So today was a red cove day in Taiji, and I just need to make sure everyone knows about this pod of six Risso’s. Not how they died, but how they spent their last hours.
These little dolphins fought like goddamn fucking lions. Time after time after time, they kept diving under the banger boats and the skiffs and that god awful noise and making a break for the open ocean, only for these big, powerful boats to run them down again. They fought for hours refusing to let themselves be herded into the cove before the hunters finally got fed up and broke out the nets.
You guys, they dove under the nets.
I’ve never, never seen a pod do that. The cove monitor had never seen that. And it was only half a dozen further rushes for freedom later that the net came out again, and that’s when they got them. They drove them under a tarp, tethered them by their tails, and drove metal poles behind their blowholes in a clumsy attempt to sever their spines.
Dolphin meat is dripping with mercury and barely in demand in Japan, and the hunts run on the sale of live dolphins to places like China and Russia. They ran down these six dolphins long, long after it became profitable to do so, just for the blood sport of it.
If you can afford to make a huge fucking ass deal about this, please do. Spread it around, spread it on Chinese, Russian, and Japanese social media. Hell, call your Japanese embassy if you can! And obviously, don’t buy a ticket to a dolphin show.
But if nothing else, please remember these six dolphins, who showed more courage than their killers will ever demonstrate in their lives.
