The Cove : The Truth ( Part II )

Well, glad to back at this after a long time...let's continue on from where I previously left!

• Another argument by pro-hunters is that Bottlenose Dolphins, the species primarily being hunted in Japan is not "Endangered" ... yet ! So,they can be exploited without any precautions whatsoever.

Now, some whale hunting countries in '30's argued in a same manner in support of whaling.
Then bingo!! ... the number of whales dropped significantly due to joyous over-hunt .And IWC,formed after WWII with 17 whaling nations - had to start regulating the hunt in 1960's, and finally had to stop commercial whaling in 1982 . The moratorium is still in place despite countries like Japan,Norway are trying their best to lift it.

This is an example of how quickly their number can decline under rapid hunting-if allowed.See the graph for Minke whale hunts .. The maroon bars are historical whaling hunts and the blue line is an estimate of former blue whale abundance.

Who will be held responsible if history repeats itself,now in case of Bottlenose dolphins ?
This "Exploit-until-they-are-gone" policy is truly unscientific.

Moreover,being itself a predatory class oceanic-mammal ( just as whales,as shown in above example) - it can never replenish it's populace as fast as other "prey" species (I will come back to this point later).

And mind you,the hunt for one species may also affect another seemingly unrelated species
This following article speaks of how killing of whales affected seals,sea-lions,urchins and otters -the whole ecology could be on stake here...here's some quotes from that article

The killing of whales caused a collapse in the food chain, the scientists believe. As a half-million whales were wiped out by Japanese and Russian whaling fleets after World War II...
..."Food webs are way more complicated than that, and when you take a species out ... it's going to have effects on a number of different things, many of which are impossible to imagine,"

Clearly we need to do more research for how decline in dolphin hunt will affect our environment before we allow it . Although the ban on whaling is in place, Japan continues it's scientific Whaling and the numbers hunted are rising - clear from the diagram from the middle of the page!

I can not fathom how deep it may impact if it is allowed totally unregulated-and same applies for dolphins too...and more so 'cause Japan's dolphin hunt industry has no international regulation imposed upon them!

• Some argues that hunting should be transformed into capture industry ,as Dolphin's enjoy human companionship - and it is better to capture and sell them to aquariums rather than killing them..

Rather inappropriate solution according to me! Let me quote from a WSPA article about true nature of captive-life of dolphins:

"Even more unsubstantiated is the assertion, which can be found in the marketing materials of many captive facilities, that the dolphins actually enjoy life in confinement, as if, somehow, millions of years of evolution and specific adaptation to life in the seas can be overcome after a single or even several generations...captive-bred dolphins are not domesticated and have the same inherent needs as wild-born animals"

full article here

I believe no dolphin enjoys captivity - but atleast it is better than getting killed.But we have to understand that actually, it is the live-capture industry that promotes, mostly indirectly,the dolphin hunts.Although the aquariums,as expected from them , deny this. Instead SeaWorld’s (largest aquarium chain in US) PR machine claims that SeaWorld supports wildlife conservation, research, education, and has rescued thousands of stranded and sick animals .

What they don’t mention however that since 1986, 22 killer whales have died at SeaWorld ( according to the Marine Mammal Inventory Report) - and environmentalists suspects stress related factors,and negligence has something to play here,and I have no reason to believe dolphins are treated any differently in these facilities .
Ric O’Barry has a different take of their MO, based on his years of experience fighting sea mammal hunting and capture in Japan

“SeaWorld claims that if we display the dolphins, people will be sensitized to them, and then they’ll be there for the dolphins. But look at Japan to see the smoking gun. The country of Japan is the size of the state of California. There are fifty dolphinariums in Japan, yet the largest slaughter in the world is happening in Japan. No one from the dolphinariums, or their 100 million customers a year, are in Taiji trying to stop the dolphin slaughter. There is no connection between dolphin shows and conservation - It’s just a big lie."

---To Be Continued....

  
  Bon Voyage fellow travellers...until we met again!

The Cove : The Truth ( Part I )

Well...I got my hands on one of the copies just sometimes before the Oscars.I was rather interested as I knew it was heavy contender at the Oscars.
Being a student of science-I was watching the docu with a systematic mind...the views were really disturbing (The blood-red water were somewhat creepy,with the local fishermen spearing the Dolphins randomly).Then I went on to read what other people are really saying about it...the response were even more disturbing,many people were crying foul over the director's attempt to misrepresent a Japanese Traditions and attacking Japan's fishing Industry

Now, I personally found the movie quite factual and went on to search about the matter on my own.I will represent those arguments one by one,and perhaps what I feel about about that particular arguments-But,readers are open to their conclusion and comments...

I know the Dolphin-hunters lobby has some claims regarding why this hunt can be justified..

• firstly,they claim this is a tradition that people of Taiji has been performing for quite some time-and to stop Dolphin hunt means a blow to their tradition.

Now,the fact is whaling had started in Japan as early as the 12th century (where dolphin hunting is a 500 year old practice,at most ! But I feel these two issues are quite similar,both species being cetaceans) .Techniques were dramatically developed in the 17th century in Taiji,Wada Kakuemon Yoriharu invented the whaling net technique called Amitori-shiki.

But near 20th century,they adopted more modern techniques.local traditions conflicted with modern whaling practices. In 1911 the conflict turned violent in Same Village, Aomori Prefecture. Ocean pollution from the whaling stations, including large quantities of oil and blood runoff, angered the local fishermen and threatened their own fishing grounds. In protest the fishermen burned a Toyo Hogei facility down. The people of the Same region also did not consume whales and considered them sacred.

Seriously,most of the Japanese does not know that they are being served Dolphin meat in food labeled as just "fish meat",mostly does not know about this so called "ritual"-local news papers are strangely silent about this topic.

So,the "tradition" of eating whale or dolphin meat is not so traditional with the wider portion of Japanese people as claimed the pro-hunting lobbyists .Moreover "tradition" can never be called as a justification for cruelty.Sea Shepherd Conservation Society representatives compared it to forced female genital cutting in Sudan, saying that although it is a practice that may have cultural roots, it still should be opposed out of necessity.And the highly poisonous dolphin meat to be distributed in a unregulated way should be stopped immediately-no tradition can justify poisoning people deliberately.


Interestingly,younger generation of Japan,who were never brought up within so called "tradition"-are mostly against whaling, due to the increasing influence of western culture and the activities of anti-whaling organizations like Greenpeace.All outdated tradition will fade away by itself.


Ultimately,Japanese researcher Jun Morikawa has suggested it as

"an invented tradition, only lasting 20 years from the end of WWII to the early 1960s"

-which implies that currently,dolphin hunt is a modern commercialized massacre and bears little resemblance to the small-scale subsistence whaling/dolphin hunt that,until the dawn of the 20th century, was limited to certain coastal regions and was done in a much smaller amount.

The main article can be found here.

• Will Japanese economy suffer if they stopped whaling and dolphin hunt?

-well,from a economic viewpoint - it should not!
Fisheries (both aquaculture and marine hunt) together with agriculture,forestry contribute to only 1.6% of gross national product,only 4.4%labour force being associated with the same. 85.5 % of Japan's farmers were also engaged in occupations outside of farming, and most of these part-time farmers earned most of their income from nonfarming activities.While other Industries accounts for 23.1%[2005 data-Wikipedia].
So,I do not think that Japanese economy as a whole will suffer much from abolition of whale/dolphin hunt.

It is true that Japan has a food problem (will deal with it separately,later) .Japan was the world's leading harvester of marine products until 1988, surpassing other major producers such as China, Peru, Chile, the Former Soviet Union, and the United States. Between 1988 and 1997, however, the Japanese fish and shellfish catch dropped 42 percent, falling to its lowest level in 31 years.Why?- one may ask,and the answer is overfishing.And they simply went deeper and deeper to find more fish,increasing the damage to fish stocks and the ocean floor.-the whole system is rapidly going toward a massive dead-end.But still,they seem to oblivious to this fact and intend to scourge along.the results tend to be disastrous,read the last paragraph here.

Further up the coast, we discover the real cost of dolphin hunting, something that goes beyond the cultural arguments batted backwards and forwards by protesters and fishermen.

In the town of Futo, we meet a man who used to hunt dolphins, but stopped.
His reason? He says his colleagues were breaking the government-imposed quota; they were killing too many dolphins...

...it seems the fishermen have simply fished themselves out of a job. But, back in Taiji, the hunt is going ahead this year as it has done for the last four centuries.

Here is another article about that person (Izumi Ishii,from the town of Futo) and what they think about the dolphin hunt in current perspective.

Finally, it’s a lot to ask of someone to change the way they are. But the way things are going now, if we don’t, the consequences will be dire.

Eventually we will run out of whales,dolphins and other large fish, and the smaller species will not be far behind.It would truly be a shame to lose such a valuable resources just because you prefer the taste.

I will post again with more materials soon-



Bon Voyage fellow travllers...