The cove why dolphin slaughter

They hold a hundred to cetaceans between them and regularly are added to from the drive hunts, according to the Japan Times. At the Whale Museum, visitors can buy whale and dolphin meat from the gift shop to snack on while watching dolphin shows. For a variety of cultural and legal reasons , public protest is less common in Japan than in some other countries.

Foreigners often protest the hunts with bloody and graphic imagery. Meanwhile, Japanese-led protests, more restrained, are becoming increasingly common. Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation.

Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to NGP. WildlifeWatch natgeo. Natasha Daly is a staff writer at National Geographic where she covers how animals and culture intersect. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. All rights reserved. Animals Wildlife Watch. Bottlenose dolphins, caught on the first day of Taiji's infamous dolphin hunt, are held in the cove, while fishermen arrange nets. Members of the coast guard, in hard hats, observe.

Share Tweet Email. A pod of striped dolphins is driven into the Cove for slaughter, Taiji, Japan. Credit: DolphinProject. Bloodied striped dolphin panics after being driven into the Cove for slaughter, Taiji, Japan.

Horrific suffering at human hands: bleeding dolphin is lead to its death, Taiji, Japan. Horrific suffering at human hands: bleeding dolphin is guided to its death, Taiji, Japan.

Several times during the interview he refers to kujira no megumi — literally, the blessing of the whale. Typically, fishermen pursue pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles against their boats to confuse their hypersensitive sonar, before herding them into a narrow inlet.

There, they are either slaughtered for their meat or selected and sold for large sums to aquariums and marine parks. A fully trained dolphin can then fetch more than 40, US dollars if sold overseas, and about half that in Japan. While making her film, Sasaki concluded that the debate over Taiji is an irreconcilable clash of cultures — between the global, and Western-led, animal rights movement and local traditions steeped in religion and ancestor worship.

Kai dismisses claims that that he and other fishermen employ a singularly cruel method to kill the dolphins.

In response to criticism, fishermen now dispatch the animals by inserting a knife into their neck, severing their brain stem — a method he claims is the most humane possible, but which some experts have said does not result in a painless or immediate death. But for the next two months, Taiji hunters can still hunt dolphins using harpoons on the high seas. The Japanese government and local hunters claim the hunts as Japanese tradition.

There are dozens of dolphinariums in Japan, and the expansion of aquariums in China has led to a demand for Taiji dolphins. The COVID pandemic, which has led to the closures of many aquariums, may eventually dampen the enthusiasm of Japanese and Chinese people for live dolphin shows.