The Japanese town of Taiji is taking a leaf from the Icelandic whale-watching play-book.
They offer a tour which allows tourists to watch minke whales being harpooned and then sample grilled whale afterwards!
Taiji is the site of the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins (as featured in the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary The Cove). Now the town has declared its infamous bay to be a marine park, in which tourists will be encouraged to swim with dolphins – and then eat them later!
It's the most barbaric bit of mixed marketing since Icelandic whaler Kristjan Loftsson declared his whaling fleet was "eco-friendly", because his ships ran on whale oil!
Masaki Wada, a Taiji town official: "We already use dolphins and small whales as a source of tourism in the cove where dolphin-hunting takes place. In the summer, swimmers can enjoy watching the mammals that are released from a partitioned-off space…this is part of Taiji's long-term plan of making the whole town a park, where you can enjoy watching marine mammals while tasting various marine products, including whale and dolphin meat." He almost makes it
sound appealing.
This perverse proposal only serves to highlight how tough it is to be a dolphin in the 21st century: everyone in the world wants to swim with you; you've been trained to blow up Vietcong divers and detect gulf war mines; you've been a TV star; rogue scientists in the 1960s have dosed you with LSD...
*sigh* After all that, what dolphin in its right mind would wanna associate with humans?
They offer a tour which allows tourists to watch minke whales being harpooned and then sample grilled whale afterwards!Taiji is the site of the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins (as featured in the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary The Cove). Now the town has declared its infamous bay to be a marine park, in which tourists will be encouraged to swim with dolphins – and then eat them later!
It's the most barbaric bit of mixed marketing since Icelandic whaler Kristjan Loftsson declared his whaling fleet was "eco-friendly", because his ships ran on whale oil!
Masaki Wada, a Taiji town official: "We already use dolphins and small whales as a source of tourism in the cove where dolphin-hunting takes place. In the summer, swimmers can enjoy watching the mammals that are released from a partitioned-off space…this is part of Taiji's long-term plan of making the whole town a park, where you can enjoy watching marine mammals while tasting various marine products, including whale and dolphin meat." He almost makes it
sound appealing.This perverse proposal only serves to highlight how tough it is to be a dolphin in the 21st century: everyone in the world wants to swim with you; you've been trained to blow up Vietcong divers and detect gulf war mines; you've been a TV star; rogue scientists in the 1960s have dosed you with LSD...
*sigh* After all that, what dolphin in its right mind would wanna associate with humans?
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