but no one seemed to care – as they knew they would be killed anyway! They even extend this brutal treatment to pregnant females and young calves.
Several aquariums and swim-with-dolphins programs worldwide purchase live dolphins caught in the bloody drive hunts of Taiji. Japan alone has more than 50 dolphinariums and swim-with-dolphins programs, ranging from extensive aquarium facilities with huge tanks and dolphin shows to small tanks at hotels or floating sea pens in harbours.
In the last ten years, dolphin exports from Taiji have gone to China, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Aquariums in the USA, like SeaWorld, claim they don’t import dolphins from Taiji, but before a ruling by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) that stated imports from Taiji Japan were illegal because under U.S. law, “the capture of marine mammals should be humane” – nobody can justify the brutal dolphin drives as being “humane’. However, despite the legal protection in the U.S., many small cetaceans, such as the false killer whale, were regularly obtained by SeaWorld, the Indianapolis Zoological Society, Miami Seaquarium, and the U.S. Navy.
Wildlife Matters believes it is time for every country to accept the protection of sentient sea mammals. No aquatic mammal should be killed or stolen from the wild to make obscene profits for the Dolphinarium and Swim with Dolphin programmes that survive by exploiting wild Dolphins and are complicit in the murder of thousands of them every year.
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Further Reading
Dolphin Captivity and Entertainment World Animal Protection