Backstabber Report

The Killing Of Dolphins In Japan – Flipper Becomes Seafood

A village in Japan is killing dolphins. Intentionally, without mercy, and by the thousands every year. A documentary, The Cove, secretly recorded the massacre, which revealed just how horrific the killing of these beautiful and intelligent animals truly is.

For those of us who grew up on weekly television episodes of Flipper, a television series in the early 1960′s, we secretly wished we lived in an ocean cove and had a dolphin as a pet. Little did we know that “Flipper” was actually comprised of 5 female dolphins all trained by a man named, Ric O’Barry, who was the man behind the movie, The Cove.

Personally, I served 5 years in the U.S. Navy and during my time at sea there was no better sight than to see a school of dolphins leading or running alongside my vessel. I would lean on the railing for hours during my downtime to watch them for as long as they would travel with us. Sailors know it is a good omen for a safe voyage if you are in the company of dolphins.

I was also lucky enough to see a pair while swimming in a cove, when stationed on Guam. The appearance of a pair of fins coming toward me had my heart in my throat, as I wondered how much of me would be left when the sharks finished, but I quickly realized they were bottlenose dolphins. They swam around me for about 5 minutes and it was thrill, to say the least, coming to about 10 feet away at their closest. My goggles and snorkel gave me an appreciation of their size and beauty. I could see their intelligence in their eyes. Then they were gone. I swam that cove frequently again and never saw another appearance. It was the last time I was in the water with dolphins.

The human race has long acknowledged that dolphins are intelligent. They are mammals – not fish. They nurture their young and maintain a family structure. They communicate with each other and understand us, though we aren’t intelligent enough to learn how to understand them.

History has recorded numerous times when dolphins came to the aid of people at sea. That’s an undisputed fact. Dolphins intelligently provided assistance to people floundering in the ocean.

How do we, as the human race treat them?

We capture and train dolphins for profit and our amusement, having them perform tricks on command. The military once had a training program for dolphins, to use them as weapons for delivering explosive charges to the sides of enemy ships  – which would have been a suicide mission for the dolphin.

One village in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan uses dolphins for food. They say it is part of their culture. However, until the film was made, Japanese in other parts of the nation, outside the village, weren’t even aware that dolphins were being killed and that the meat was being sold in markets.

The “fishermen” of the village round up and drive thousands of dolphins into a hidden cove by banging steel poles placed in the water, herding the dolphins from the sea to the cove. Once there, nets are raised trapping the dolphins. After culling out the best looking dolphins for live sale to shows around the world, at a price of $150,000 on average, the remainder, including the youngsters, are killed with spears. The water in the cove – all of it – turns red with blood and the screams of dolphins are heard as the slaughter continues for hours. The dolphin meat is sold in supermarkets, often marked as “whale meat.”

The film also reports on the  “buying” by Japan, of favorable votes in the International Whaling Commission. The film indicates that while Dominica has withdrawn from the IWC, Japan has recruited the following nations to its whaling agenda: Cambodia, Ecuador, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Kiribati, Laos, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.  At the end of the film, O’Barry marches into a meeting of the Commission carrying a TV showing footage of the Taiji dolphin slaughter. O’Barry walks around the crowded meeting room displaying the images until he is escorted from the room.

This is what the documentary, The Cove, exposes on film. The movie follows former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry’s quest to document the dolphin hunting operations.  O’Barry helped capture and train the five wild dolphins who shared the role of “Flipper” in the hit television series of the same name. The show, a pop-culture phenomenon, fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins, influencing the development of marine parks that included dolphins in their attractions. O’Barry came to see the dolphin’s captivity as a curse, not a blessing. He was once arrested off the island of Bimini, attempting to cut a hole in the sea pen in order to set free a captured dolphin. Since then, O’Barry has dedicated himself full-time as an advocate on behalf of dolphins around the world.

If you want to see The Cove, you can VIEW IT ON NETFLIX as an instant stream to your computer. (Using our link will get you 1 month of Netflix for free.)

It’s worth the cost of admission… if you have the stomach for it.

The celebrities in the video below have joined the fight. You can too, by clicking HERE.