The next time your travel agent or someone recommends you spend some leisure time in Japan ask to go see the corporate conglomerate, commercial fishermen “bottle up” event which occurs in a nearby bay where they slaughter defenseless marine mammals by harpooning, knifing, clubbing and drowning some of the thousands of defenseless dolphins and species of “protected” whales that these fishermen kill yearly.
What thrilling, horrific sights and sounds as dolphins and whales are heard screaming from the torture, bleeding to death, so much so that the bay area waters actually turn red, and it is all an illegal activity in the eyes of the international community but not in Japan. How does the Japanese government respond to all this? By placing signs around the bay areas prohibiting anyone from photographing the graphic images and sending the pictures to newspapers and other media outlets around the world. Moreover, critics charge the corporate commercial fishermen are also seemingly allowed by government officials to attack anyone photographing the horrific events.
The event starts like this. The mammals are herded into the shallow bay using sounding rods below the water’s surface to interfere with the mammal’s sonar and navigational abilities and nets are then dropped trapping the dolphin or whale family in the shallow bay. One or two of these magnificent sea creatures are speared to force the others to rally around and assist their wounded family pod members which they have done instinctively for thousands of years. The fishermen know this and readily take advantage of the complex social inter-relationships of these commercially hunted marine mammals.
As the mammals start getting speared and frantically thrash about in the bay, you can see steam rise from the open wounds as the butchers hack off the mammals’ fins. Fighting to the death in the crimson waters the male mammals try and protect the newborn babies
and nursing mothers from the small boats of fishermen spearing and hacking to death the whole pod leaving nothing left but hundreds of bloody corpses, except maybe for a few babies that are captured and sold to aquariums and “swimming with dolphins” tourist attractions.
The Japanese government is accused of viewing the oceans as nothing more than an asset to be liquidated by greedy corporate conglomerates. Critics see red while the capitalists see only the color of money. Actually the profit is not made from the sale of the mammals’ meat but mostly comes from the sale of the baby mammals that are captured and sold to commercial marine parks, aquariums and other tourist attractions.
People caught photographing these bloody events have been branded “terrorists” by capitalists and government officials. But who really are the terrorists? If life is more important than profit and property, then what should those people be labeled that take life, threaten life and engage in the wholesale slaughter of innocent life?
There are seemingly only two paths to take. The greedy, self-centered destruction of life or the preservation of life for future generations.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: EARTH FIRST JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2004