Today is Cetacean Day, a day when countries around the world honor whales, dolphins, and porpoises, the intelligent and sentient beings your scientists call cetaceans. If you were not aware of this, you're not alone. Based on the limited coverage in global news media, apparently only the people of Malta and Hawaii are celebrating this event. And it will most certainly get no support in Japan, Iceland, and Norway—three countries who continue to slaughter cetaceans—other than perhaps by having the men in rubber aprons standing on decks awash in whale blood, sharpen their long knives and ring the dinner bell even more loudly.
If I seem cynical, I am. Despite the good intentions of whoever it was who decided to make April 14 a day to celebrate the beauty and majesty of my kind, this noble but little-recognized effort pales in comparison to the continuing cruel and unusual treatment that cetaceans are subjected to around the globe. And I am not just referring to the butchery cited above: I am also talking about the imprisonment of Belugas, Orcas and Bottlenose Dolphins, among others, who are confined in tiny concrete tanks where they live shortened lives of mindless boredom as the free spirit that was hard-wired into them at birth flickers and slowly dies. All in the name of entertainment, masquerading as ‘education’. Sad. So very sad.
So if you really care about my kind on this day set aside by someone somewhere to honor cetaceans, the best thing you can do is to sit down and write a letter to your government, and demand that it stops the killing and captive display of whales, dolphins, and porpoises around the globe. If not you, who? And if not today, when?
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