Special Report: Dolphins Perform in Sight of Freedom
By Mark J. Palmer
Photography by Kunito Seko
The city of Shimonoseki in southern Japan is the headquarters for the commercial whaling industry. It is also home to the Shimonoseki Aquarium, which houses dolphins ripped from their families in the Taiji, Japan, drive hunts.
We asked our colleague, Kunito Seko, resident activist of Taiji and a photographer, to travel to Shimonoseki for us and photograph the Taiji dolphins performing tricks for small crowds.
According to CetaBase, a nonprofit dedicated to chronicling whales and dolphins in captivity, the Shimonoseki Aquarium has seven bottlenose dolphins, all but one stolen from the wild. The aquarium also possesses three finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides), also caught in the wild.
Kunito’s photos document the harshness of dolphins being confined to small concrete tanks and forced, seven days a week, to perform tricks.
Why do dolphins do tricks? Because they are hungry. They are deliberately kept hungry in parks to ensure they will do the tricks and not swim off into a corner of the tank. If they don’t do the trick, they go hungry. Photo Credit: Kunito Seko
Kunito captured the moment when a dolphin leaps high in its tank for the show. But the dolphin can see the ocean just on the other side of its tank. Freedom is so close! Photo Credit: Kunito Seko
Dolphins, obviously, do not play ball in the wild. It is another behavior they are forced to do or risk going hungry. Photo Credit: Kunito Seko
The financial heart of the Taiji dolphin drive hunts is the sale of live dolphins to aquariums like the Shimonoseki Aquarium. The hunters will choose the “best” show animals for captivity, and then slaughter other dolphins for meat sales in Japan. Thousands of dolphins have died so hundreds can be displayed in aquariums and then die, only to be replaced by new animals torn from their families in the wild.
These hunts must end, and captivity for whales and dolphins should be illegal, as it is now in many nations, like France, Canada, and Mexico.
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The International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) is a global leader in the push to end captivity for whales and dolphins and to end the bloody Taiji dolphin drive hunts. You can help dolphins and whales with a donation to our work. Your support is our lifeblood. And thanks to your support, we’ve helped to shut down many aquariums that should never have been built. The Miami Seaquarium in Florida, home to the Flipper TV show in the 60s, just closed permanently, as has Marineland in Ontario. With your help, IMMP continues to push for dolphins and whales in captivity to be retired to seaside sanctuaries. Thank you for your support!
