Posts Tagged ‘Drive hunts’
Dolphin slaughter in Japan resumes
The annual slaughter of various species of dolphin has begun in the waters around Taiji in Japan. These awful hunts, which are expected to run until March next year, involved the corralling of dolphins at sea by small boats and driving them into the confines of a cove, where they are slaughtered for meat or…
Read MoreHigh mercury levels found in slaughtered Japanese dolphin meat
According to reports from Japan, police there are investigating the sale of whale and dolphin meat containing potentially illegal levels of dangerous toxins. Action for Dolphins group say tests on samples of meat sold in the coastal town of Taiji reveal mercury levels up to 25 times higher that safe limits set by the government.…
Read MoreLatest Taiji slaughter season ends with many dolphins killed
Fishermen in the coastal town of Taiji, Japan have ended this season’s brutal dolphin hunt and, according to local sources, have killed or captured over 550 whales and dolphins. Species killed include Risso’s and striped dolphins as well as melon-headed whales and short-finned pilot whales. These drive hunts run from September to March or April…
Read MoreUnderstanding whale and dolphin hunts in the Faroe Islands – why change is not easy
Most people in my home country of the Faroe Islands would like to see an end to the kind of dolphin hunt that sparked an outcry in September last year. Yet a poll has shown that a staggering 83% are in favour of continuing the traditional grindadráp, the slaughter of pilot whales. This is not…
Read MoreThe horror – reflecting on the massacre of 1,428 dolphins on the Faroe Islands
Like you and millions of people around the globe, I felt horrified by the news that 1,428 beautiful Atlantic white-sided dolphins had been slaughtered in a drive hunt on the shores of the Faroe Islands on 12th September 2021. This news and the staggering number of individuals massacred actually took some time to sink in.…
Read More250 whales slaughtered in Faroes hunt
Groups of local people have gathered on the Faroe Islands to begin the ritual slaughter of hundreds of whales in what are known as grinds. Despite glimpses of nature reclaiming its spaces whilst people have been locked down during the global coronavirus pandemic, and many reassessing their relationships with the environment, these cruel hunts look…
Read MoreKill numbers emerge from latest dolphin hunt season in Taiji
Figures from the latest Taiji dolphin hunt season, which began last September, suggest that around 130 individual hunts took place with over 500 dolphins slaughtered. Every year, starting on 1st September, fishermen in the Taiji region of Japan leave the shore to kill a range of different species. Once a pod of dolphins is spotted,…
Read MoreWDC joins NGOs to lobby Japanese PM as drive hunt season opens today
Today marks the beginning of yet another slaughter season in Japan for hundreds of dolphins. In Taiji, dolphins are herded into the notorious Cove, where some are hand-picked for a miserable lifetime in captivity, while the rest of their family pod is slaughtered – for a meat market that barely exists. In December, Japan will…
Read MoreTwo aquaria in Japan ignore dolphin hunt ban
The controversial sale of dolphins caught in the cruel Taiji Cove drive hunts in Japan has led two aquariums to cancel their memberships with the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA). In 2015, the Association decided to forbid members from taking dolphins captured alive in the brutal hunt. As a result, the two aquariums…
Read MoreTaiji – an inflated symbol of perceived culture
I have the pleasure of introducing a guest blog by Kame-Kujira-Neko, a Japanese whale and dolphin advocate and author. Kame regularly blogs about whaling and dolphin hunting, mainly in Japanese. His novel “Whales Ocean” was published in Japan in 1995. In Japan, “Alternative facts” about whaling are spreading. There is no longer any reflection on…
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