The Screams of a Silent Killer

I am compelled to return to a subject about which I have spoken before. It is the ongoing tragedy being carried out by fishermen in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji. During six months each year, beginning in September, tens of thousands of dolphins are rounded up in small groups and herded into a tiny cove. There the Bottlenose Dolphins are separated from the rest to be sold to oceanariums around the world, dooming them to lives of imprisonment. But these are the ‘lucky’ ones. The rest, mostly Spinner and Spotted Dolphins, are then methodically butchered alive by these cold, cruel men who snicker and suck on cigarettes as the dying adults cry out to their young, and the terrified young scream in agony, in water stained red with blood. Ironically, the dolphin flesh, which contains mercury levels 2,000 times higher than what is safe for human consumption, is then sold under the guise of whale meat. In murdering the dolphins, the fishermen are thereby unleashing a silent killer upon unsuspecting consumers. My heart aches for the innocent victims, both dolphin and human, of these evil men and I pray that someday good and decent people in Japan will put an end to this atrocity forever.