Do Dolphin Trainers Condone Taiji’s Dolphin Hunts?

We’ve asked ourselves the same question – over and over. How can dolphin trainers work alongside dolphin hunters, with an aquarium industry basing their business on claims that the dolphins’ welfare is their top concern?

Let’s explore this a little deeper:

In Taiji, Japan commencing in September for approximately six months every year, hunters scour the local coastline in search of dolphins to take into captivity, or to kill for their meat. Once a pod is found, the mammals are driven, or herded into the shallow waters of the Cove. Here, the exhausted and often injured animals await their fate.

Typically, the captivity industry prefers young, unblemished females, so divers engage in an aggressive sorting process, separating these dolphins from the rest of the pod. Trainers will make the final decision on which animals are taken for “life” in captivity. The ones that are not selected may be released back into the open ocean, or often, suffer another fate: dragged under the tarps and slaughtered.

Dolphins are aggressively herded into the shallow waters of the Cove where they may be inspected by trainers for the purpose of being taken captive, Taiji, Japan. Credit: DolphinProject.com

Bottlenose dolphins run over by skiffs during captive selection, Taiji, Japan. Credit: DolphinProject.com

It’s unimaginable to think that trainers entrusted with caring for captive dolphins – mammals who have been yanked out of the ocean and away from family members, for the sole purpose of performing tricks for paying audiences – could make a swift decision to sentence other dolphins to death.

It just doesn’t make any sense, and perhaps points to something even darker. Are the aquariums which still purchase dolphins from Taiji’s drive fishery merely putting their proverbial heads in the sand, ignoring the ominous implications of buying dolphins from Japan? Or do they truly not care that they are perpetuating the brutal drive hunts that have taken the lives of thousands upon thousands of mammals, in one form or another?

There is a simple solution: one needs to make a choice whether to support an industry where live dolphins are mere commodities, or choose not to buy a ticket to a dolphin show. There is another choice that needs to be made, too, this one, by the dolphin trainers who attend the hunts in Taiji. We hope that ultimately, ethics will overrule occupation, but until then we will defend the rights of dolphins and other whales who continue to be exploited worldwide.

LEARN MORE about Dolphin Project’s work in Taiji, Japan.

Related:

Taiji Dolphin Sales are Being Revealed

Featured image: Bottlenose dolphin secured to skiff, after being ripped away from its pod and the open ocean for “life” in captivity, Taiji, Japan. Credit: DolphinProject.com