Dolphins & Whales.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

Not at all, its just a topic i am particularily passionate about, so i tend to go overboard sometimes.

[Yuki's Passion 1]

what about fish? Japan (more than any other country) overfishes the shit outta the ocean...I eat seafood, including fish once/week sometimes twice, shrimp once a week, and sometimes scallops, octopus, squid, and other seafood. Why dont we make a bigger stink over that? Maybe theyre not, as many pointed out, as cute as other animals, but, supposedly, according to many people, the fish stocks are rapidly declining and due to over fishing, theyre not able to resupply those stocks. Basically cuz nobody wants to voluntarily cut back. Kinda like Americans and their freaking gas-guzzling SUVs and what not. Nobody wants to make the effort, thats the problem. I think your hearts in the right place OK Keep fighting brotha

[Yuki's Passion 1]

 Originally Posted By: Rag-Doll

I'll keep an eye out for the book. Thanks for the fun guys, and sorry again to everyone if I came across as being a bit of a smart arse. It's friday and I'm just a little bored.

be a fun topic in hakuba RD

[Domokun_72dpi 0]

I take my hat off to you Oyuki kigan.

 

I work for Dept Environment and Conservation, so you don't need to ask me where I stand.

[Yuki's Passion 1]

you stand on top of slaughtered dolphins and whales and then eat them dont you? Youre fired

[thursday 1]

I had some whale meat once. Didn't like it.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

ha ha!

 

thanks for the kinds words, Domokun, but my life is hardly anything special. As half of the members on this board can attest to1

 

But like Creek Boy points out, there are HUGE problems right now with how we treat the rest of the earth. Sure, the dolphin cull is but one small, graphic example of a larger problem.

 

And usually its easier to look and point at the crazy, wierd manifistations of the diease, than to see it completely, and how they themselves are complicit.

[thursday 1]

[Tubby Beaver 209]

I like meat too much to give it up. Steak, bacon, Chicken, lamb, Veal...I'll take it all...mmmmmmmmmmm.

 

Dunno that much about farming tbh, but most of the farms around my home city in Scotland are full of fields of healthy looking sheep, pigs and cows running around having what I imagine is a pretty good time for these animals. I wouldn't want to kill them like, I'm sure anyway you do it will involve lots of blood but I'm glad someone does cos I love the end product sizzling away on my plate.

 

CB you are right about Dolphins being high in mercury but then so is Tuna, in fact any "top of the tree" sea predator is high in Mercury, simply because it collects in the apex animals as they eat lots of tint amounts in all the small fish they eat.

[Mantas 3]

Oyuki- Anyone can see from your posts that that you are passionate about these issues, and good on you for being like that, we need more people like you in the world to-day

 

But.

 

Keep it real mate. RD was just trying to add some balance to your slightly sensationalized view. Animals have always suffered greatly whether it has been at the hand of humans or not. It's been that way for millions of years.

[indosnm 0]

I can understand local tribes doing this stuff out of survival but the thing that really bothers me is that they are trying to hide it .. Like they know it's wrong.

We need someone like kimutaku to paddle out with Rasta and the gang to bring some publicity in Japan to the cause.

I7m translating the first article and putting it all over mixi..

[thursday 1]

what is the point of all this? Amusement on an afternoon to type words and say good things? Yes. That was the point. Yes I love dolphins and whales and tuna and cod.

 

You want to change the world? Join the army: go places, see differnt cultures and people; and kill them.

 

Hell, I feel sorry for those beloved dolphins. Please don't kill them you barbarian bastards. Now, I'll have my kobe sirloin rare please, no salad, just the meat with my wine.

[Mantas 3]

 Originally Posted By: Indo

I can understand local tribes doing this stuff out of survival but the thing that really bothers me is that they are trying to hide it .. Like they know it's wrong.
We need someone like kimutaku to paddle out with Rasta and the gang to bring some publicity in Japan to the cause.
I7m translating the first article and putting it all over mixi..

It made prime time news here Indo. The first time I've ever seen that.

[farquah 0]

I have just come back from a week in Taiji while all this was kicking off. I was working with a pretty well known film maker Hardy Jones, who is also the founder of Blue Voice. He has been going there every year since 1980 to fight against this dolphin slaughter. He also used to document the dolphin culls in Futo (Shizuoka) and Kii Island (Off of Kyushu). Due to his action and the wide spread media coverage it courted, the last two palces have since largely stopped the process switching to dolphin watching instead.

 

It was a really really interesting and hard week down there, as soon as I arrived I had 3 plain clothes police officers in my hotel questioning me. THey took my drivers license and I only got it back this morning when I left. The village itself is a strange place (think League of Gentlemen esque x 10) and has a distinct sour feeling about it, and a nervousness in the air. Cars would slow down and try and intimidate me, and I was followed around town by a couple of different people pretty much my whole time there. We were chased off of public land and also refused enterance to public places such as the community centers and small library where the towns documents are kept for public reading. We were also aggresivelly confronted when trying to film the fishing co-operatives supermarket where the dolphin is sold.

 

The purpose of being down there was to garner some samples for testing from the Taiji kids and locals. We wanted hair samples which would be tested for mercury and PCB levels, which is a common pre cursor to cancer if high levels are detected. We also took samples of dolohin, whale, snapper and tuna from the supermarket for testing.

 

The feeding of the dolphin meat to schools doesn`t actually happen now, and was taken off the menu earlier this year as well as off of one of the super markets shelves. Mostly due to the great work of a Taiji assembly man who is finally speaking out. There is an obvious lack of warmth for him in his own town which gives me even more respect for what he is doing. There is also a fwe Japanese journalists (one who is a fantastic 65 year old lady who is just tenacious when it comes to challenging the Taiji council and pulling facts from all over the place). The Japanese fisheries agency have allready told Taiji that if they get any more negative publicity then they may have to shut down their operations, and it seems to be working in that they haven`t had a hunt since last Monday, (bear in mind they usually kill every other day, over 2000 a year).

 

The hard part is getting it in the Japanese media, as it has been covered by the worlds journalists before. However we are starting to make small inroads in exposing it to the public here. Most Japanese when told about it don`t believe that they eat dolphin here, let alone have even heard of the tiny village of Taiji.

 

I will be posting a vid on You tube of the weeks events when I have time and will link it here. IN the mean time if youa re interested then there is a load of stuff on http://www.bluevoice.org

[NoFakie 45]

I don't know anything about dolphins, but the biggest cause of mercury in the oceans is coal-fired power stations.

 

The easiest way to improve that problem is to stop wasting electricity.

[farquah 0]

Not just that but also chemicals (herbicides, pesticides etc) used on the land which wash into rivers then out into the ocean. With the decrease of river deltas, which is natures own water purifier, this then makes the seas contaminated with high levels of PCB`s and POP`s which then gets into the food chain and so the dolphins, etc and then ultimately to us. Power stations, petro chemical factories, any industry that produces waste water, take your pick!

[soubriquet 0]

Erm. What chemicals are you two on? Remind me to avoid them.

[soubriquet 0]

Here is a delta. This is the Mogami delta at Sakata. Like all good deltas, it has oil and gas.

 

 

 

Mr Wiggles. Lead me through the chemical process that turns coal to mercury. I'd like to see that, but I fear we are on O11 territory.

[farquah 0]

Sorry not sure what you mean but to clarrify, I wasn`t talking about mercury, i was talking about PCB levels and POP levels which are caused due to the above factors.

[NoFakie 45]

I would have thought a geologist would know about impurities in coal.

[soubriquet 0]

Just so we are clear then, we are neither creating nor destroying, but recycling. I'm not a coal specialist (they exist). I'd be very interested to see the numbers from a credible source.

 

If coal is full of mercury, it is the natural result of a natural process. There weren't many chemists around in the Carboniferous, and certainly no geologists.

 

Farquah: "With the decrease of river deltas,..."

WTF does this mean? It's a pretty broad claim. Any peer reviewed work to support it?

[me jane 0]

 Originally Posted By: soubriquet

WTF does this mean? It's a pretty broad claim. Any peer reviewed work to support it?

Language, Soubs!

[Rag-Doll 0]

 Originally Posted By: Mr Wiggles

I don't know anything about dolphins, but the biggest cause of mercury in the oceans is coal-fired power stations.

I think this is what Soubs had an issue with. Wiggly, where does this factoid come from?

[thursday 1]

conversely the Pearl river delta is a main source of mercury and heavy metals going into the oceans. If not from the waste water seeping from the many industrial dump sites, then the fires from the burning of theses wastes that send it into the atmosphere to be rained down.

[bushpig 0]

farquah, do you have any links in Japanese for all this stuff? I want to send some links to people I know.