Anyone see it ???
I am truly amazed this type of thing can be allowed to occur.
As the Doco stated...
"you're either an activist or a non-activist"
Where do you stand ?
What a well produced and compelling program. I had no intention of watching it but couldn't drag myself away.
The dedication and bravery of those activists in collecting their video and audio evidence is amazing.
My favorite bit was at the whaling commission where the Japanese delegate said the reason there are less fish in the ocean is due to the whales and dolphins eating them all!!!! Therefore we should cull them to fix the problem. I propose the reason there are less whales and dolphins in the ocean due to nations such as Japan fishing them into extinction. Maybe we should fix that problem by culling the Japanese fishing fleets.
Was also disturbing listening to the tales of the older Japanese butchers telling of the old days where they would see horizon to horizon full of whales, then proceed to kill them all and laugh.
Certainly was a powerful film. Being a slickly produced American doco I kept expecting the good news kicker at the end that since this film has been made the dolphin slaughter has been outlawed by the outraged Japanese population. Didn't happen, and Berry's efforts with the walking monitor are testament to that. That work is still to be done...
Pretty nasty stuff.
Not about Japanese slaughters or anything but dolphins all the same - www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080610092720.htm
The primary source of mercury is from wastewater that then settles in the sediment in the bay - interestingly the biggest contributor to mercury in waste water is dentistry!
I hope they all get mercury poisoning, turned my gut but I had to make myself watch it.
As I sit here eating my dolphin steak I now wonder that it may not have been an enironmentally friendly choice.
Missed the Cove, worth watching is it?
Its very disturbing well i found it to be. Pretty cowardly of the slaughterers. but hey im not a vegetarian.
Culture, diet choices, politics and propaganda aside, it was a fairly brutal method of despatching them, it makes the Indonesian abbattoirs look pretty good.
Didn't see it but have seen a few scenes in the past. Enough to make you cry.
Having had several dolphin encounters in the wild, both sailboarding and boating, where these critters fearlessly approach you just to check you out and have a play, I can't comprehend how people can club them to death. Never had any kind of "kindred spirit" experience with a cow or a sheep.
I think I'm probably like most people though- an inactive activist.
I am not even sure they consume the meat, they do not eat a lot of whale meat and they have a stockpile of it, it is not traditional food I heard they started to eat it during the war cause they had no choice.
The Jap gov. try not to upset the whalers.
I'm an inactive activist too. It wouldn't take much though.
We've got two Japanese cars. It's not been made unacceptable for me to do this yet but if a few adverts, t shirts etc
Sitting behind a bumper sticker in traffic that says
"I drive a Holden cos Yanks don't kill whales..."
"Ford - real men don't kill dolphins"
"Holden made in a country where people watch documentaries about how the Toyota-making country kills whales"
and other more creative things...
then I'd pause for thought when I bought my next one... by which time Toyota would have lobbied the Japanese government into submission and no one would be whaling.
Holden play the "Australian cars designed by Australians who watch Australian TV whilst drinking Australian beer from their eskis just before going surfing on Australian waves in Australia"
maybe they should talk down the Japanese a bit more....
In that Doco there was a statement made that even if the whalers where paid the same amont of money to stay home, they wouldnt accept it and would still go out to kill the whales.
It was a " matter of getting rid of vermin " according to them. Apparently a large part of the problem is they dont regard whales and dolphin as intelligent mammals, they regard them as fish.
Sad reality is that it starts again in a few days with the 'season' running from September through to March.
Maybe it's time for a revival of the 'Save the Whale' type campaign that resulted in the initial banning of whale hunting and the establishment of the IWC.
This was when the IWC actually had power and conviction... there was no shameless corruption and the buying out of votes with a Japanese Government created slush fund had not begun)
Or maybe greater support to the likes of Sea Shepperd could help put an end to the practice of slaughtering whales and dolphins ?
Now im a dolphin hugger like most and watched the Cove with disgust, but when you consider the issue from the point of view of the Japanese fisherman maybe you can see some logic. Here is a very populated country with minimal land for agriculture or livestock. The majority of Japenese consume fish as their major source of protien (185kg per head per year compared to the Australian population consuming just 19.8 kg per head per year) so the desire to protect their food source is understandable. Kinda like us culling Kangaroos because they are a pest in the National Parks or killing dingos because they are into our sheep.
So killing Dophins to protect your food source is logical but bloody hard to watch from your couch for a dolphin hugger like me.
Regardless of whether it is acceptable to kill dolphins, this method of slaughter is inhumane and unacceptable. It looked like the corralled dolphins were stabbed indiscriminately until they bled out. The amount of blood staining in the water of that cove would support that. It takes a lot of blood to colour a whole cove blood red. Death would have been slow and agonising, and the terror conveyed to the other captive dolphins unimaginable. These are intelligent creatures with vocal communication. Such a primitive killing method in such a technologically sophisticated society is unacceptable.
Dolphins, Whales, Tigers, Sharks - as humans its all game.
Its just Whales and Dolphins are intelligent and cute.
Video is a bit disturbing but should be watched.
^^ www.abc.net.au/news/2008-02-06/fisherman-raises-alarm-on-indigenous-dugong-hunt/1034052
According to that link 1600 Dugongs per year, ten years ago..
I would say for an endangered, slow breeding, life time partnering mammal thats 1600 too many..
www.theage.com.au/national/hunting-for-dugong-turtles-cruel-20100414-se6q.html#ixzz1WaNXeVBg
Native Papuan New Guineans ate native human for food.. Japanese are Native, killing Native animals..
The only reason Dugongs have survived 40000 years of introduced Homo sapiens, is simply because they couldn't catch them in bark rafts.. If they had tinnies with 20hp outboards dugongs would already be extinct..
We are unsustainably hunting Dugongs, we don't have a leg to stand on telling the Japanese they can't cull dolphins.. Which is unfortunate..
