Every year, fishermen participate in a dolphin drive hunt that is taken place in a shallow cove located off of the Kii Peninsula, south of Kyoto in Taiji. Hundreds to thousands of dolphins are slaughtered, butchered or kept alive in confinement for future transfer to marine parks or aquariums.
The Cove
Blood shed from the killing of the dolphins
The dates of when these annual dolphin drive hunt occurs is from October 31st until April 30th. For 6 months, fishermen are looking out for pods of dolphins to lure and capture in the cove. The fishermen are successful at locating these dolphins because the dolphins have been using the same migratory path for thousands of years. The dolphins that are targeted include, the common bottlenose, striped, spotted, risso’s, rough-toothed and pacific white-sided, dolphins and short-finned pilot whales.
Dolphins trapped in The Cove
Different types of dolphins
This cove is blocked off from the public with blue and green tarps that cover the cove during the fishermen’s annual hunt, because of the recent past years awareness of this brutal culling from activists, environmentalists, and organizations such as the International Whaling Commission. This awareness has given the little town of Taiji a black eye and the Japanese want to further decrease the amount of local Japanese, Japanese tourists or people from around the world from finding out about their big ‘secret’. They also want to minimize the amount of pictures of this annual hunt that are released via the media, internet or possible documentaries that could be made such as the famous documentary “The Cove.”
Blue and green tarps blocking the slaughtering of the dolphins
Fishermen preventing the public from observing the cull
