The dolphin snatchers: Mail investigation exposes vile trade where animals are sold for up to £100,000 each to aquariums where they suffer unimaginable cruelty
For the men wearing wetsuits
wading in a shallow bay teeming with trapped wild dolphins, the decision
is as simple as it is ruthless. Running their hands carefully over each
dolphin’s body, they check to ensure the creature is free from scars,
particularly on the dorsal and tail fins.
At
first glance this human interaction with one of the few creatures said
to possess an intellect close to our own appears an act of caring
tenderness. But in reality, these are businessmen selecting their
merchandise for a multi-million-pound trade in live dolphins. The best
specimens (usually young females, or cows) are removed from their
families to be sold live for between £50,000 and £100,000 each to
aquariums.
The dolphins
they reject — the ones with minor blemishes on their skin — are
slaughtered where they are trapped in that cove at Taiji on the south
coast of Japan.
The cruel sea: A dolphin selected for sale last month in Japan. Others that are 'not suitable' are killed
In a frenzy of violence that has
shocked animal lovers and marine environmentalists around the world,
some are speared repeatedly by fisherman circling in motorboats whose
propellers often slice the dolphins’ skin. Others are simply held
underwater to drown.
Sometimes,
a metal pole is rammed into their blubber in the hope of shattering the
mammal’s spine. A cork stopper is then hammered into the hole where the
rod was forced in, to try to reduce the blood spilt into the sea — to
conceal the extent of the slaughter.
Invariably a few dolphins try to make a break for freedom and attempt to jump over the netting that seals off the bay.
However,
amid the blood-red waters almost all of them eventually succumb to
their fate. These barbaric scenes took place just before Christmas,
during a hunting season when Japanese fishermen ‘harvest’ dolphins to
supply to aquariums for human entertainment.
It
is estimated that for every wild dolphin caught to be trained to
perform tricks in captivity, around four times that number are
slaughtered.
The fishermen
then sell off the meat for about £10 a kilo. They see the creatures as a
menace because they pose a threat to the dwindling reserves of fish in
the Pacific Ocean.
But for
those that survive the slaughter, life might as well be over.The stress a
dolphin suffers as a result of being captured, transported and
imprisoned in a small tank dramatically reduces its lifespan.
The rejects are slaughtered for their meat. Some
are speared repeatedly by fisherman circling in motorboats whose
propellers often slice the dolphins' skin
Killer cove: The dolphins they reject - the ones
with minor blemishes on their skin - are trapped in a cove at Taiji on
the south coast of Japan
While wild dolphins live for up
to 60 or 70 years, captured ones often perish when they are as young as
eight, say environmentalists.
According to marine experts, some dolphins are so distressed by their capture that they commit suicide.
One
of the most vocal campaigners against the practice is also one of the
most knowledgeable — he is the very man who helped create and promote
the worldwide aquarium industry.
Ric
O’Barry became famous in the Sixties as the on-screen trainer of the
five dolphins that played Flipper in the popular U.S. TV series, which
was also hugely successful in Britain.
For
ten years he worked at Miami Seaquarium, where he trained the wild
mammals after capturing them on hunting expeditions in the Pacific.
But
when Kathy, the main dolphin that played Flipper, died in his arms
after apparently losing the will to live, he says it dawned on him how
cruel captivity is for such intelligent and social creatures.
Blood red: Japanese fishermen collect the bodies of harpooned dolphins from the bloody waters of a bay in Taiji
For the past 40 years he has
travelled the world highlighting the plight of dolphins in amusement
parks, and even releasing them from those parks into the wild, often
getting arrested in the process.
Three
years ago, he made a documentary called The Cove, which revealed the
truth about the ‘drive hunts’ that take place at Taiji in Japan. Yet
since then, the practice has continued unabated — as these photographs
demonstrate only too graphically.
O’Barry,
73, says live dolphins taken from the waters in Japan are shipped to
aquariums and ‘swim-with-dolphin’ centres mostly in the Far East.
Speaking from his home in Miami, O’Barry says: ‘Taiji is the number one
location to get dolphins for the dolphinarium industry — or what I
called “abusement parks”.’
Although
there are no international laws banning the shipment of live dolphins
to those countries prepared to accept them, O’Barry claims the dolphins
undergo terrible suffering.
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