"You think we smile all the time, don’t you? Hey, just cause we don’t have any facial muscles and our jaw is fixed in a permanent shape, doesn’t mean we can’t get pissed off!"

"Lighten up, Doak, you’re getting us started on the wrong flipper."

"Swee you! Ever since the Mardocs scanned that financial planner dude into you, you been too mellow…"

"Now, now, boys, let’s not get started or we’ll never tell the people about endangered dolphins."

"Nina’s right. I’ll start. Folks, we’re gonna tell you about man, dolphins, and whales from our point of view. Why don’t you tell it, Nina?"

"OK, Mookeeo. I’ll start with something good first. You know, I like to think positive, don’t you boys?"

"Yeah, but this ain’t no pretty story."

"You’re so right, so let me get started…First, there are some excellent environmental organizations around the world that try to protect us. For that, we thank everybody in environmental organizations working on our behalf. "Let’s start with the California gray whale because they recovered from the brink of extinction twice. Huwees used to slaughter them with explosive harpoons, now they pet gray whales from rubber boats in Baja. Other species haven’t fared as well. The oceans were home to thriving populations of whales and dolphins before man decimated their populations for lamp oil, pet food, and sport. In 1900 there were 250,000 blue whales. One hundred years later, the largest animal ever to live on the planet was reduced to a struggling population of 3,000. The story is the same for other whales: right whales. bowhead, blue, fin, sei, humpback, and sperm whales are all listed as endangered or vulnerable by the World Conservation Union, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). "Japan and Norway continue to persuade the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to allow them to continue hunting whales under the thin veil of "scientific research." Iceland just started too. Iceland wants it both ways – they want the whale watching business and the whale killing business. Presumably, if the IWC forbid ‘scientific research’ these nations would defy international opinion and do it anyway."

"Yeah, Japanese and Norwegian diplomats avoided me and John at the U.N. That’s in our story ‘The Dolphins’ View.’ Maybe they avoided us because they’re ashamed about what they do."

"Ashamed? They don’t have no shame. The whales end up on supermarket shelves in Japan! So do dolphins!

"Cool it, Doak. Let Nina tell the story."

"Thank you, Mookeeo…Dolphins don’t just get slaughtered for tuna fish or cat food. Some countries do it for sport. Japan and the Faeroe Islands (a province of Denmark) kill thousands of dolphins a year; so do Chile, Peru, and Venezuela."

"Tell them about Japan, Nina. How the ocean turns red with dolphin blood."

"Folks, how many of you know that dolphins get slaughtered every year in Japan? They try to hide it, you know and when we have to dive into something like this, it’s difficult for our fun loving dolphinalities to surface."

"You’re right, Mookeeo. This is difficult for us to report. We didn’t want to talk about it but our writer insisted you had to know. Then we asked Doak to sit this one out cause he would just…

"Hey, I’m trying my best to be cool, ain’t I?"

"OK, OK. This is so gross, it’s hard to tell it straight and true but I’ll do it…Dolphins are driven into the shallows. They pitch and roll, jammed and trapped in shallow waters, quivering in freight, whistling in distress. Then a hook is sliced into their side, they’re winched ashore, and their bodies are slashed."

"That’s right, Nina. Witnesses have seen their hearts torn out and tossed on the beach…still beating."

"And what about the American dolphin trainers who encourage the Japanese dolphin slaughter cause they capture some of those dolphins and sell them?"

"And the rest of them get butchered and killed. It makes me sick just thinking about it!"

"Hey writer! We really don’t want to talk about this! Besides you already posted the story in The Dolphin News."

"OK, Mookeeo. I’ll attach it to the end of your report too and I’ll include some things people can do if they want to take action to stop the slaughters."

"OK, you do that! "You know, Nina, maybe huwees do these things because they don’t think of us as sentient beings, with feelings just like them. Maybe we should talk about that."

"Good idea, Mookeeo. Let’s appeal to huwees who don’t know us. Most huwees don’t know dolphins have bigger brains than they do, so they don’t think we’re intelligent. They hear our songs but they don’t think we can communicate. Their scientists have observed the bond between a dolphin mother and calf, but huwees don’t think we can love."

"You can tell them about that, can’t you Nina?"

"Huwees can read about it in ‘The Dolphins’ View.’ Let me continue here. Fishermen have seen us supporting a disabled member of our pod, holding him above the water with our backs so he can breathe but most huwees don’t think we feel grief. Boaters see us riding a bow wave and huwees see us reaching for the sky, breaching above the waves. Don’t they think we know joy?"

"We know lots of joy, that’s in our nature."

"Well, we ain’t talking about joy in these pages, are we?"

"Nope, we’re not showing huwees our fun loving dolphinalities here."

"That’s for sure. Quite a contrast to ‘The Dolphins’ View,’ isn’t it?…this is where we let out our anger. Let huwees know we feel everything they feel."

"Well, let’s cool down or huwees are going to get turned off and go away."

"You’re right, Nina. Let’s mellow it down."

"Mellow? You’re too sweeing mellow…"

"Let’s not get into that, boys. How about focusing on endangered dolphins and porpoises?"

"That all right with you, Doak?"

"OK, dude."

"The vaquita, baiji, Indus and Ganges susu, boto, franciscana, tucuxi, and Hector’s dolphin (especially the subspecies Maui’s dolphin) are all listed as endangered or vulnerable by the World Conservation Union and the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). Populations of Atlantic humpbacked and Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins are also unknown and depleted. Let’s talk about the three most endangered species."

"How about talking about why they’re endangered."

"We already did that in our Environmental Hazards discussion."

"That’s OK, we can do that first and we can add a few things we forgot to include in that discussion too. Let’s see, over fishing is a big factor, habitat destruction, drowning in fishing nets and other debris, bycatch, and illegal hunting all contribute to depleted populations of wild dolphins. "All creatures need food, air, water, and other environmental factors composing their habitat. When huwees build beachfront housing, bridges, docks, and harbors, they take over areas that belonged to ocean life. As their population increases, more speedboats, water skiers, and jet skiers take over parts of the ocean where dolphins live, upsetting our patterns of hunting, sleeping, and reproduction, That, plus taking so many fish that they can’t reproduce and replenish their stock so we don’t have any to eat, is habitat destruction."

"Tell them about ‘bycatch’ and illegal hunting too, Nina."

"OK, Bycatch is the unintentional capture of sea life in commercial fishing nets. Victims include sea turtles, birds, dolphins, juvenile fish, squid, and other animals. To make matters worse, it’s extremely wasteful because the unintended animals caught, which are usually dead, are thrown away. Illegal hunting doesn’t happen that much in the United States anymore, but it happens more often in other countries, especially Japan. Sometimes it’s for sport, but most commonly some fishermen have the idea that we are taking ‘their’ fish and they shoot us."

"What about pollution? When toxic chemicals enter streams and rivers on their way to the sea, they contaminate fish and crabs and other animals. Farther up the food chain, when we eat them, the toxins concentrate in our bodies and we get tumors… You know huwees think the white beluga whale is so cute, but when they die in the Saint Lawrence River, the Canadian government considers them toxic waste."

"How about PCBs? Tell them about the dolphin holocaust too."

"You know I don’t like to talk about that after what I went through in ‘The Dolphins’ View.’"

"Lighten up on her dude. The dolphin holocaust is in our story too. Give her a break…"

"Hey! I was with her, not you, and since when did you become Mr. Sensitive?"

"Swee! Don’t get so gnarly! You know why I couldn’t be there…"

"Shut up! Both of you shut up! I said I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t I?"

"OK! OK! What about the latest threat, low frequency active sonar (LFAS)?"

"Yeah, the U.S. Navy wants to get into the whale and dolphin killing business too!"

"They want to use LFAS to detect silent submarines but its transmitted at very high decibel levels and travels over long distances. For huwees, the noise level would be like standing 20 feet away from a space shuttle launch rocket at takeoff. For us, it can destroy our hearing, our greatest and most sensitive sense. Without it we’re blind, we become disoriented, vulnerable to predators, and we strand on the beach."

"Yeah, but some huwees say it hasn’t been tested."

"Yeah, right! They didn’t test PCBs before they used them either, did they? That’s what we’re talking about. The great void, the lack of stewardship of the oceans. They’re going to commit speciescide now.

"Speciescide?"

"Yeah, they’re going to wipe out a whole species before they’re satisfied that LFAS is lethal to us. As a matter of fact, it’s not just whole species, it’s whole families of species – all the whales and dolphins. Wipe us all out. What do they care?"

"Don’t you think you’re being too hard on them? The Natural Resources Defense Council and Ocean Conservancy are trying to stop the Navy in court. Earth Island started ‘Dolphin-Safe’ tuna and now they’re promoting a ‘Friend of the Sea’ program."

"Stop bickering boys, or I’ll never finish. Let me talk about the three most endangered dolphins and porpoises now. Let’s focus on the Vaquita, Baiji, and Hector’s Dolphin."

"Just like them to name a dolphin after themselves. Betcha most of them never heard of them. Betcha they don’t even know there are river dolphins."

"May I continue, please?"

"Oh, OK, sorry about that."

"Twenty million years ago, dolphins moved from the ocean to live exclusively in the Yangtze River. The Baiji, also known as the Chinese River Dolphin, can be found in counter-currents near channel convergences, sand bars, and islands. Their dorsal region is blue-gray, fading to white on the ventral part of their body, with a long, narrow beak and small eyes set high on the side of their head. Their size ranges up to 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) and 135 to 250 kg (300 to 500 lbs). Females are larger than males. What do you think of that, boys?"

"So?"

"Well Mookeeo, wouldn’t it be more difficult for bottlenose bulls to gang up on dolphinas if dolphinas were bigger and more powerful?

"Never thought of that."

"See boys? Just like the huwees, it’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?"

"Huh? I never…yeah right, stop teasing the huwees, Nina. You’re always teasing, aren’t you?"

"Gotta have some fun, boys, especially when we talk about something serious, like this. Baiji are considered the world’s most endangered cetacean. Baiji are revered in Chinese myths as a reincarnation of a drowned princess and as a galloping white horse flying across lakes and rivers with divinities on its back. More recently, a local brewery produced Baiji Beer. Despite this adulation, their populations shrank from 6,000 in the 1950s to less than 100 today."

"Tell them why, Nina."

"Habitat degradation is one factor. Dams block access to tributaries and lakes where Baiji used to feed and raise their calves. They don’t even enter Lake Dongtinghu in the spring floods anymore because sedimentation ruined the lake for them. Pollution from toxic chemicals, deafening noise and propeller collisions from increased boat traffic, fish hooks, nets, and lines, dynamite explosions from dredging and bridge building. All those things contributed to decimate them. They can’t replenish their population fast enough to keep pace with the ecological destruction in the Yangzi River. "One part of the Chinese government wants to preserve them but another part of the Chinese government, like the builders of the huge Three Gorges Dam, doesn’t think saving Baiji is their responsibility. There are so few of them now, it may be difficult for them to find each other. According to some experts, they will probably vanish within a few decades, becoming the first dolphin species driven to extinction at the hands of man."

"Wow, extinction, that’s like forever. No more Baiji…"

"That’s right, and the Vaquita may not be far behind. They are classified as endangered by both the Mexican and U.S. governments and as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. Vaquita are the smallest porpoise in the world, about 1.2 to 1.5 meters long (less than 5 feet) and 55kg in weight. They can only be found at the northern end of the Gulf of California (AKA Sea of Cortez). Besides their small size, they have a dark patch around the eye and dark coloring under the mouth. If porpoises had hair, huwees would think they had a beard.

"Vaquitas are victims of gillnets set for sharks, rays, mackerel, and chano. They die in commercial shrimp trawls too."

"Huwees call that ‘incidental mortality,’ don’t they? Amazing all the different words they have for killing us."

"You’re right, Doak. Vaquitas tell them that by their body count. There are only about 100 to 500 left."

"How many Hector’s Dolphins are left?"

"They’re classified as endangered too. There are about 3,000 to 4,000 left, down from 10,000 about five years ago."

"Wow, that’s a rapid decline. What caused it?"

"What do you think? Fishing techniques – in this case, ‘entrapment fishing’ – lowering nets into the water and herding fish. Hector’s dolphins eat the same fish the fishermen are trapping, so they get caught in the net, tangled attempting to escape, and drown."

"What do they look like? Where are they found?"

"Only off the coast of New Zealand. There are only about 100 left near the north island, most of them live off the south island. The north island dolphins have recently been classified as a separate subspecies and named Maui’s dolphin. That classification makes the population of Maui’s dolphin lower than the Vaquita. "Hector’s dolphins are small too. Their size ranges from 1.2 to 1.5 meters long and they weigh between 50 to 60 kg (75 to 130 pounds). In some ways, they look more like a porpoise because they don’t have a rostrum like most dolphins. They have very distinctive colors, mostly light gray, but they have a dark patch extending from their snout across their eye to their flippers, and their ventral region is white. One of their most distinctive features is a round, black dorsal fin. Their flukes are small too.

"So, what can people do to save dolphins?"

"’The Dolphins’ View’" includes 10 things people can do to save the earth. To save dolphins, I’ll list six things here:

1) "People can reduce, reuse, and recycle, so trash doesn’t end up in the ocean. 2) "Properly dispose of toxic substances like paint and motor oil at special collection sites. Never pour them down a drain where they will start a journey to the ocean. 3) "Participate in ocean cleanup day. 4) "Join an environmental organization and participate in their activities. 5) "Do not support dolphin prisons in marine parks. Take a whale and dolphin-watching trip instead or watch us on the Discovery channel or Animal Planet. Let us be free to live our lives, just like you’re free to live yours. 6) "Write and Email your congressional representatives, senators, and state legislators supporting laws and funding that keep the ocean clean and protect marine life."

"Good job, Nina."

"Yeah Nina, sure glad we didn’t lose you to the golden waves in ‘The Dolphins’ View."’

A Dirty Secret:

Dolphin Trainers Participating in Japanese Dolphin Slaughters

Witness to a Dolphin Capture

What You Can Do

An effective way to stop these inhumane and brutal killings is to protest them. An even more effective way is to start a boycott of goods and services provided by those engaging in the activity and by the host nation, which can pressure them to stop. Share your protest with your friends and neighbors. Please send a letter or an email to the following, expressing your opposition to the horrendous slaughter of dolphins in Taiji. Better yet, make a petition. If you’re a student, ask everyone in your class to sign it. If you’re working, ask your coworkers to sign it. Mail a copy to your representatives in Congress and the Senate. Here is a sample petition that you can modify as you see fit:

Petition

(Address one to each of the parties below).

Dear Sir or Madam:

We are aware that your annual drive fishery in Japan kills and slaughters dolphins every year. We believe dolphins are a sentient species and deserve their rightful place in the ecosystem without harm and interference from humans. We hereby protest your annual dolphin slaughters and ask that you halt them immediately. We will boycott all Japanese goods and services until these slaughters are stopped.

Name Address

Name Address

Name Address Send your comments to:


Taiji Fishery Cooperative
3167-7 Taiji, Wakayama, 649-5171 Japan
Fax:+81-735-59-2821
Email: taijitfc@cypress.ne.jp

Mr. Yoshiki Kimura, Governor of Wakayama
Prefectural Office of Wakayama 1-1 Komatsubaradouri,
Wakayama-shi, Wakayama-ken 640-8269 Japan
Fax:+81-73-423-9500
Email: teigen-s@office.wakayama.go.jp and e0001003@pref.wakayama.lg.jp

Embassy of Japan in Washington, DC
Ambassador Ryozo Kato
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2520 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: (202) 328-2187

Prime Minister of Japan
Mr. Junichiro Koizumi
1-6-1 Nagata-cho 1 Chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
100-8968 JAPAN
Email: http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment.html

Minister of Fisheries
Mr. Yoshiyuki Kamei
1-2-1 Ksumigaseki 1 Chome
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8907 JAPAN
Fax: 81-3-3502-8220
Email: white56@maff.go.jp

Wakayama-ken Kankoushinkou-ka
(This is a tourism section in Wakayama prefecture, important becauseTaiji is a popular tourist destination.)
Fax: 81-73-432-8313
Email: e0624001@office.wakayama.go.jp

"Want to learn more about us? Share our adventure in the huwee world and discover our dolphinalities. Read ‘The Dolphins’ View.’"