PLEASE TAKE ACTION TO #SHUTDOWNTAIJI IN 2013
the real dolphin killer behind 'The Cove'
Monday 8 July 2013 10:56AM Alastair Lucas
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/dolphin-aquarium-trade/4802144
On Tuesday the International Court of Justice will hear arguments on 'scientific whaling' and the dispute between Australia and Japan. But what about that other killing scandal—the dolphin fishing in Taiji made notorious in the film The Cove? Goldman Sachs banker Alastair Lucas has travelled to Japan to break down the economics of dolphin hunting, and campaign against the practice.
I had a vague knowledge of [dolphin fishing] through The Cove, a wonderful film I recommend to everyone—it won an Academy Award.
I hadn't seen the film in full and my daughter brought it to my attention, and that led to her deciding to go to Taiji to see these killings. I decided to go with her.
I spent, I have to say, the worst week of my life in the most horrible place in the world—this little town on the east coast of Japan. And we witnessed for a week these appalling atrocities.
The method through which the dolphins are killed is the cheapest way—that's the only conclusion that we can draw. Dolphins are large animals, it's quite hard to shoot them, and guns and bullets are expensive. The way they kill them is the most efficacious. This is a moneymaking operation—it's not traditional, it's not cultural, it's all about making money for a very small group of so-called fishermen in this town.
They herd the dolphins into this cove in a very traumatic way, using a wall of sound that confuses the animals. They keep them overnight, it's hard to know quite why they keep them overnight, but obviously they can't eat during this period, so they are disorientated and very hungry. Then you watch the buyers come. Buyers come from aquariums in Japan and China—we believe also the Middle East.
When the killing starts, you hear the screaming. You can't get within a couple of hundred metres but you hear the screaming. It's the most traumatic thing I've ever been a witness to or experienced.
ALASTAIR LUCAS
And the handsome ones, the juveniles who look good, not the babies and not the older ones, not the ordinary ones, but the handsome ones are bought for aquariums. And it may be that they are the unlucky ones, they get to live and they go in unregulated aquariums in those places. Of course Australian and American aquariums have long since banned buying a dolphin from Taiji.
The rest, those that aren't bought for aquariums, are butchered in a very traumatic way.
It's terrible to watch and it's actually terrible to listen to. They use a metal rod. It's based on pithing—we can all remember having to pith frogs in biology class. They seem to think that this is a humane way, they have argued that it is. What it involves is forcing a metal rod into the top of the dolphin, just behind the blowhole. They hold the tail, hold the animal at the nose and force this metal rod in. The animal goes into convulsions of pain.
And then they leave the metal rod in for a period. When they pull it out, they'll then hammer a wooden chock into the wound to prevent the blood staining the cove. We've all seen the photographs of blood in the cove—that no longer happens because they use these wooden chocks.
It's plainly enormously painful for the animal. Scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK and City University of New York have carried out quite an extensive study—their conclusions were that the method of killing was profoundly distressing, traumatic and painful, and it clearly is.
When the killing starts, you hear the screaming. You can't get within a couple of hundred metres but you hear the screaming. It's the most traumatic thing I've ever been a witness to or experienced.
The fishermen call them vermin. They run an argument that these are vermin of the sea that are eating fish stocks. There's no evidence of that, none whatsoever. In fact the evidence is to the contrary.
You'd liken it to a logging operation. They kick them, they push them, they throw them on the beach, they have no concern for these wonderful creatures as sentient beings, none whatsoever. They treat them like logs.
Dolphin meat is actually not a very important part of it. The economics is driven by the aquarium trade. So maybe 10 per cent of the animals go to the aquariums. It runs for six months of the year every day. Of the 20 dolphins, say, of a typical pod, maybe a couple of the handsome ones would go off to aquariums. They may sell for up to $150,000, $250,000. That drives the economics.
The meat is a by-product, and it goes into supermarkets in Japan. We searched a number of supermarkets for dolphin meat. It's hard to find. It most probably is relabelled as whale meat, which is more acceptable. Some of it apparently goes into pet food.
It's absolutely unnecessary. The quantity of animals, they are killing about 2,000 a year, that's just infinitesimal in terms of the food requirements of Japan. They are absolutely unnecessary for human protein intake.
The town is a dolphin town. It's bizarre. The town gates are big archways with dolphins on them. The ferries are great big dolphins with happy smiling dolphin faces and dolphin tails. They sell dolphin models in the supermarkets, and people go as a tourist town to Taiji to share in a dolphin experience. So they purport to love dolphins.
On our first day there we went to the cove and there was a pod trapped there in readiment for slaughter the next day. There was a man and his kids, and the father was showing the kids the dolphins and laughing and giggling. I don't speak Japanese, so I got my iPad out and translated through the iPad, 'Are you aware these animals will be slaughtered tomorrow?' He read it, he clearly understood but wanted nothing to do with it.
So it's a town built on false pretences. It has this ugly, ugly secret. It's not a secret anymore but it appears to the Japanese people a secret. Holidaymakers go about in their happy way in this happy dolphin town where in the early morning before the sun comes up the dolphins are slaughtered each morning.
I think that one doesn't want to get drawn into a position of saying the way the dolphins are killed is bad and every other way of killing animals is good, and I absolutely don't hold to that position. But I think we can make some distinctions about the intelligence and family nature of dolphins which puts them into a different category of animals. We know much about the social behaviour and the sheer intelligence of dolphins. Dolphins have a brain 1.7 kilos, the average human brain is 1.3 kilos.
Pigs also have intelligence. But the rules for abattoir killing are for humane killing using stunning. Ensuring that an animal is not aware of its impending death and that it's stunned is the foundation of modern abattoir killing. We all know that doesn't always happen, we are all very aware of what happens to some of our animals in the live export trade.
But the way dolphins are first herded, so they have an awareness of their impending death 24 hours before they are killed—these animals know something terrible has happened, they've been trapped in these tiny enclosures. They know something very bad is happening. And then the animals are killed one by one, each animal takes up to six to eight minutes to die. The others can hear the screaming.
We watched a pod of pilot whales being killed, and those animals are very hard to kill, it can take 20 minutes to die. These animals have such understanding of their fate. The method of killing is so profoundly cruel, it does distinguish it from the killing of farm animals.
My daughter and I have created, with the help of other people, an organisation called Australia for Dolphins. We've had just wonderful support so far. We'll be launching a website and we hope to get as many members as possible, and we're going to use the money lawfully and respectfully and peacefully to advocate for these wonderful animals.
Some wonderful Australians have agreed to support us, people like Fiona Stanley and Gus Nossal, and sports people like Pat Rafter and Sally Pearson, Dawn Fraser, Olivia Newton John, Michael Caton, just wonderful people who are concerned, have agreed to lend their support. We're enormously gratified by their support, and I'm embarrassed about leaving off a whole bunch of people who've agreed. So we will have a wonderful backing of people.
We feel very strongly that the Japanese government is at a tipping point. The embarrassment on this issue is building and building, and a number of people who are expert in this area have said that a strong movement from Australia might be the tipping point which stops the whole thing. We really think we have a possibility of bringing this to an end.
Alastair Lucas is the Chairman for Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs Australia. You can find Australia for Dolphins website, soon to be relaunched, at afd.org.au. This article is an edited transcript of Mr Lucas’s comments on The Science Show.
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