Happy New Year!

Sort of. Kind of. I guess. A lot of stuff is going on, so here's what you need to know:

1. Sea Shepherd's Cove Guardians are still on the ground in Taiji, Japan, opposing the slaughter and captivity of dolphins and small cetaceans. I am not participating in that campaign this year, but right now, as I type this, four dolphins are arriving at an aquarium in Japan. The dolphins spent 15 hours being driven across Japan, crammed into coffin-like crates just for human entertainment. Cove Guardians followed the truck and are livestreaming the arrival here: http://livestream.seashepherd.org/ (assuming I hit "Publish Post" soon enough). You can read my account of a similar (but much shorter) transport from last year HERE. Read about ways you can help HERE. Follow them on Twitter @coveguardians.

2. Speaking of the Cove Guardians, Vegan Drinks will benefit the campaign tomorrow. We'll have amazing food from Monks Meats and Mister Sister and some great raffle prizes, including hard to find, vintage Sea Shepherd gear and DVDs signed by Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson.

3. Sea Shepherd NYC will be tabling the Red Hot Chili Peppers show at the Barclays Center on Saturday, January 30. If you're there, come by.

4. We'll also be at the John Butler Trio's shows at Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg, February 3 and 4, respectively.

5. Then on the fifth, fellow Cove Guardian, Dam Guardian and Sea Shepherd NYC coordinator Ethan and I will be speaking at a free screening of Blackfish at Bluestockings on the Lower East Side. Free vegan refreshments will be available as well, so don't miss it.

6. THEN, on February 16, we'll have our annual Whalentine's Day Bake Sale at MooShoes, also on the Lower East Side. You all know how delicious that event is, so don't get me started.

We hope to have a volunteer training some time in February, before our tables at the Vegetarian Food Festival and Beneath the Sea dive show in March, so if you'd like to get involved and live in the NYC area, please email nyc @ seashepherd . org to attend.

Letter to USA Today: Travel to Taiji

UPDATE: looks like USA Today has pulled the piece promoting Taiji as a tourist destination that this letter was a response to. Will keep the letter here anyway. Thanks, USA Today!

Dear USA Today,

I recently came across your piece suggesting Taiji, Japan as a vacation destination, and I must admit my surprise at the piece, having been there twice myself.

Firstly, I think you do the town of Taiji a great disservice by completely ignoring the natural beauty of the landscape. It is one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been, with absolutely gorgeous mountains. The ocean views are always breathtaking, whether they’re clear, Pacific blue, the fiery orange reflection of sunset, or the deep, blood red of the daily dolphin slaughter that is perpetrated there from September to March.

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Connecting the Dots: Taiji + IMATA

IMATA is the Internatonal Marine Animal Trainers' Association. They're the people responsible for making sure marine animals kept in captivity are treated ethically and humanely*. According to their website, they are committed to

"Exercising the highest levels of respect and humaneness for all animals"

And

"strongly oppose the slaughter of whales and dolphins that occur in drive fisheries. We have long had a clear and definitive position opposing the slaughter, which is opposed by all international, accredited zoo and aquarium organizations."

But they

"oppose the unreasonable demand that IMATA blacklist trainers [involved with drive fisheries]. For IMATA to do so would, in fact, be counter-productive to the goal of ending the slaughter of animals in drive fisheries. IMATA's mission is to ensure that marine animal trainers -- regardless of the facility for which they work - have access to the most progressive, professional, and responsible animal training and management techniques."

So how do they hope to end these drive fisheries that they're so opposed to?

" IMATA believes that thoughtful dialogue on a difficult subject like commercial whaling (specifically drive fisheries) is important between people of different cultures, and a positive way to make changes that eventually benefit marine animals. Through IMATA membership, trainers have access to a network of professionals continually working to improve training and care techniques; access to educational publications; and can attend our professional meetings where the latest training information is discussed. The well being of marine mammals is the first priority of IMATA members, who are dedicated trainers at parks and aquariums around the world. These trainers care deeply about the whales, dolphins, sea lions and other marine mammals they interact with every day."

By taking people's money, then hoping they'll talk about it! That's bound to work, right?

Two professionals having a respectful dialog about the animals they care about so deeply

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Follow the Greedier

Early one morning this week, we arrived in Taiji expecting to see the dolphin killers doing maintenance on their boats and preparing for the regular fishing season. Instead, we found this:

Divers wrestle dolphins into slings, which the crane lifts into the crates. The crates are then loaded into the truck with a forklift.

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Back in the Saddle

Despite the fact that the dolphin drive hunt had pretty much ended by the time I arrived in Taiji, so much has happened that it has been difficult to keep this blog up to date. There hasn't been a single drive since I touched down, but the danger to dolphins doesn't end just because the season does.

Dolphin and whale hunting via harpoon is permitted year round, so even as the sight of boats without banger poles lifted our spirits, we knew it would not last long, as the poles could soon be replaced with harpoons. Additionally, these are just regular fishing boats, so while cetaceans are now safer than they've been for the past few months, all other species of marine life are still at risk.

 Banger poles come down

 

Fishing poles go up

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If Slaughterhouses Had Glass Walls...

...everyone would be vegetarian.

Or at least that's what people who take the time to put text on images of cows and post them on the Internet would have you believe. And if you walked around Taiji during the dolphin drive hunt season, you'd probably think they believe it too. That would be a pretty logical explanation for all the secrecy, right? All the tarps and barricades and "No Trespassing" signs are there because seeing how the animals they eat are killed makes people uncomfortable and less likely to eat it, right?

Wrong.

One town over, in Kii Katsuura, the fish market is practically a tourist attraction. The slaughterhouse goes a step further than having glass walls: it has no walls. So another Cove Guardian and I went over to see if they'd object to our presence as much as the killers of Taiji do.

WARNING: At the risk of stating the obvious, the photos in this post with the word "slaughterhouse" in the title are going to be quite graphic.

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Upcoming Events

There are so many events coming up in NYC over the next few months it's a little overwhelming. Here's a selction:

Monday, January 28: Dinner with Sea Shepherd at Blossom Chelsea

Eat, drink and be merry because Blossom is donating 10% of their receipts to Sea Shepherd on Monday! Blossom is located at 187 9th Avenue, NYC. They seat for dinner 5:15 PM to 9:30 PM and reservations are recommended. Make one at blossomnyc.com or by calling 212.627.1144 ext. 5.

Thursday, January 31 - Saturday, February 2: The 3rd Annual New York Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
The festival will be full of great films and speakers, including a local Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian. His presentation about Operation Infinite Patience will be part of Thursday night's program. Tickets and more information here. Use the code "sea shepherd" for $1 off.

Sunday, February 10: The Vegan Bake-Off Dessert Competition*
Seriously. I think it's the first event of it's kind in NYC, which is really exciting. Also, I entered, which is kind of terrifying. Get more info, tickets or enter here: http://www.veganbakeoff.com/

Sunday, February 17: Sea Shepherd's Second Annual Whalentine's Day Bake Sale
Yes, it's the best thing about the winter season: bake sale time! At the always wonderful MooShoes, of course. Get all the info here and sign up to bake here.

Tuesday, February 19: At the Edge of the World Screening + Q&A w/film director and crew
The film is kind of like a prequel to Whale Wars. We'll be showing it at NYU, for a suggested donation of $10 per person (but everything is appreciated and no one will be turned away, as long as there's room. Get all the details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/243281942471065/

After that, we'll be screening The Cove and Galapagos with Q&A sessions with volunteers from each of those campaigns and we have some other plans up our sleeves, so be sure to add Sea Shepherd NYC on Facebook or Twitter or join our mailing list (email nyc at seashepherd dot org) to stay up to date.


*Not a Sea Shepherd event, just awesome.

Here We Go Again

As you may have gathered from my last post*, I find the current situation in Taiji, Japan very upsetting. So I'm going back. Next month, I will rejoin Sea Shepherd at the Cove for Operation Infinite Patience, where I will help stop Japan's dolphin slaughter. I hope to update this blog regularly from Japan. In addition, I'll be tweeting and the Cove Guardians have a Facebook page and Twitter account and post updates on Sea Shepherd's website.

Travel to Japan is expensive, so I'm doing a bit of fundraising to help me on my way. There are four ways you can help, if you'd like:

1. Buy some of the knitwear I have for sale. I hope to put more things up over time, but here's what I have so far:

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Semi-Annual Update

Hello, the Internet! What's been happening lately? I hope you're well. What have I been up to? Glad you asked!

1. Terry Hope Romero's latest book, Vegan Eats World has hit the shelves and it's everything I hoped it would be and more. Hard cover! Beautiful photos! Delicious recipes (obviously)! If you have an ice cream maker, please make the mochi and let me know how it is so I can be jealous (or share!).

2. Isa Chandra Moskowitz's next book, Isa Does It, is nearing the end of the recipe testing stage (I think) and it's amazing. DIY gnocchi on a week night? Done. Burgers from scratch in 30 minutes? Yes. The best chocolate chip cookies in the world (HINT: rosemary)? Sorted. Vegan meatballs and spaghetti that don't disappoint? Victory! Seriously, this may be my favorite cookbook. I may say that about every cookbook, but this time I mean it even more: the recipes are delicious and most are timed so you can start them when you're already hungry without losing your mind and personally, I can't ask for more than that.

3. This bit's a lot less happy, sorry: I'd like to talk about what's been happening at the Cove lately.

If you're reading this (all three of you), you've probably seen the film The Cove, about the dolphin drive hunt in Taiji, Japan. As an onshore volunteer with Sea Shepherd,  I discuss that movie with people quite a bit and appreciate having a mainstream film to refer to, even though Sea Shepherd was on the ground in Japan and cut the nets years before Ric O'Barry and his crew showed up. Unfortunately, for most people, the take home message of the film seems to be "Eating dolphin is bad, don't do that", which absolves them of all responsibility, since they don't. But that's missing half the point.

Ric O'Barry stated that he made the film as a tool against the captive dolphin industry. He realized how horrific it is and felt responsible for it because he had worked as a trainer on the TV show "Flipper", which he believes made people want to get all cozy with dolphins. Somehow this part of the message has been lost on most people.

This past week was the most horrific time at the Cove most of us have ever known. The dolphin killers drove an enormous pod of dolphins into the Cove Tuesday night (NYC time; Wednesday morning Taiji time) and didn't finish with them until Sunday night. These were bottlenose dolphins (the most sought after by dolphinaria) and they were driven for one purpose: captivity.

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In Our Own Back Yard

When I returned home from Taiji and told people what I witnessed and experienced, their immediate response was the expected horror and revulsion, often followed by a bizarre sense of relief and superiority. The dolphin slaugher happened there. That could never happen here. We are civilized. We would never invest government funds to indiscriminately kill wildlife, intelligent animals with families and relationships, and feed their potentially hazardous flesh to people who have no choice but to eat it.

Ahahaha.

Ahem.

Under the pretense of aviation safety and charitable acts, the USDA has been killing Canada geese in NYC parks and saying they will feed the goose meat to homeless and other needy people. Really.

Back in 2009, migrating Canada geese were blamed for taking down the "Miracle on the Hudson" (from which everyone escaped safely), despite the craft's history of engine trouble. Mayor Bloomberg's response was to arrange a contract between the DEP and USDA to slaughter local, non-migrating, Canada geese on city property.

I could go on and on about why this makes no damn sense, but thankfully, someone else has done it for me:

Check out their website here: http://www.goosewatchnyc.com/

Then sign up to help. The wonderful people of GooseWatch are looking for people who live near NYC's parks and are willing to keep an eye on them and let us know when the USDA is there so we can document what they do, bear witness and hopefully discourage it from ever happening again.

If you would like to get involved, or just keep up on what's going on, please contact GooseWatch at

Phone: (567) NY-GOOSE
Email: goosewatching@gmail.com
'Like' GooseWatch NYC on Facebook

Follow on Twitter

We are all Cove Guardians

My last full day in Taiji, a few of us headed into town to film our parts for this video. I hate being on camera and public speaking, but I hate the senseless slaughter of living beings even more. And I liked the idea of standing around in front of a whaling vessel and discretely flipping it off. Research my ass.

If you can, please share that video. Tweet it, Facebook it, Tumbl it, post a response video on YouTube, make some calls, send some emails, whatever it takes to spread the message that what's happening is not OK and you won't stand for it. It's up to all of us to protect our planet and together, we can all be Cove Guardians.

I'm back home now, which means back at Occupy Wall Street. Last night, I made my first meeting of the Animal Issues working group in a while. We've got a lot going on. Most notably, we'll be presenting a wide range of workshops at the Brooklyn Food Conference on Saturday, May 12 on topics ranging from animal agriculture and the environment to food and free trade issues to bringing plant based diets to urban communities of color. Should be rad. Hope to see you there.

I was just about to post this when I read this bit of good news: the Japanese whaling fleet has called it quits for the year thanks to Sea Shepherd (again)!

More than Murder

My second week in Taiji, the dolphin hunters found a large pod of several hundred Pacific white sided dolphins. Eight bangers, four skiffs and a few hours later, two of those dolphins were stuffed into the Fisherman's Union harbor captive pens I mentioned in my post. The boats chased the dolphins down, circled them and entrapped them with progressively smaller nets until they were relatively easy to wrestle into the skiffs.

Everything else aside, that black smoke the bangers constantly fart out pisses me off to no end.
White sided dolphins are stronger and fight more than bottlenose, so the hunters take them while they're still at sea instead of driving them into the cove where they may damage themselves on the rocks. Once they had the dolphins restrained in the skiffs (a diver had to lay on top of one of them to keep it from moving too much), they took them to the harbor pens, which they had intentionally blocked with their gutting barge so we couldn't record the transfer. I managed to get a couple of small peeks anyway.

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The View From (and of) Taiji

As you may already know, Taiji's dolphin slaughter has ended for the year. The banger poles have come off most of the boats (they spend the rest of the year as regular fishing boats), the structure they use to hide the butchery has been dismantled, and they're moving on to the pilot whale slaughter and bonito fishing.

Sigh.

Sea Shepherd's Cove Guardians will still be on the ground for at least the next month or so to evaluate the situation and plan future campaigns, a rather daunting task when the future of Taiji itself seems so uncertain.

Anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Taiji, will come to notice three things:

1. Taiji is beautiful.
2. Taiji is poor.
3. Taiji is dying.

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that these states should be mutually exclusive; if you have beautiful land, invite people to look at it, then charge them for the privilege. Make all food and drink walking distance from the gorgeousness obnoxiously expensive. This would lead the people who live there to be proud of their home and encourage other people to visit, or move there, instead of moving out at the first opportunity.

The problem with Taiji is that for every this:

There is this:

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Skip to the End

Greetings from New York.

Yes, I'm back home. I still have a few things to say about my time in Taiji, but before I get there, I'd like to skip to what happened the day I left.

Monday started normally. We left for the harbor around 5:30 AM, with my luggage in the car, so I could go straight from "active duty" to the train (to the plane). Nine boats went out to hunt, which was better than most days, when eleven of their twelve went out. Once we were sure all the boats were out, we went to one of our elevated lookout points. The sea looked pretty calm, but there was a bit of motion to it. I could only hope it was worse where the boats were headed; the rougher the sea, the harder it is to find dolphins (and I wouldn't mind them getting a raging bout of seasickness either).

I said my goodbyes and left for the train. When I got to the airport a few hours later, I checked Sea Shepherd's Twitter while waiting to depart. Here's what I found:

Taiji: 5 killing boats in drive formation just 2 miles north of Taiji. 7:57am
Taiji: Pod being driven by 4 killing boats toward Taiji. 5 other boats remain at sea. 8:09am #tweet4taiji
Taiji: Dolphins driven into harbor. Five killing boats now joined with two net skiffs. 8:34am #tweet4taiji
Taiji: There is no hope for this pod now as they are being netted into cove. 9:08am #tweet4taiji
Taiji: Blood bath has begun...This pod is now under tarps at cove and being slaughtered one by one. 9:34am #tweet4taiji
Taiji: The murder is finished. The bodies are being thrown onto skiffs and soon will be heading toward butcherhouse. 9:56am #tweet4taiji

Taiji: 3 skiffs of dead dolphins unloaded at Taiji butcherhouse. 10:27am #tweet4taiji

And that, my friends, is when I burst into tears in the middle of an airport. Sorry.

In the two weeks I was in Japan, four dolphins were taken into captivity (more on that later), and one was killed, under a tarp, hidden from view. The moment I left Taiji, 98 pan tropical spotted dolphins, including many babies and juveniles, were murdered. I know I'm not responsible for this. Even if I was in Taiji, I wouldn't have been able to stop it. Yet I can't help feeling like I abandoned them to their fate. It's one of the worst feelings in the world.
Here's a video a fellow volunteer in Taiji took that day. Some viewers may find it triggering, but if you can, please watch it; the dolphins don't get to opt out of experiencing it, so why should we?

Sea Shepherd's Cove Guardians will be on the ground in Taiji until at least April 1. To learn more about the project, get involved or lend your support, please CLICK.

The Cost of Captivity

Fun fact: worldwide, most of the dolphins in dolphinariums, swim with dolphins programs* and parks like (and including) Sea World come from Taiji. For every dolphin taken into captivity, many more are slaughtered.

In Taiji itself, it's even more awesome: the swim with dolphins program is held in the cove. So after they spend months in pens being trained, they're brought back to the place they saw their family members brutally butchered to do tricks for people's entertainment. Amazing. As an added bonus, you can also eat grilled dolphin meat while watching them perform.

My last post discussed the brutal process of getting these beautiful, intelligent creatures from the sea to captivity, but what happens when they get there?

Usually (Monday was an exception), they're transferred from the wild to sea pens: netted off parts of the ocean that allow them to stay in the water they're used to, with the tides and waves and everything else that comes with it, but without any pesky distractions like being able to travel or hunt and eat live fish. There are two sets of pens in Taiji: Dolphin Base's pens and the harbor pens,

which are even smaller and mostly house juveniles. Yes, the dolphin hunters in Taiji capture (and kill) juveniles. And then they wonder why "stocks" are decreasing.

After that, it's lives of endless monotony, broken up with the occasional transport, which is done via open truck when it's local, or packed into coffin-sized boxes when it's international.

This new lifestyle (if one can even call it that) is nothing like what they're accustomed to and takes some getting used to. By "getting used to", I mean drugs and other substances.

That left-hand bucket contains dead fish about to be prepped to be fed to the dolphins. The right-hand bucket contains a variety of medications and treatments probably not all that dissimilar to what factory farmed cattle are given in the US (and for the same reasons: to keep the animals passably healthy so they can continue to serve humans as long as necessary). Here's a trainer injecting these substances into a fish for a dolphin:

As you can see, they come with an awful lot of gear for a process as simple as feeding the dolphins a few fish (nowhere near enough. In the wild, dolphins eat 4-8% of their body weight in live fish per day. In captivity, they get roughly one bucket, twice per day. They're always hungry so they're more likely to perform for their food). They often come with knives and cutting boards to open the fish up and stick something inside, as well as wooden mallets, but I haven't been able to determine how those are used yet (and may not want to know).

Once the fish is ready, it's used as an incentive to get the dolphins to jump, twirl, sing and do all the other tricks people know and love from dolphin shows.

For me, the image above is the worst thing about being here. Because I enjoy it. I love watching the dolphins jump and leap and seem to play together. It's beautiful, until I remember they're just doing it because they're hungry. This is not a game for them, it's survival. It's their only way of getting exercise while penned up for the rest of their lives. As horrific as the dolphin slaughter is, it's not as difficult for me to consider because I don't eat dolphin. I don't feel complicit. But recognizing that I still get some enjoyment from the misery these dolphins experience breaks the little bit of heart I have left.

* In case it's unclear, the dolphins in most swim with dolphin programs don't just happen to be in the area, living their natural lives. They are trained not to stray too far from a designated space and to be comfortable around humans, transported and dumped into their new "homes".

First Blood

I witnessed my first successful dolphin hunt this week: two bottlenose were taken into captivity and one was killed.

At the risk of seeming melodramatic, the photo above is of a death march. If you can't see it, please click to embiggen. Those boats drove a pod of dolphins for over ten miles, terrifying and exhausting them, until they finally trapped them in the cove, wrestled two of them into slings, killed the third and brought the first two to Dolphin Resort, where they will live out their remaining days in tiny pools of nearly stagnate water.

This shit's fucked up.

This was my first time hearing the banger boats. From above, they sound like knuckles rapping on an empty coffin. I can only imagine what they sound like from below. Understandably, the noise frightened the dolphins and allowed the hunters to herd them into the cove. Once there, one of the hunters jumped into the water, wrestled the dolphins still, tied a rope around their tails and dragged them under a tarp. The dolphins were then presented to trainers from Dolphin Base, Dolphin Resort and the Whale Museum, three of the places in Taiji where people can view and swim with captive marine mammals. Dolphin Resort purchased two and the third was murdered because he was too ugly and scarred for the entertainment industry. The dead dolphin was wrapped in tarps and nets, strapped to the side of a skiff and brought to the butcher.

The live dolphins were stuffed into harnesses, strapped to the side of another skiff, thrown into a truck and delivered to Dolphin Resort. Here's a video I took of the delivery:



In case you're at work and can't watch videos right now (there's no sound), the dolphin trainers lost control of the harness and the poor dolphin ended up swinging around, two stories above the ground like a giant, miserable, goddamn fucking pinata before being dropped straight into a tiny tank. Normally, dolphins are taken from the wild to sea pens for a transitional period before being moved to tanks, but I guess Dolphin Resort just couldn't wait to start torturing these poor creatures. Fuck this.

Sea Shepherd's Cove Guardians are primarily here for the dolphin slaughter, but I think my next post will be about captive dolphins' living conditions.

Blog Roundup

I am pleased to report that not a single dolphin has been killed since I landed in Japan. Hells yes.

On non-slaughter days, we monitor the state of captive dolphins as well as the trade in whale, dolphin, bluefin tuna and other marine animals. In the past few days, I've seen fish larger than me and crabs larger than pillows. All dead. There are some amazing things around here and this could be one of the most amazing places on earth if people could stop fucking it up.

Seriously. How gorgeous is this?

I took that photo while waiting for the banger boats that drive the dolphins into the Cove for slaughter to return from their hunt. I love it. Partly because it's beautiful in and of itself and partly because it commemorates another day when no dolphins were murdered.

I'm obviously not here alone. If you'd like to read some other blogs documenting this experience, please check out:

Sea Shepherd's Official Cove Guardian Page
Red Sea Dead Sea
Dolphins of Taiji
Stand Up Today
Ocean on Fire (currently back in the US, but may continue to update about marine issues)

Celebration

Yesterday was a day of celebration for several reasons.

First and foremost, it was another day without any dolphins killed in Taiji. That's all three days since I arrived in Japan and five in a row, total.

Then while we were watching the banger boats come in without any dolphins, this guy was tugged into harbor:

We all hoped it was one of the Japanese whaling vessels currently in the Southern Ocean, but it wasn't quite that awesome. It's an older whaling vessel that's been decommissioned for a while and will soon be displayed at Taiji's Whale Museum (which not only displays whale and dolphin skeletons and whaling gear, but live dolphins and whales. You seriously can't go a block in Taiji without running into captive animals). So while it's not as great as a current whaling vessel being taken out of the loop, at least we know for sure that this old one will never harm another creature.

Outside Taiji's Whale Museum (a better description would be WhalING Museum)

Then the U.S. federal district court judge denied Japan's request for a preliminary injunction to stop our "harassment".

And THEN Erwin was released and came home (by home, I mean back to our hotel)! Words cannot describe our joy at having him back. Erwin's a brilliant activist and I'm privileged to have the opportunity to get to know him.

And best of all, it was taco night!

First Day at the Cove

I was up at 4:45 this morning for my first trip to the Cove. We started at the harbor to count the banger boats (so named because of the poles attached to them that the fishermen use to bang to round up the dolphins since their hearing is sensitive) going out, then made our way up to a lookout to watch for them coming back and see if they were driving any pods of dolphins ahead of them. While we were there, the weather worsened until all the boats had to come back without any dolphins. YES!

Eleven stones for the eleven banger boats that went out and came back dolphin free.

Later on, we returned to Dolphin Base during feeding time (read as training time).

The dolphins were unable to eat until they had done their tricks, like spinning a ring around their snouts like hula hoops or jumping to reach a red ball on a stick. 


Here's a dolphin pen:

Roughly four dolphins live in each pen, which is just a few meters square. Some of them are let out for a little while, but they never stray more than a few feet from the pen and are quickly herded back. In the wild, dolphins swim roughly 40 miles every day. But here, for our entertainment, they're held in torturously small water cages with limited food and exercise. This shit sucks.

All Your Dolphin Base Are Belong to Us

Well, this is a little different: for the next two weeks, I'm coming at you live from Taiji, Japan. I'm here as a Sea Shepherd Cove Guardian to document, and eventually end, the annual dolphin slaughter that happens here. So I'll finally be updating regularly again, but very little (if anything) will be about food and there's a good chance some of the content will be graphic and depressing as hell.

I left New York Monday afternoon, arrived in Osaka Tuesday evening and arrived in Katsuura (where we're staying) Wednesday morning. It was raining so the dolphin killers didn't go out. Hurrah! We went to Dolphin Base, where they train dolphins captured in the Cove for dolphin shows. Which brings me to my first point: PLEASE do not go to Sea World or any other dolphinariums. Many of them get their dolphins from here. The killers murder most of the dolphins straight out and set aside a certain number for captivity. Supporting people who profit from this is not cool.

The dolphins "lucky" enough to be taken to Dolphin Base are fed twice per day as part of their training. At Sea World, it looks like they perform in order to get treats. At Dolphin Base, those are their meals. They have to (sometimes literally) sing for their supper. Today, one person walked back and forth to the pens, in the cold and the rain bringing roughly one bucket of fish per dolphin, while I played the world's tiniest violin for him. Then the trainers arrived to feed (and by "feed", I mean "withhold food until they do what the trainers want") them. Before the fish could be fed to the dolphins, they had to be treated. Some of that was done out in the open, so we were able to see the trainers do things like add water from the pens to the buckets of fish. For other things, they set up a little white barricade and worked kneeling behind it.

What are they hiding?

And why are they cutting fish small enough for the dolphins to eat whole?

And why do the dolphins stay in the pens when they can leap like this?

I actually have the answer to that one: training. I suppose in other species, we'd call it brainwashing. They don't seem to remember that life extends more than a few feet beyond those pens and that they're capable of fending for themselves. So now they're not. They've become wholly dependent on their trainers. On the rare occasions that these dolphins see a live fish, remember what they're supposed to do with it and actually catch it, if these trainers see it happen, they take it away in order to make it clear that they run the show. It's depressing and disgusting.