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Kamikaze nation slaughters over 2,000 dolphins each year
Each year, between September and May, the mutant kamikaze turdletts kill more than 2,000 dolphins, as part of their “cultural heritage.”
The butchered dolphins are used for food, despite the fact that the meat is tainted with high levels of mercury.
The massacre occurs in Taiji, a coastal town of 3,500 people in the backwater Japanese prefecture of Wakayama.
While Most of the dolphins are killed for their meat, many are sold live to aquariums around the globe. The most attractive specimens are sold for more than $100,000 each.
‘Barbaric’ Killing Ritual
The animals are massacred using a technique known as “drive hunting” which the Sea Shepherd’s campaign coordinator for the Taiji project, described as “barbaric.”
“Using metal banger poles to create a wall of sound to disorient and deafen the pod… forces them to swim away from the boats and into the shallows of the killing cove,” she said.
“Once netted into the cove, the dolphins are literally wrangled and tethered, often sustaining bloody wounds [… ] The dolphin hunters use large metal rods to penetrate the spinal cord. This is hammered into the dolphins and small whales. The dolphins do not die immediately, but are left to either bleed out from internal injuries or drown in their own blood.”
Taiji Sea of Red. Click image to enlarge.
The slaughter sparked renewed global criticism after Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Japan, expressed her concern at the “inhumaneness” of the hunt.
“It’s eerie,” commented actress Shannen Doherty after visiting Taiji last week to witness the slaughter. “You wonder how they (the butchers) are able to go to bed at night […] I think being here rocks even the most hardened human being, because it is just atrocious.”
The annual hunt, which officially began on September 1, moved into high gear today.
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