Your Dolphin Outlook Weekly Update!

Great News for Dolphins and Whales!
BREAKING NEWS ON THE JAPAN DOLPHIN FRONT
It was just announced that Japanese Aquariums will cease buying live captive dolphins caught in the cruel Taiji drive fishery.  This a huge news in the effort to stop the Taiji dolphin killing and capture operation.
The decision came as the result of building pressure on the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) that resulted in their vote to suspend the membership of the Japanese Zoos and Aquariums unless they ceased all sourcing of dolphins from the bloody drive hunts in Taiji.
This development is a stunning blow against the dolphin killers of Taiji.  If the Japanese aquariums follow through with this new ban on these captive dolphins, it will take millions of yen out of the Taiji dolphin killers' pockets and could render the entire Taiji killing operation uneconomic and unsustainable.
Dolphins in Light 2.jpg
But it will take continued vigilance to ensure that the Taiji dolphins are not secretly sold to Japanese aquariums, and that other markets around the world do not step in to take the place of the Japanese purchases. 

The Save Japan Dolphins campaign at Earth Island Institute and other organizations have been pressing WAZA to dump the Japanese Aquariums for years.  Earth Island Institute and Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan first pointed out JAZA’s subsidy of the dolphin hunts in 2005 when our campaign was getting started.  Other organizations including Sea Shepherd, OceanCare, and Australia for Dolphins also joined in.  Australia for Dolphins recently filed a key lawsuit in Switzerland charging WAZA with false advertising for not enforcing their ethical code against purchases from Taiji.  All these efforts were crucial parts of the victory.

NEWS ON OUR LAWSUIT AGAINST SEAWORLD
 BN-HT313_seawor_G_20150406174318-200x134.jpg
SeaWorld’s efforts to lure people to buy tickets based on false and misleading claims that orcas are happy and healthy in their concrete tanks have been dealt a blow by our new lawsuit.
The suit is a broad challenge of SeaWorld’s violations of California consumer protection laws and unfair business practices.  It is being led by the firm of Covington and Burling LLP in San Francisco, with the assistance of our International Marine Mammal Project staff.

SeaWorld is fighting back against the suit, trying to transfer it to a venue more sympathetic to their arguments. But we’re convinced that the facts are strongly on our side and that public attitudes toward orca whales being held in captivity for circus performances continue to swing strongly against SeaWorld.

You can help by signing our petition to new SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby (HERE)
We got a boost from the Wall Street Journal's article "Whale of a Problem" crediting Earth Island 
Institute’s key role in protecting dolphins and whales and working to end the whale circus shows.  Check it out HERE. Columnist Charles Krauthammer also wrote an article in the Washington Post slamming the display of whales for circus spectacles. Check it out HERE
Study Directly Ties BP Oil Rig Explosion to Dramatic Rise in Dolphin Deaths
Collage
A report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) yesterday shows that the dramatic increase in dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico can be directly linked to BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, which left 11 workers dead and pumped millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.
According to the study published by the online scientific journal Plos One, the mortality rate of bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf began increasing around February 2010 and continued into last year, “overlapping in time and space with … the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”
Dolphins found dead along the Gulf coast were tested for evidence of biotoxins, morbillivirus, and brucellosis and results were compared to dolphins from outside the region. Scientists found that “an unusually high number of dead Gulf dolphins had what are normally rare lesions on their lungs and hormone-producing adrenal glands.”
In fact, one out of every three dead Gulf dolphins had these lesions on their adrenal glands, causing a serious condition known as adrenal insufficiency, which leaves animals “less able to cope with additional stressors in their everyday lives.” This inability to cope with added stressors makes the affected animals more likely to die.
“This is the latest in a series of peer-reviewed scientific studies, conducted over the five years since the spill, looking at possible reasons for the historically high number of dolphin deaths that have occurred within the footprint of the Deepwater Horizon spill,” said NOAA’s Dr. Terri Rowles, one of the study’s authors.
“These studies have increasingly pointed to the presence of petroleum hydrocarbons as being the most significant cause of the illnesses and deaths plaguing the Gulf’s dolphin population,” said Dr. Rowles.
In the five years since the disaster, BP has not only tried to avoid taking responsibility for the damages its rig explosion caused, it has tried to downplay the effects the spill actually had on the environment.
Last month, the oil giant sent out a report basically claiming “all is well” in the Gulf and things are returning to normal. This study, along with numerous others, proves that untrue. The Gulf is still very much affected by the spill — humans and animals alike.
“While dolphins and our ecosystem continue to die a BP death, most corporate media refuses to report the story,” said Ring of Fire host Mike Papantonio. “That’s what huge advertising dollars will do for psychopaths like British Petroleum. They have all the money, and we are left with all the suffering.”

'WHY YOU SHOULDN'T GO TO SIX FLAGS' VIDEO GETS BANNED BY HIGH SCHOOL DUE TO GRAPHIC IMAGES
High school student Mercedes Raine Ekre made this film about 'Why You Shouldn't Go To Six-Flags' in hopes of spreading the truth about captivity. However, due to "graphic images", this video was banned from participating in last night's Pleasanton High School Film Festival. There was a letter-writing campaign to the school district to request this important and educational film be shown to the parents. students and staff of the Pleasanton High School Film Festival, but unfortunately last night it was still banned from the line up. Please follow this LINK to write a short letter explain why it's important to stop the censorship of truth.
Mercedes reminds us all: REMINDER: EVEN IF YOU PAY AND JUST GO ON THE RIDES THE ANIMALS ARE STILL EFFECTED. In any case, this video is set to be featured as Phinfest 's 2016 Curator's Choice of the Year and will be shown at the Dolphin And Whale Film Festival to be held in Dana Point California during the historic Festival of Whales. There is nothing more graphic than captivity. The Pleasanton School District is about to get #Blackfished.
Could the Beginning of the End for the Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji be in Sight? Soon, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA) must decide if they wish to remain a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) or instead to continue to do business with the barbaric dolphin slayers of Taiji. The deadline for this decision is May 21st.

If the 152 Japanese members of JAZA vote to keep doing business with Taiji they will be effectively isolated from the entire international community of Zoos and Aquariums. 
Of these 152 members of JAZA, 30 aquariums are holding and displaying 250 dolphins.  The Japanese Aquariums purchase an average of 20 dolphins each year at prices between $150K and $250K.

If they vote to remain in WAZA they will need to cancel all further purchases of dolphins and that may well be the end of the horrific annual massacre of dolphins.

A spokesperson for JAZA said the Japanese organization is both shocked and bewildered by this suspension.

JAZA Secretary-General Naonori Okada said, “The capturing of dolphins for food and for aquariums have been separated, and we have asked fishermen to set aside a period during which dolphins are caught only for aquariums,” he said. “We have also asked them not to chase a big group to avoid panic, and not to chase them too persistently.”

Okada may very well have told the Taiji fishermen just that, but it’s quite apparent that the Taiji fishermen never took it very seriously.

The reason for the suspension is that WAZA is stating that JAZA has violated the WAZA code of ethics and animal welfare. Having dolphins being captured by men who viciously slaughter dolphins is a violation no matter if they chase them less persistently or even if they chase them separately from the dolphins they kill for meat.

What JAZA does not seem to understand is that without the lucrative sales of the dolphins for aquarium display there would be no real financial motivation to kill just for the meat. The meat kill is just an added profit, but by itself would not sustain the practice.

JAZA is responsible for the slaughter by supporting the captures with their purchases.
In response to the WAZA decision to suspend JAZA, the governor of Wakayama Prefecture on Wednesday slammed the country’s suspension from the global association of zoos as “unwarranted foreign coercion.”

Governor Yoshinobu Nisaka said the recent decision by the Swiss-based World Association of Zoos and Aquariums to suspend Japan’s membership was “bullying, from all over the world.”

In other words the Governor views any criticism of the slaughter and enslavement of dolphins as “bullying” by everyone against poor little Japan as if they have been singled out for discrimination for no other reason other than being Japanese.

This is not inconsistent with past criticisms of the abuse of Korean comfort women and the slaughter of millions of Chinese people as “bullying” and insensitive to Japanese culture.

At a press conference in Japan, the governor said most of the creatures on display at aquariums were captured from the wild, and that there would be a sharp drop if only those bred in captivity could be shown.

In my opinion that would be a very positive consequence.
According to Okada, WAZA did not take issue with the use of dolphins from Taiji for years, though it proposed methods to capture them more humanely. But WAZA recently hardened its stance and around 2014 it started asking JAZA to cease obtaining animals from Taiji.

Sea Shepherd along with the Dolphin Project, Earth Island and many other groups have been pressuring WAZA for years to take action. WAZA has been sandwiched between the pro-dolphin killing JAZA and the anti-dolphin killing rest of the world. Finally thanks to the persistence of all those campaigning against the Taiji kill for years, WAZA finally decided to get firm with JAZA.

Zoos and aquariums around the world are on the defensive over the captivity of wild animals and the bloody slaughter and abject cruelty of the Taiji dolphin drive was causing the public to be critical of the captivity industry worldwide. SeaWorld, for example, has enough problems dealing with the movie Blackfish; they certainly do not need nor want to be the link to Taiji, and WAZA has been that unwanted link.

By May 21st, we will know if Japan decides to sulk and isolate themselves by continuing to support the butchers of Taiji or if they wish to remain connected to their colleagues in the rest of the international community.

Japanese Aquariums' Link to the Dolphin Slaughter at Taiji.
aquarium in Tokyo
Nearly half of the dolphins in Japanese aquariums may have been taken from the dolphin hunts in Taiji, according to a survey in The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, which reported that a lack of breeding facilities is fueling demand for the mammals.

The newspaper surveyed 33 of the 54 Japanese aquariums that keep dolphins and found that 18 of them bought animals from the Taiji drives. Eight aquariums refused to respond.

“The 33 aquariums keep at least 352 dolphins, of which 158 were captured through drive fishery,” The Yomiuri Shimbun reported. “Some aquariums said all the dolphins they keep are from drive fishery.”

An additional 68 dolphins were captured after being snagged “in a fixed net by accident,” according to the newspaper, while only 42 were bred at aquariums. The article did not specify how the remaining dolphins were acquired.

Critics of the drives say the aquariums are sustaining the Taiji hunt, where entire pods are forced into a small cove and then slaughtered, released, or captured and sold to aquariums in Japan and around the world.

But is captive breeding the best way to reduce demand for live dolphins?

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums has long demanded that the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums put an end to buying live-caught dolphins, and last month it suspended JAZA’s membership for refusing to do so.

Even zoos belonging to JAZA have criticized the country’s aquariums and said that captive breeding is the way to end the drives.

“Zoos stopped obtaining and exhibiting wild animals some time ago,” one unidentified zoo director told The Yomiuri Shimbun. “We’ve made efforts to breed animals. I think the time has come for aquariums to also change their way of thinking.”

But Ric O’Barry, director of Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project and star of the Oscar-winning documentary on Taiji, The Cove, said captive breeding “is not the solution.”

“One can clearly see that dolphins and other whales suffer and die in captivity,” O’Barry said in an email. “It does not matter if the dolphin was captured from the wild or born in captivity. They suffer equally. The captive dolphins die from the same stress-related diseases whether they were born in captivity or captured from the wild.”

Even if Japanese aquariums wanted to breed dolphins, most of them lack the space for a breeding pool, where mothers can nurse their calves.

As Naomi Rose, marine mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, pointed out, if aquariums are too small for breeding, they are, by the industry's own standards, too small for dolphins.

“Rather than recognize that there must be a problem with their facilities, they simply think they should be allowed to continue to source from the drives because otherwise they couldn’t have dolphins,” Rose, who opposes captive breeding, said in an email.

Courtney Vail, program and campaigns manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said changing the way Japanese aquariums operate would be difficult.

“Unless standards improve in Japan, breeding success will be limited,” Vail said in an email. “Anything that removes the incentive for the hunts to continue is a step in the right direction. Of course, we have to be concerned that captures will occur elsewhere around Japan through other methods. Any capture operation is inhumane.”

Aquariums Deal Big Blow to Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji. Most Japanese facilities no longer will buy animals captured during the annual hunt at the cove.
Dolphins in Japanese aquarium
In a stunning setback to the dolphin hunt in Taiji, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums on Wednesday banned its members from acquiring animals captured during the annual slaughter.

Of the country’s 54 aquariums that house dolphins, 17 are non-JAZA members and are not bound by the decision. Aquariums from at least 20 foreign countries also acquire dolphins from Taiji. Meanwhile, it’s not clear if the JAZA ban extends to dolphins caught in places other than Taiji.

Still, the move is a big blow to the live-animal trade in Taiji. About 40 percent of all dolphins caught there are sent to aquariums in Japan, according to Sarah Lucas, chief executive of Australia for Dolphins. Nearly half of the dolphins in Japanese aquariums, meanwhile, may have been taken from Taiji.

"JAZA will prohibit its members to acquire wild dolphins caught by drive fishing in Taiji and to take part in their export and sale,” the group’s chairman, Kazutoshi Arai, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Scientists and activists applauded the move.

“This is a huge victory for the dolphins,” Ric O’Barry, director of Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project and star of the Oscar-winning documentary on Taiji, The Cove, said in an email. “And it's another nail in the coffin for the annual dolphin slaughter. We must be vigilant however. We will monitor the captures very carefully this year as usual.”

Last month, the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums suspended the Japanese group’s membership for failure "to adhere to policies that prohibit participating in cruel and non-selective methods of taking animals from the wild."

The global organization was set to expel JAZA on Thursday if the Japanese didn’t take action.

“WAZA considers JAZA’s decision to be a welcome breakthrough and looks forward to receiving further details from JAZA in order to fully appreciate the implications of today’s decision,” the group said in a statement.

Diana Reiss, a marine mammal scientist and a psychology professor at Hunter College in New York, said she and other scientists and industry insiders had been working with JAZA and WAZA to bring about such a ban since 2004.

“It’s amazing and important news,” Reiss said. “What’s really terrific and critical about this decision is that it came from within Japan’s zoological community…which says that this needs to stop.”

JAZA’s decision, which was approved by a 142–43 vote of its members, came after years of negotiations with and pressure from WAZA.

The Taiji drives, where entire pods are forced into a small cove and then slaughtered, released, or captured and sold to aquariums for up to $150,000 apiece, has been the focus of enormous international opposition for years.

But Arai made it clear that JAZA was not rejecting drive hunts altogether.

"We do not think it is cruel to take wild dolphins...but as we have reached this kind of conclusion in relation to WAZA, we need to steer [our policy] toward breeding," Arai said.

Ramping up Japan’s captive breeding efforts will be difficult. Many aquariums are too small to house breeding pools, and only about 13 percent of aquarium dolphins in Japan were bred in captivity, compared with about 70 percent in the United States, according to Arai.

Arai estimated it could take “five years or more" to establish adequate breeding skills in Japan. Failing that, “some aquariums could eventually face difficulty operating as they may not be able to find an alternative source of dolphins,” the Japanese newspaper Mainichi reported.

Possible loopholes in the new ban have some critics concerned.

“They say they will no longer capture dolphins in Taiji, but it’s not clear whether they’re going to capture dolphins in other places or not,” Reiss said. “This needs to be clarified with JAZA.” Moreover, non-JAZA aquariums presumably will continue buying dolphins from Taiji.

“JAZA’s decision…is a big step, and one that will hopefully contribute to an end to these hunts,” Courtney Vail, program and campaigns manager for Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said in an email. “We must still be concerned, however, with all wild captures. As long as zoo and aquaria keep the door open for acquisition from the wild, dolphins will suffer."

Dolphin 'reality show' filming suspended in Portugal.
dolphins
Animal protection groups say they have successfully suspended the recording of a TV series called "Dolphins with the Stars" in Portugal.

According to the Born Free Foundation, the show involves celebrities training captive dolphins to perform routines and tricks for live audiences.

Campaigners argued that the show was exploitative, and also contravened zoo regulations.
The broadcaster and the zoo said it had educational and scientific value.

A slick trailer for the series states that ten celebrities each "team up" with a dolphin and the teams "live together" for a month. Trainers and choreographers work with each pair to create a show that is eventually judged by a live audience.

"Dolphins with the Stars" has already been broadcast in Lithuania and it is thought that the rights have been bought in Spain and Italy and optioned across Europe.

The Portuguese version was being filmed at Zoomarine in Guia, in the Algarve, and was due to be broadcast on 20th June by SIC, a national television network.
Exploitative or informative?

Daniel Turner, spokesperson for the Born Free Foundation (BFF) said: "We are delighted to hear the news. We weren't able to stop it in Lithuania, but the Portuguese were much more receptive. They have very good legislation for zoos that prevents the over-exploitation of animals."

The BFF and the Dolphinaria-Free Europe Coalition, which is made up of 19 NGOs from 11 countries, sent letters to the Portuguese government claiming: "The exploitative practices of the TV show contradicted the zoo's legal requirements that dictate a commitment to species conservation, meaningful public education and species-specific animal welfare. It was clear that the use of Zoomarine's bottlenose dolphins would be in breach of those requirements."
The filming of the show was underway, although it is thought that the celebrities had not yet been introduced to the dolphins.

Announcing the official suspension of the programme, SIC and Zoomarine said they had done so on the advice of government regulatory bodies - the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) and the National Authority for Animal Health (DGAV).

Expressing disappointment with the decision, a press release stated that they had gone to great lengths to strengthen the educational and scientific elements of the show. The aim had been to "increase understanding of this magnificent marine species" and thus promote marine conservation. Ensuring the health of the dolphins had been of paramount importance.

According to campaigners, more than 300 whales and dolphins are kept in zoos and theme parks in 15 European countries.

For a long time there has been a debate about the ethics and effect of confinement on cetaceans - the family of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises - especially as more is discovered about their intellectual and cognitive abilities. They are seen as among the more intelligent species on earth. They have complex social networks, recognise themselves in mirrors and have been shown to keep track of more than 100 words.

Mr Turner said: "Whales and dolphins are hugely intelligent and social species, which when deprived of space and environmental complexity, develop abnormal behaviours such as stereotypic behaviour (repetitive behaviour without any reason), heightened aggression and in some cases, early mortality."
The 2013 documentary Blackfish explored the impact on orcas of living in tanks at SeaWorld. The resort saw a steep decline in visitor numbers after it was broadcast.

However, SeaWorld and similar theme parks strongly refute any claims that their conditions inflict harm on their captive aquatic animals. They maintain that such positions are not scientific, but are the views of animal rights activists - and that tanks are specially designed to mimic the animals' watery world as accurately as possible. The majority of dolphins are captive born. European law prevents the capture of wild cetaceans from EU waters for commercial purposes - for example, their use in dolphinaria. But according to the Born Free Foundation there are "few restrictions to importing wild-caught animals from outside the EU".

An Oil Spill Killed the Gulf’s Dolphins—Are Santa Barbara’s Marine Mammals Next? A new study shows the strongest link yet between the Deepwater Horizon spill and the deaths of Gulf dolphins. 

For the past five years, dolphins have been dying in the Gulf of Mexico at higher-than-normal rates.

While multiple studies have labeled the 168 million gallons of oil left behind by the Deepwater Horizon spill as a “contributing factor” to the mortalities, a new study appears to leave little doubt: The petroleum that blanketed the Gulf Coast in 2010 is killing the animals.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that bottlenose dolphins stranded in the oil spill–affected area had higher rates of lung and adrenal lesions—ailments found in other marine mammals exposed to petroleum products after an oil spill—than dolphins outside the Gulf.

“These dolphins had some of the most severe lung lesions I have seen in the 13-plus years that I have examined dead dolphin tissues from throughout the U.S.,” said Kathleen Colegrove, a veterinary diagnostic laboratory professor at the University of Illinois and a coauthor of the study, which was published in the journal PLOS One.

While British Petroleum puts out press releases refuting study after study linking the disaster to animal deaths, another oil spill in Santa Barbara, California—albeit much smaller in scope—could mean petroleum-related animal impacts are coming on the West Coast too.

For Gulf dolphins, the lesions led to higher-than-average adrenal disorders and cases of bacterial pneumonia—factors that contributed to the area’s unusual mortality event, which NOAA is calling the largest-ever die-off of bottlenose dolphins in the area.

Researchers ruled out diseases that have caused dolphin deaths in the past, leading scientists to one conclusion: The BP spill contributed to the high number of dolphin deaths in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. 

“No feasible alternative causes remain that can reasonably explain the timing, location, and nature of these distinct lesions,” Stephanie Venn-Watson, the lead author of the study and a veterinary epidemiologist, said on a press call Wednesday.

The Santa Barbara spill has grown from original estimates of 21,000 gallons spilled and a four-mile slick offshore to 105,000 gallons and two nine-mile slicks at sea. An onshore pipe operated by Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline burst Tuesday afternoon, flowing down a storm drain onto beaches and into the ocean.

So far, only 7,700 gallons of crude have been recovered by vessels working offshore, and thousands of gallons are splattered along rocks and sandy shorelines. Early estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 gallons spilled from the pipe before the leak was stopped.

In the two days since the spill, impacts to wildlife have proved minimal: Five oiled pelicans and one sea lion were rescued and are receiving treatment at a nearby rehabilitation facility. 

“Just because there’s a lot of oil in the environment doesn’t mean we will have huge numbers of animals,” Mike Ziccardi, director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, said in a statement. “Sometimes there are small spills with large numbers of animals and huge spills with just a few animals.”

But it’s still early, and the cleanup efforts are expected to continue for months, officials say. As the Gulf of Mexico’s dolphins show, the effects of an oil spill last long after the cleanup crews are gone.

Toni Frohoff, a cetacean researcher with the animal advocacy group In Defense of Animals, studies Santa Barbara’s resident coastal bottlenose dolphins, a population known to migrate as far north as Monterey Bay.

“Dolphins and whales feel the impacts from oil spills internally and externally—they’re exposed in a radically intense and prolonged way,” Frohoff said. “They breathe in the noxious fumes and are stuck in the water, which can cause lesions in their lungs, ulcers in stomachs, and make their adrenal glands stop functioning.”

While there is a large population of offshore bottlenose dolphins in the Pacific Ocean that will likely be unaffected by the spill, the smaller population of California’s coastal bottlenose (a separate ecotype recognized by scientists) could feel the effects. “This is their home, and they are vulnerable,” Frohoff said.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for the dolphin. In the Gulf of Mexico, recent figures from NOAA have shown fewer dolphin strandings in each month of 2015 so far compared with last year. Last year’s strandings totaled 117, nowhere near the high of 335 in 2011—the year following the spill.

At Mississippi’s Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, Jonathan Pitchford has been studying the seasonal distributions of bottlenose dolphins along the entire Mississippi Sound for the organization.

“Early on, we saw the jump in strandings, but over the past couple years, the population studies we’re conducting have shown largely a stable population,” Pitchford said. “Not much has changed.”

Taiji Won't Quit Killing Or Capturing Dolphins, Laughs At WAZA. Japanese town 'will not quit' dolphin hunting even though aquariums will stop buying animals.

2013 Taiji kill schedule
The fishing town of Taiji will not stop its dolphin hunts, the mayor said Thursday, after Japan's aquariums decided to stop buying captured dolphins under international pressure sparked by cruelty concerns.
"We are hunting under the permission of the Japanese government and prefecture, and so we will continue to protect our fishermen and the methods. We will not quit," said Kazutaka Sangen, mayor of the small town in central Japan.

Dolphins swirl anxiously as the nets close in Taiji cove. Eating dolphin and whale meat is waning in Japan as people's tastes change, but some Japanese see it as no different from eating chicken or beef. They are puzzled by how the international view on dolphin and whale hunting is so different from that of traditional fishing communities like Taiji.On Wednesday, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums announced it would stop buying Taiji dolphins. It had risked being suspended by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which characterized the Taiji hunt as "cruel" and decided that none of its members should acquire dolphins in such a way.WAZA declares their first step towards compassion last year with this directive about Taiji. The highlighted text was never followed by the Taiji figherman's union. In Taiji's hunt, notoriously filmed in the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," dolphins are scared with banging, herded into a cove and speared by fishermen for their meat. The best-looking animals are sold to aquariums and marine shows for thousands of dollars each.
Sangen scoffed at WAZA's views.
"WAZA gave in to the anti-whaling activists that turned dolphin hunting into an international problem. I believe there was a better way to handle the issue," he told reporters.
Even if all of the Japanese group's 63 member aquariums and 89 zoos stop buying Taiji dolphins, they could be sold in other places, including overseas marine parks. Taiji also runs its own aquarium.
WAZA has more than 1,000 members and has talked with the Japanese aquarium group about the Taiji hunt for more than a decade.

Remember this face. And these numbers, from 2013, show just how much the industry has grown in China, the #1 exporter of captive dolphins from Japan.The campaign against the Taiji hunt has drawn Hollywood stars as well as the anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd. "The Cove," which won an Academy Award in 2009, focuses on Ric O'Barry, who trained dolphins for the 1960s "Flipper" TV series before deciding to devote his life to protecting them.