Dolphin Outlook Weekly Newsletter


Dolphins Are Still Dying Five Years After the Deepwater Horizon Disaster
A new government-funded study attributes the high rate of marine mammal deaths in part to the BP oil spill.
lphins in the Gulf of Mexico continue to die at high rates five years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a new government-funded study.
The report, published in the journal PLOS One, could have a significant impact on how money the petroleum giant must pay to restore the Gulf will be used to save imperiled dolphins.
The study “indicates that the current multi-year marine mammal unusual mortality event (UME) in the Northern Gulf of Mexico has multiple groupings of high bottlenose dolphin mortalities and may be due to different contributing factors, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said in a statement.
“It’s been fairly clear that the oil played a role in this situation, and obviously more science is always needed, but I don’t know that this study will change the strategy for BP,” said Lacey McCormick, communications manager at the National Wildlife Federation. “I think they will continue to dig in their heels and deny the science the whole way through.”
The study nonetheless can help scientists determine how to proceed from here, McCormick said.
“BP will have to pay billions of dollars under the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act, and it raises the question of what do we do with this money,” she said. “We need to use science to determine how to use this money effectively on ecosystem restoration for dolphins and other species in the Gulf.”
The report, which was prepared by the National Marine Mammal Foundation and funded by NOAA, analyzed data from four groupings of dolphin deaths in the Gulf, three of which took place after the spill.
From February 2010 through the present, 1,305 dolphins stranded on Gulf shores, about 94 percent of which were found dead, making it the longest marine mammal die-off in the Gulf in recorded history.
Still, BP is repeating its long-held contention that the dolphin die-off prior to the spill is proof that the company is not to blame.
“The study on the Gulf’s ‘unusual mortality event’ (UME) reiterates what other experts, such as NOAA, have stated: the UME started three months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the cause or causes have not been determined,” BP said on its State of the Gulf website. “The study does not show that the accident adversely impacted dolphin populations.”


BP claims that various other factors likely caused all four die-offs, including cold water temperatures, freshwater runoff in Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, bacterial infestations, “and the increased public awareness and number of wildlife observers in the Gulf after the spill.”

But McCormick noted in a blog post that the study found that the 26 dolphins that died in Lake Pontchartrain prior to the spill had “tell-tale skin lesions” caused by freshwater and they were also exposed to unusually cold weather. “Therefore,” she wrote, “there is no reason to connect these earlier deaths with the ongoing deaths.”
NWF Gulf restoration scientist Ryan Fikes said in a statement: “BP executives need to quit bashing the science—and the scientists—and accept the company’s responsibility. It’s time for BP to quit stalling so we can get started restoring the Gulf.”
Rogue 'Electro-Fishing' Puts River Dolphins at Risk in Myanmar
Illegal tactic tests the marine mammals' traditional role in helping Irrawaddy River fishermen
Picture of Maung Lay preparing his net for fishing

Maung Lay, who has been fishing on the Irrawaddy River with the help of dolphins for 30 years, gets ready to cast his net.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR
On a pale blue dawn on the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (Burma), Maung Lay crouched at the front of his canoe, rapping the gunwale with a short stick. He then made a throaty, high-pitched purr, like the ringtone of an old telephone: his call for assistance.

Standing up, Maung Lay pulled a pleated net over his right elbow and shook the lead weights woven into its hem against the hull. At the other end of the 15-foot (5-meter) boat, an assistant splashed the water with an oar.On cue, the shiny gray flipper of a dolphin broke the surface and waved—dolphinese for: "We're ready to cooperate."
More dolphins arrived, exhaling heavily as they breached the surface, their mission to corral schools of fish around the canoe. After about a minute, a dolphin flicked its tailfin out of the water, a sort of aquatic thumbs up. Maung Lay responded by casting his net in a wide arc into the tea-brown water.
But when he hauled the net back in, it was empty—not a single fish.

Such scenes are increasingly common on the Irrawaddy River. That's because of "electro-fishing"—a new, and illegal, technique in which rogue fishermen send an electric current through the water to stun fish, making them easier to scoop up in bunches.

The tactic is depleting the fish stocks that feed the already endangered Irrawaddy dolphins and is thought to have inadvertently killed two dolphins. It also seems to have made some dolphins wary of helping legitimate fishermen round up fish, a longtime tradition on the river.

Range map of Irrawaddy Dolphin in Myanmar (Burma)
LAUREN JAMES, NG STAFF

SOURCES: IUCN; MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION AND FORESTRY 2013

Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) live in rivers, lakes, and seas from the northwest Bay of Bengal, in India, to northeastern Australia. In Myanmar, they're critically endangered. Two years ago, 82 dolphins were counted in the Irrawaddy River; today there are no more than 60.
Conservationists say that the increasing threat electro-fishing poses to Irrawaddy dolphins is reminiscent of what happened to the baiji dolphinsin China's Yangtze River. Those dolphins were declared extinct eight years ago, in part, it seems, because of electro-fishing.

You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

People along the Irrawaddy have fished cooperatively with dolphins for generations. The dolphins take their share of the catch by snapping up fish that try to wriggle free from the net as it's pulled up.
A 2007 report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) estimated that a good net haul with dolphin assist was about 60 pounds (27 kilograms). Without help from dolphins: a meager 11 pounds (five kilograms).

Maung Lay has been working with dolphins for more than 30 years, but he says the relationship is fraying. "There used to be trust between the dolphins and fishermen—they're no longer obeying our calls as they used to."

Picture of a dolphin in the Irrawaddy river, Mandalay, Mynmar
An Irrawaddy dolphin breaches the surface of the river. The dolphins are highly endangered and now number no more than 60.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

During the past few months, I've spent several days on a patrol boat run jointly by the WCS and Myanmar's Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries, and Rural Development. We've been reconnoitering a 40-mile (72-kilometer) reach of the river north of Mandalay that has been set aside as a protected area, where fishing with certain types of dragnets and gill nets is banned.

There was a time when the dolphins would wake a sleeping Maung Lay with a squirt of water to start the night's fishing. He would call out their names—Thangina and Thandima were his favorite dolphins.

These days the dolphins seem reluctant to heed Maung Lay's calls, and they rarely come anywhere close to his canoe.

I spent several frustrating hours watching Maung Lay cast his net in vain. Even at night, when the fish swim to the surface to feed, his catch was scanty—a fraction of what he routinely caught a decade ago.

"When I was young, I was happy—there were so many fish," he said.

Picture of dogs greeting Maung Lay as he comes back from fishing

Village dogs greet Maung Lay, a self-styled dolphin whisperer, at the end of a day's fishing. Maung has been teaching his son (in the canoe) how to fish with help from dolphins before that long-held tradition is lost.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

A New Way to Fish
The first electro-fishing boats appeared on the Irrawaddy around than ten years ago. Fishermen used small batteries and wire wound around bamboo poles to create a shock, whose radius was not much more than a yard. Even so, the method zapped a lot of fish and was cheap, and it spread like a virus along the river.

During the past three years, violent gangs of fishermen have been stalking the Irrawaddy. Their more sophisticated technique is to thread copper wires through trawling nets, and then connect the wires to banks of car batteries and high-voltage transformers. The heavy doses of electricity sent into the river by this method stun a whole lot more fish.

A significant part of the problem is the way the regional government parcels out fishing concessions on a year-by-year basis through competitive bidding, creating an incentive to pull a lot of fish out of the river as quickly as possible.

"It's clearly not a sustainable fisheries system," said a conservationist who asked to remain anonymous. Under that system, the conservationist said, "fishermen are trying to maximize their catch before their concession ends."

"When I started fishing in 1984, it was easy," Maung Lay told me. "There were many fish, and the water was clean. Since 2005, I haven't caught so many. It's electro-fishing."

Electro-fishing is illegal in Myanmar, carrying a three-year prison sentence and a fine, but those penalties aren't enough to stop the battery-powered marauders.

The "electro-fishermen" (who come from the same riverside villages as people like Maung Lay) often use the traditional calls to dolphins. If the dolphins respond and go to work rounding up fish, they get stunned too—and worse.

Picture of a fisherman showing one of the fishes he caught by using electric shock in the Irrawaddy river
These fishermen use electric current to stun fish. The method, called electro-fishing, is illegal on the Irrawaddy and is so efficient that it's depleting fish stocks.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

On December 4, 2014, two dolphins, a young male and female, were found dead in a protected stretch north of Mandalay, not far from Maung Lay's village.

"We saw no injury or sign of them becoming entangled in nets," said Kyaw Hlay Thein of the WCS, flicking through photos of the dolphins' carcasses on his cell phone. "We found no sign of toxics."
The photos show two slate-gray dolphins with bulbous heads and the signature dolphin grin being examined, then buried in the sandy riverbank. Their skin had already begun to peel away, revealing pink flesh underneath.

According to Kyaw Hlay, autopsies indicated that the dolphins were victims of electro-fishing.
"When they died, it felt like a member of the family was gone," Maung Lay said.

As the waterborne mafia has become more organized and aggressive, electro-fishing has become more lethal and widespread. Locals who try to stop electro-fishermen by reporting them to the police do so at their peril.

In U San Win's village, people tried to stop the electro-fishermen. "They threatened to burn down our whole village," he said. "We couldn't persuade them to stop, and now we're afraid to report them to authorities."

"The collaborative fishing will completely disappear if something isn't done," Kyaw Hlay told me.
Our patrol boat captain was too afraid to stop at one village where, after he informed authorities, several electro-fishermen had recently been arrested.

Maung Lay says he's concerned that the electro-fishermen don't realize—or care—that their unchecked avarice is pushing the dolphins toward extinction. "Regret always comes too late," he said.

Picture of a fish market in Mandalay
Fish prices at this market in Mandalay have risen dramatically in recent years, as stocks in the river have plummeted. Environmentalists blame overfishing, chiefly by electro-fishermen.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

Cooperative Covenant
Villagers along the river revere Irrawaddy dolphins, which are woven into their folktales. The animals are integral to their culture and identity.

The late dictator Ne Win, who was Burma's head of state from 1962 to 1981, is said to have bathed in dolphin blood to keep him youthful.

Records show that cooperative fishing with dolphins has been going on in Myanmar for at least 150 years. And the dolphin-fisherman bond has been so close that particular dolphins came to be associated with certain villages.

An 1843 edition of Zoologist: A Monthly Journal of Natural History notes that fishermen sometimes sued one another to recover their share of a catch in which "a plaintiff's dolphin [was] held to have filled the nets of a rival fisherman."

Over a lunch of rice and fermented fish paste in the village of Shein Makar, Maung Lay told me how, according to local mythology, this extraordinary relationship began.

There was once a Buddhist monk in Bagan, the ancient capital of what was to become Myanmar, who made it rain gold and silver. At the time, some struggling local fishermen were sleeping and missed the rain.

One day a wife of one of the fishermen was crying by the riverbank and said to her friend, "How can we feed our children and make enough money to send them to school if there aren't any fish?"
A pair of dolphins overheard the commotion and asked why she was crying. They made a covenant with the woman: "We will help find fish for you, but you have to be faithful and must not betray or harm us."

From that day forward, the dolphins have helped more than triple the size of the average catch of net fishermen on the Irrawaddy.

Picture of a girl fetching water in the Irrawaddy River

A girl fetches water from the Irrawaddy River, eulogized as the "Road to Mandalay" in Rudyard Kipling's 1892 poem, "Mandalay."

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

Other Threats to the Dolphins
Electro-fishing is a grave threat, but dolphin-watchers also worry about
logging, dredging, and gold mining.

Since the early 1990s, when Western governments imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar after the junta failed to recognize the landslide election of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the government intensified exploitation of teak and rosewood forests.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in two decades one-fifth of the nation's forest cover was stripped. Soil erosion increased, and silt washed into the Irrawaddy.
"There's more erosion and turbidity, which indicates how much mud is in the water," explained Myo Aung, a river dolphin expert for the government. "This kills the small fish and affects the food chain the Irrawaddy dolphin feeds on."

Meanwhile, river dredging to keep the waterway open for barge traffic and gold mining in government and rebel-held territory upstream of the protected area have added to the river's sediment burden.

Early last year, I visited a gold mine controlled by the Kachin Independence Army, a rebel group opposed to the central government, about 300 miles (500 kilometers) northeast of Mandalay. The bleak, treeless landscape looked like a World War II battlefield, and milky red water seeped into the local stream.

The water's burgundy color is a side effect of the extraction process, in which water under high pressure is used to free fragments of gold from the red-brown earth.

Worse still, mercury, used to amalgamate gold, is released into the river. Once there, it's ingested by fish and gradually accumulates at the top of the food chain, inside dolphins and people.

Spectrum, a local extractive industries watchdog group, stated in a 2014 report that although mercury levels for fish in the Irrawaddy are not known, it's highly likely that they carry "large proportions of mercury."

Picture of people unloading wood off a boat in the Irrawaddy River

People offload stacks of wood from a boat at the jetty in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city and last royal capital.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

Can the Irrawaddy Mafia Be Stopped?

Electro-fishing gangs, ever more brazen, have begun working in teams of up to a dozen boats, equipped with bigger engines, that can easily outrun river police and conservation patrols.
They've been known to attack officials with catapults loaded with sharpened nails and have even seized back electro-fishing equipment confiscated during raids.

Fishermen from several villages claimed government officials have even sold equipment back to busted gang members.

Han Win, a government dolphin expert, says that too often the gangs plunder the river unchallenged, and that even when electro-fishermen are arrested, they rarely get the maximum jail time. Local judges "aren't giving harsh-enough sentences," he said.

There's some reason for optimism, perhaps. A specialist river police team was established recently to combat a separate spate of river piracy around Mandalay. The police, the WCS, and the fisheries ministry have started patrolling together.

Over the longer term, Han Win told me, ecotourism may offer the best hope for the last surviving Irrawaddy dolphins. Dolphin-watching excursions will put tourist dollars into the pockets of villagers and, he suggested, help end behavior that threatens the dolphins.

A pilot program has already sent six groups of tourists upriver, giving them an intimate dose of local culture and cuisine.

"Even electro-fishermen may swap their livelihood for ecotourism," Han Win said, "because I don't believe they want to live on the dark side."

Picture of Maung Lay waiting by his boat to give a signal to the dolphins nearby, in the Irrawaddy river, Mandalay, Myanmar

Maung Lay calls out to a pod of dolphins, a throaty entreaty for them to corral fish around his canoe.

He bemoans the facts that electro-fishing is making it harder to enlist the dolphins' help and that his catches are diminishing. Electro-fishing also jeopardizes the dolphins, reducing their food supply and giving them what may be life-threatening jolts of electricity.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MINZAYAR

The Paradox of the Dolphin’s Smile: How Marine Parks Capitalize on Dolphin Misery


In the groundbreaking film, The Covedolphin advocate Ric O’Barry states, “A dolphin’s smile is the greatest deception. It creates the illusion that they’re always happy.”
It is this illustrious smile that allows humans to exploit dolphins for their own gains and carry on the fallacy that dolphins do indeed enjoy interacting with humans in captivity.
So when visitors pay for a ticket at an aquarium, they’re convinced that the dolphin they’re swimming with or having their picture taken with is actually smiling and therefore, radiate happiness. Of course, this is only a myth, and we are more than familiar with the power that myths have to perpetuate harm against animals.
Even when their mouths are smiling, their hearts could be breaking inside because these are dolphins kept in captivity and restricted from their natural habitat they prefer.
The Paradox of the Dolphin's Smile: How the Captivity Industry Capitalizes on Dolphin's Miseryloliljuah/Flickr

Kathy, the Dolphin Who Changed Our Understanding of Captivity Forever

The bottlenose dolphin is one of the most common captive species. Many people have grown up seeing dolphins used for entertainment, largely because of the hit 1960s television show, Flipper.
Ric O’Barry was the trainer for the dolphins in Flipper, but filming stopped when the dolphins grew aggressive. At the time, few understood why captive dolphins would suddenly turn aggressive. After working with dolphins over a long period of time, O’Barry began to realize that there was something extremely tragic hiding behind their smiles, and it seemed that these animals were actually depressed.
This was the case for, Kathy one of the dolphins Ric O’Barry trained.
“She was really depressed…,” O’Barry recounts, “You have to understand dolphins and whales are not air breathers like we are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. They can end their life whenever. She swam into my arms and looked me right in the eye, took a breath and didn’t take another one. I let her go and she sank straight down on her belly to the bottom of the tank.”
From that day on, Ric O Barry turned from dolphin trainer to dolphin campaigner.
He truly believed that Kathy had taken her own life. She was one of the several dolphins that played Flipper, but towards the end of her career as an entertainer, she lived in an isolated chamber. Dolphins are highly social beings, so life in solitary confinement is understandably devastating.

The Paradox of the Dolphin's Smile: How the Captivity Industry Capitalizes on Dolphin's Misery

How Captivity Impacts Dolphins

Dolphins are intelligent, self-aware animals – like human beings. When they are placed in a tank and forced to perform tricks every day, behavioral abnormalities begin to surface. They can become aggressive, towards both humans and members of their own species.
We have now learned that when in captivity, dolphins are not able to express their natural behaviors which causes them to experience extreme stress.
When in the wild, dolphins can swim anywhere from 40 to 100 miles with their pods a day, considering the fact that the average dolphin tank can be only 24 feet wide, it’s easy to see why they become frustrated in captivity. Captive dolphins are also separated from their families and pods and some, like Kathy, are forced to live a solitary existence which slowly causes their mental and physical health to degrade.
In addition to this, dolphins are used to living in saltwater environments. In captivity, they are conventionally kept in chlorine tanks. Chlorine and the other chemicals used to keep water “clean,” can cause irritation to their eyes and skin. In one instance, the dolphins at theClearwater Marine Aquarium began to lose their skin and could not open their eyes due to high levels of chlorine.
Despite marine parks’ attempts to kill bacteria with chlorine, dolphins who interact directly with guests at attractions are exposed dolphins to diseases they would not contract in the wild and many captive dolphins die prematurely. In the wild, dolphins usually live to be 50 years old, although some have been reached 90 years old. In captivity, 80 percent of dolphins will die before they reach 20 years old. Dolphins who are kept in marine parks, like SeaWorld, rarely survive for more than 10 years.
The Paradox of the Dolphin's Smile: How the Captivity Industry Capitalizes on Dolphin's MiserySimon_sees/Flickr

What Can You Do?

There are currently over 800 bottlenose dolphins are in captivity all over the world that need our help! You can make a real difference to a lot of dolphins around the world, stuck in tiny, chlorinated tanks by standing up against marine parks and other captive animal attractions. Here’s how:
  • Don’t visit captive dolphin facilities or any zoos that have captive marine mammals.
  • Share what you’ve learned with others and encourage them to boycott these facilities as well.
  • Support the work of anti-captivity organizations like Whale and Dolphin ConservationDolphin Project and Oceanic Preservation Society.
  • Remember, dolphin captivity isn’t unique to the U.S. it happens everywhere. To help international dolphins, sign this petition to challenge the European dolphinaria industry andthis petition to stop the dolphin slaughter in Taiji.

127 Million Reasons Why the Cove Dolphin Slaughter Continues



As the 2014–2015 killing season in Taiji, Japan, winds down, TakePart catches up with activist Ric O’Barry to talk about the future of the hunt.




Dolphins rounded up for slaughter in Taiji, Japan. (Photo: Courtesy Change.org)

Six years have come and gone since The Cove, the 2009 Oscar winner, cemented Ric O’Barry’s status atop the masthead of the global cetacean abolitionist movement.
While the number of dolphins killed and captured at the cove in Taiji, Japan, has beentrending downward in the wake of the worldwide attention wrought by the film, O’Barry is far from satisfied, refusing to take solace in such “one-off victories.”
O’Barry, 75, said he will not relent on his Taiji activism until he can stand “on that rocky shore, look out, and know [the drive hunt] is finally over.”
Until that day, O’Barry and his team of volunteers at The Dolphin Project will remain, as they have been since 2003, a highly visible, peaceful presence on the ground in the cove, monitoring and reporting the daily activities of the 30-odd fishers who conduct the killings. “There’s nothing easy about this fight, that’s for sure, and I’m not going anywhere, even at my age,” he said.
With the 2014–2015 Taiji dolphin-hunting season approaching its expected March 1 end, O’Barry spoke with TakePart from his home in Miami, engaging in a wide-ranging discussion on all things cove dolphin, including why the drive hunt still happens and what he believes will cause its downfall.
TakePart: The Cove premiered more than six years ago at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. You’re quoted as saying that when you sat in that theater in Park City, Utah, you were convinced the hunt would be over. And yet, here we are—it’s 2015, and the slaughter and capture of dolphins in Taiji is ongoing. What happened?
Ric O’Barry: Robert Redford told me afterwards it was the only Sundance documentary that he ever saw get a standing ovation. It won the U.S. Audience Award at Sundance and more than 100 awards at other festivals around the world, and at every screening there was a standing ovation. But it wasn’t the fanfare, nice as that was, that the film received that made me predict the hunt’s demise. It was because of how the film pulled the curtain back on the high levels of mercury in dolphin meat. But the hunt goes on. And it goes on because there are 127 million people in Japan who still have never seen the movie.
TakePartWhy haven’t they?
O’Barry: They don’t have access to it. Unfortunately, it never got to the Japanese people for free on the Internet. It went to a distributor, who owns the rights in Japan. And he hasn’t allowed it to be shown in the country for free. We—someone, anyone—would have to buy the rights back from this distributor, because every time someone puts it on the equivalent of their YouTube, it’s taken down immediately. And then there would have to be a campaign, a big one, to drive the Japanese to watch it. Then and only then will the pendulum shift. Why? The mercury angle. I cannot stress this enough.
TakePartHow much are the rights?
O’Barry: $30,000. Relatively speaking, that’s pretty cheap, considering how much we spend trying to stop this slaughter. We’re working on this particular facet of the issue; it’s not dead yet.
TakePartU.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy sent shock waves across the dolphin captive industry in January 2014 by tweeting her opposition to Japan’s drive hunts. You said at the time you wanted to get a meeting with her. Did you? If so, what happened?
O’Barry: I went to the embassy with a delegation including Izumi Ishii, a onetime dolphin hunter in the city of Futo who now runs sightseeing tours for dolphins. Ambassador Kennedy was out of the country. We met with her staff, and they were not very receptive, to say the least. I got the impression she got into trouble for speaking her mind. She was shooting from the hip, I think, and there was never any follow-up from her. Once we get the million signatures on our petition, we’ll go back to her and try again. We’re not giving up on Caroline Kennedy.
TakePartLast year The Japan Times ran an op-ed condemning the hunt.
O’Barry: The op-ed pointed out what Izumi Ishii’s been saying for years—the hunt is not a centuries-long tradition, as the fishers say. It’s not culture. It started in 1969. It’s not old enough to be cultural or traditional. Even if it was cultural or traditional, there’s no reason for it to continue. It was our culture not to let women have the right to vote. We don’t do that anymore. It was our culture to own slaves. We don’t do that anymore.
TakePart: Eight children from Thailand observed the hunt last month from the ground as youth cove monitors for your organization, The Dolphin Project. Talk to me about the importance of handing the baton to a younger generation.
O’Barry: The best way to bring about change for the common good is by example. We’re hoping these kids set an example and, in fact, are seeing other schoolkids, ordinary citizens, and Japanese citizens coming to Taiji. They’re sort of pioneers in that regard. Traditionally, it’s been activists over there—the Dolphin Project or whoever. But now we’re seeing ordinary people come. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.
TakePartWhat’s the state of the proposed marine park in Taiji?




O’Barry: They're moving forward with it. They have some sea pens built. Personally, I don’t think it will work. I don’t think tourists will go. Think about what they’re proposing: watching dolphins jump and do tricks in sea pens in a park, and then nearby fishermen are killing other dolphins. Really? Really?
TakePartMore than a year ago, Taiji fishers captured an albino dolphin that activists subsequently named Angel. Currently, she’s living in a tank in the Taiji Whale Museum. How’s she doing? What’s her fate?
O’Barry: I saw her just last month. I’ve been around dolphins for 50 years, so I can read her body language, and I can tell you her life is extremely boring. She’s trapped in a small tank with two other dolphins of a different species; they don’t socialize well. I’ve been told that she’s for sale for $500,000, and they’re waiting for a buyer. We talked about trying to raise the money and moving her to a sanctuary, but when you get into paying for hostages, dishing out ransom money—well, it doesn’t solve the problem. “Anguish” is the word that comes to mind; you just want to pull your hair out and scream, and that’s where we are with her.
TakePartWhat keeps you going year after year?
O’Barry: If I stopped to think about it, I probably wouldn’t be. I really believed when I saw the film at Sundance that it would end the killings. But I also assumed that everyone in Japan would get to see it. They haven’t. They don’t have the information we Westerners take for granted. If you want to solve a problem, you first need to make someone aware of it, and then they can do something. We have to, we must reach the Japanese people—even if they watch the film and only believe the mercury poisoning segments, that’s enough. That will end it.


The Cove: Sign the Petition to Help Save Japan's Dolphins

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The goal of Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project is to put an end to dolphin exploitation and slaughter once and for all. Dolphins are regularly captured, harassed, slaughtered and sold into captivity around the world – all in the name of profit. The Dolphin Project works not only to halt these slaughters in countries around the world, but also to rehabilitate captive dolphins, investigate and advocate for economic alternatives to dolphin slaughter exploitation, and to put a permanent end to dolphin captivity.

about the petition

In The Cove, a team of activists and filmmakers infiltrate a heavily-guarded cove in Taiji, Japan. In this remote village they witness and document activities deliberately being hidden from the public: More than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered each year and their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan, often times labeled as whale meat.

The majority of the world is not aware this is happening. The Taiji cove is blocked off from the public. Cameras are not allowed inside and the media does not cover the story. It's critical that we get the word out in Japan. Once the Japanese people know we believe they will demand change.

Stand with Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project and send a letter to President Obama, Vice President Biden and Kenichiro Sasae, Ambassador of Japan to the United States urging them to address this issue.
To: President Obama, Vice President Biden and Kenichiro Sasae, Ambassador of Japan to the United States
I recently heard about the documentary film The Cove and was alarmed to find out that more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are brutally killed each year off the coast of Japan. In addition, Japanese consumers are being sold dolphin meat, containing dangerously high levels of mercury, often labeled as whale meat.

I ask that you urge the Japanese government to revoke permits that allow Japan's Fisheries Agency to continue this heinous, dangerous and illegal practice.

I also urge American leadership to ensure that the International Whaling Commission includes the proper management of dolphins and porpoises and a comprehensive plan to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

Your immediate action is needed.

Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]