September 1 marks the official start of the annual Taiji dolphin and small whale hunt in Japan, made infamous by the 2009 documentary The Cove. A quota of nearly 2,000 animals has been approved for this season, and Taiji hunters insist that the killing is done in a humane fashion – but the method used involves tethering the animals’ tails then severing the spinal cord of each animal in turn using a metal spike. The metal spike is meant to cause immediate brain death, followed by ‘bleed out,’ but video footage captured over recent years shows animals clearly in severe distress and struggling for their lives. (A 2011 veterinary observation noted one death took four minutes.) Cetaceans are intelligent and closely bonded creatures with complex communication systems – which means the process is anything but humane for the animals still struggling to free themselves as the water fills with the blood of their already slain fellow pod members.
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Post tags: aquariums, dolphin capture, dolphin drive hunting, dolphin shows, dolphin slaughter, Japan, Japanese dolphin slaughter, Save Japan Dolphins, Sea Shepherd, SeaWorld, Taiji, taiji cove, The Cove, whales, whaling
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