dinsdag 22 januari 2013

Dolphin prison Taiji


This morning, mother nature woke us up with the most beautiful song she could ever sing: The sound of rain, pooring down on Taiji. In most cases that means only one thing, that there will be no dolphin hunting ! But there has been exceptions, so to be absolutely sure, we drove to Taiji harbour to watch with our own eyes that all killerboats stayed in !

Dolphin Resort Taiji











What a blessing for the dolphins after such a bloody week. They could swim by, peacefull and unharmed and hopefully far away from the cost of Japan. Because the weather here in these parts of the world, can change in an instant, the next day can be a whole different situation again. We can only take it one day at the time. But today was a good day ! It started with rain-showers, enough to keep them in, but later in the morning the sun broke through, the clouds disappeared and we had a nice temperature high enough to walk outside in our T-shirts !
While only the day before, we were shivering in the cove in our winterclothes. Unbelievable.
So we had the day off, went for a coffee and breakfast in town and chatted 
together in the sun.









But even on the days that the cove stayes blue, the tragedy never stops here in Taiji. We went to Dolphin Resort, were the captive dolphins are held and trained.
It is a place of absolute sadness. It is the place were the dolphins and whales ripped from the ocean and their family have to serve their live sentence in prison. Because these mighty animals will never be free again. Their world, once the open ocean, is now reduced to a pen about the size of a swimming pool. And they are turned into circus clowns, learning silly tricks they have to perform later to entertain us, humans, in a dolphin show somewhere in the world. 
Unbelievable that people still think that this is funny and that a dolphin "smiles", because it is happy. The smile of a dolphin is natures greatest deception !

Striped dolphins

Bijschrift toevoegen
The animals are kept hungry, so it is quitte easy to let these intelligent creatures do what the trainers want in exchange for a dead fish. They were literally begging for food everytime one of the trainers was nearby with a bucket full of fish.
The animals are so bored that when there is no food around, they are chasing each other or make the same movement over and over again. They get ulcers for which they have to be treated with medication.

In the pens are different species held together. Striped dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins, Risso's and false killer whales, many are here for weeks or months !
There were 2 pilot whales held in one pen together with some bottlenose dolphins. One of them was here already for a long time, and it was in a very bad shape. It laid in the same corner of the pen, not moving at all and sometimes rolled on it's side. During my stay in Taiji, i was here for the second time in the last two weeks and the pilot whale was still in the same corner, it hardly had moved. It's mate swam around it, as if it tried to help and give comfort. It never left it's side. But i think this pilot whale gave up on life....

Pilot whale gave up on life
Doing silly things for dead fish...










The dolphin-hunts and killings all start here. The big cash is made in the trade of the so called "show dolphins", who are sold for tons of money ($150.000 or more) to dolphinaria all over the world. The other animals which are slaughtered, are "by-catch" ! They are often sold as whale meat for only 6 or 700 dollar each.
Begging for food











We can stop the animal cruelty and bloodshed here in Taiji, simply by not buying a ticket for a dolphin show or a "swimming with dolphins" program.
If we take away the demand, we can surely eliminate the supply !!
And without this multi-million dollar industry, it wouldn't be profitable anymore for those killers to go out every day, to hunt for dolphins !
Please keep sharing the news. Far to many people still don't realize what's behind that dolphins smile...



Thanks for all your support and thank you for reading my blog.


With love, Willem