Relentless Inquiry

Reading Divester today I discovered that Sept 20th is Japan Dolphin Day.

Not a celebration, alas, a protest. If I were up in SF, I would go and take part– at noon (lunchtime, which many folks can take away from work) people gather in silent protest at Japanese embassies to draw attention to the Tokyo-sanctioned slaughter of roughly 20K dolphins during 'dolphin hunting season' from October to April. Fishermen use boats to surround dolphin pods and drive them into shallow water, killing them by hand with tools and implements. They say they 'have to' kill dolphins because they compete and eat too many fish.

As the article points out, people get very wroth about the licensed 'scientific' whaling that is allowed by the Japanese– a thousand whales a year, and since the meat is leftover anyway (ha!) they allow it to be sold for consumption. Yet dolphins are cetacea, order tursiops– they're 'real' whales, albeit small ones.

Interestingly, the fishermen realize that if mainstream media attention focuses on this practice, that they will not be able to continue. They threaten and discourage journalists, and the Japanese public in general has no idea about the degree and brutality involved.

So take a minute and let any friend in Japan know about Japan Dolphin Day, and send the link to travel/tour industry friends as well. Once the practice is sufficiently well-known, it will no longer be sanctioned– fishermen will not be granted dolphin extermination permits by the government in Tokyo. We can make it happen.

Oh, and if you have a contact in any of the anime studios, see if they'd be interested in doing an anime series or manga series with a dolphin hero. Imagine 'Flipper', but with the dolphin as the main protagonist, maybe working for conservation (or, hey, fighting giant robots who are invading our oceans, whatever). If there were a dolphin anime or manga hero(ine) in Japanese popular culture, this dolphin killing would be snuffed out like yesterday's candles. Fight culture memes with BIGGER culture memes.