The Cove...a billion dollar busines in killing thousands of Dolphins every year

belgiank

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Damm, I don't condone killing Dolphin (Mammals not fish) but what "hunt" for animals concerning food production is fair?

that is exactly one of the points. As the food is unfit for human consumption. And the fishermen there justified themselves by saying that they were killing a "pest" as they were eating to many fish...
 

Acira

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"The Cove" is nothing but animal rights extremist propaganda and filled with lies and misinformation. The 'star' Ric O'Barry is a known liar and hypocrite who was fined by the NOAA over $60,000 (the highest fine ever doled out by this organization) for violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, for 'releasing' captive dolphins into the wild which later died from starvation and injuries from boat propellers. In his mind, just like the Taiji dolphins, they are better off dead than in an aquarium.

Not a single dolphin in the Dominican Republic comes from Taiji, not a single dolphin currently cared for by Sea World is from Taiji. The Cove is a clever propaganda piece disguised as a documentary.

Ocean World tried to buy dolphins from Taiji back in 2006, but due to Ric O'Barry's interference (using lies and misinformation) with Dominican government officials, the import was not allowed. This is the basis of two multi-million dollar lawsuits we have filed in Florida against Ric O'Barry and his boss Earth Island Institute (some eco-warriors who's mission statement is to "control earth, land, and sea"), for tortious interference in a contract and for defamation.

Those dolphins would have come out of the annual slaugther in Taiji, since Japan has a legal quota to kill thousands of dolphins per year. In Taiji, they have been doing this for hundreds of years as it is part of their culture. The dophins are eaten and not 'killed for entertainment.' The Japanese are horrified that we kill Bambi in hunting trips the same way we are horrified when they kill flipper.

The dolphins that Ocean World would have gotten, would be alive today, had it not been for people like O'Barry and the makers of The Cove, however, they would rather see the dolphins dead than alive, frolicking in the largest man made dolphin lagoon in the world, with free healthcare, food, and a state of the art filtration system - because it doesn't suit their extreme fantasy agenda that all animals should be 'free' to roam in an untouched (by man) Mother Earth.

The lawsuit is going good for us, especially now that we can prove that the video tape O'Barry and EII were using to influence the Dominican Government officials (dolphins being slaughtered and blood splattering on the camera lens), was not the video tape of the 2006 collection of the our dophins, but footage that they lifted from a 1999 PBS special.

This time, they will have to pay for their lies. They have been getting away with this way too long.

Can I/Dare I see that as positive then?
Does that mean that you have a very succesfull breeding program?
Does it mean that you have an interchange program running with other dolphinaria in the world?
 

wrecksum

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Sep 27, 2010
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I can't see how conchman could be any clearer.
His position is perfectly clear and his arguments are backed by reality.

I despise all displays of cruelty solely for the 'Thrill of the Kill".I eat meat but don't kill. I eat fish but don't fish.I'm the ultimate Ostrich. The slaughter of an animal for its consumption is a primordial reflex. The pleasure in its suffering is a perverse side-effect enjoyed by some.

I have no horse in this race but my concept will always be that the misguided protection and possible survival of one favoured species in preference to another unloved by (disney human) species will always lead to unbalance.

Save the Sardines! is not a cry I hear often.
Long live Lionfish or Bluebottles Forever! are voices lost in the Greenpeace clamour.
Feed your cockroach or its health may suffer!
Ban Baygon Today!

What about "save the Krill!". Eat Whales!
Lake flies forever! Shoot all the birds! movement.
Amoebas need love too!
E Coli needs a new home. Give generously!

OK
I've stopped now.

See also:
Bibliography:
Books by Cilly Green Press.

Why did God make fish so tasty?
Are Hippopotamus just a celestial joke?
I know why Dolphins smile so much.
How to eat humans. Great White Cookbook.
It's just a little hump. Welsh Publishing.
Collector's Guide to Human Blood. Mossie Byte
Et Al.
 

Conchman

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What exactly do you call a lie in this story? Elaborate me please.

1) For starters, Sea World and the Dominican Republic do not have any dolphins that were caught in Taiji. This is a blatant lie.

2) Then, the slaughter is not perpetuated by the marine mammal parks, the Japanese have been doing this for hundreds of years, way before aquariums came into existence. In The Cove Ric OBarry contradicts himself, first he says its because of marine parks, then he says its because the fishermen kill dolphins because of 'pest control.' So which is it Mr. O'Barry?

3) In fact, any dolphin taken by marine mammal parks, would save the life of that animal, since it would come out of the yearly quota for consumption.

3) Foreigners are allowed in Taiji, however, foreigners that break the law like Ric O'Barry who trespasses, are not allowed.

4) Ric O'Barry was never a dolphin trainer for the Flipper movie, according to Bill Hertz the owner of the Miami SeAquarium who was in charge of the filming of the movie/series.

5) The house that he claims he lived in, during the filming of Flipper, was a prop.

6) And he really showed Flipper the series on TV, and the dolphin recognized himself on TV? Come on.

7) Dolphins are slaughtered in the US, Norway, Canada, Russia, Faroe Islands (Denmark).

8) Trevor Spradlin of the National Marine Fisheries Service division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ?the reality is that the public-display industry has not requested permission to catch animals since the late 1980s.? Instead, the American industry has switched focus to captive breeding and artificial insemination. The movie leds you to believe that Sea World currently imports dolphins from Taiji.

9) Dolphins live more than 5 years 'in captivity,' contrary to Ric O'Barry's claims. Their lifespan under human care can actually be much more than in the wild (+15 years), depending on the quality of the facility. We have dolphins at our facility in The Bahamas that are in their 30's and 40's, one of them is about to have its 5th baby.

These are just the ones I can think of the top of my head, without watching the film again.

The other lies I am talking about are the one spewed by Mr.O'Barry in a tv interview he did on Medio a Medio in Santo Domingo, where he personally attacked me with lies which is the basis of my defamation lawsuit. Basically, every sentence he said on the interview was a lie.
 

Acira

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I am going to answer on some of these quotes just because I ask for it myself.

1) For starters, Sea World and the Dominican Republic do not have any dolphins that were caught in Taiji. This is a blatant lie.

Can you tell me where they came from then originally and where they come from now?

2) Then, the slaughter is not perpetuated by the marine mammal parks, the Japanese have been doing this for hundreds of years, way before aquariums came into existence. In The Cove Ric OBarry contradicts himself, first he says its because of marine parks, then he says its because the fishermen kill dolphins because of 'pest control.' So which is it Mr. O'Barry?

You don't have to watch the movie chronological to see the logic in it. Those Japanese fishermen have been killing dolphins by "tradition" for their meat with only a small population taken it in consumption. Then came the boom of dolphinaria and many admit that Taiji was the easiest and maybe cheapest place to get a dolphin from, so a bit of political lobbying and the quota for fishing dolphins goes up. Find me one commercial fishermen who will not fish UNDER a quota. After the rising of the quota, they had a lot of dolphin meat left, lets promote it and give it as schoollunch for the children, hec lets give it for free.
The words Pestcontrol are not coming out of the mouth of Ric, they are coming from some official who couldn't think of anything other more to say. Too much dolphins slaughtered, meat is soled under the name of whale meat just to get rid of it..hey lets call it pest control.


3) In fact, any dolphin taken by marine mammal parks, would save the life of that animal, since it would come out of the yearly quota for consumption.

Any marine park or zoo these day's that has the good intention of preserving wild life, sets up extended breeding programs to avoid taking any other wild animal out of their natural inhabitat.

3) Foreigners are allowed in Taiji, however, foreigners that break the law like Ric O'Barry who trespasses, are not allowed.

4) Ric O'Barry was never a dolphin trainer for the Flipper movie, according to Bill Hertz the owner of the Miami SeAquarium who was in charge of the filming of the movie/series.

Really? I am not going to ask for Ric O'Barrie's resume but it seems to me that there is enough evidence on the Internet to say he was.

5) The house that he claims he lived in, during the filming of Flipper, was a prop.

6) And he really showed Flipper the series on TV, and the dolphin recognized himself on TV? Come on.

7) Dolphins are slaughtered in the US, Norway, Canada, Russia, Faroe Islands (Denmark).

And your point is?

8) Trevor Spradlin of the National Marine Fisheries Service division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ?the reality is that the public-display industry has not requested permission to catch animals since the late 1980s.? Instead, the American industry has switched focus to captive breeding and artificial insemination. The movie leds you to believe that Sea World currently imports dolphins from Taiji.

Well, thats what I have asked you to in another question in this thread. How about the breeding programs of Sea World. I can only applaud extensive research in such breeding programs instead of getting more mammals out of the wild.

9) Dolphins live more than 5 years 'in captivity,' contrary to Ric O'Barry's claims. Their lifespan under human care can actually be much more than in the wild (+15 years), depending on the quality of the facility. We have dolphins at our facility in The Bahamas that are in their 30's and 40's, one of them is about to have its 5th baby.

The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is around 45 years. Half of the dolphins captured are going to die within their first two years.

These are just the ones I can think of the top of my head, without watching the film again.

The other lies I am talking about are the one spewed by Mr.O'Barry in a tv interview he did on Medio a Medio in Santo Domingo, where he personally attacked me with lies which is the basis of my defamation lawsuit. Basically, every sentence he said on the interview was a lie.

Look Mr. Conchman, it was never my intention to go into "battle" with you. You have your own battles to fight apperently with Ric O'Barry and I am in no way connected, neither to you nor to him.

I am just a person who saw this movie and for me it was an eye opener. I had no idea that dolphins were hunted and slaughtered in such a way. I find it disgusting, barbaric and not of these day's anymore. Despite "tradition", there should be coming an end to this. There are enough factors that prove that this kind of drive hunting of dolphins is not necessary anymore and this tradition should die off.

I am also an end-user who used to love to go and visit marine parks around the world. Instead of attacking me with all this going on around Ric O'Barry, shouldn't you be better of inviting me to your park and give me a tour?

Acira
 

Chip

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While I don't support the killing off of any animal because of possible implications to the earths environment the fact is whales and dolphins are animals and can't reason and in fact commonly practice infanticide (well we humans do that too I suppose) and therefore shouldn't be exalted as "almost" human imo. In fact if our ancestors took a similar approach none of us would be here in the first place. Nonetheless, I don't support killing animals w/o any purpose and certainly not doing it in an inhumane manner. People too seem to forget that these same animals are killing eachother everyday. Finally, I saw a show the other day that boggled my mind - people stating it is worth a human life to try to stop the killing of whales by the Japanese - something that has sustained many human beings over the centuries and I thought it's a tragedy that these same people couldn't put their desire to do good to save something much more worthwhile - say a human being in Haiti or something.
 

Acira

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While I don't support the killing off of any animal because of possible implications to the earths environment the fact is whales and dolphins are animals and can't reason and in fact commonly practice infanticide (well we humans do that too I suppose) and therefore shouldn't be exalted as "almost" human imo. In fact if our ancestors took a similar approach none of us would be here in the first place. Nonetheless, I don't support killing animals w/o any purpose and certainly not doing it in an inhumane manner. People too seem to forget that these same animals are killing eachother everyday. Finally, I saw a show the other day that boggled my mind - people stating it is worth a human life to try to stop the killing of whales by the Japanese - something that has sustained many human beings over the centuries and I thought it's a tragedy that these same people couldn't put their desire to do good to save something much more worthwhile - say a human being in Haiti or something.

Chip, even a dog can reason.
Sure, animals kill each other for food, its called the Chain of Life and humans kill animals for food too because we are one of those animals at the top of that food chain. The only difference is that we are "evolved" more then other species on earth so we can adapt and improve how we access that food supply.

Do we do that alway's or have done that alway's in the best interest of animals "beneath" us? No, certainly not but we do can change and we often do that. An orka will alway's chase the same way like he has done for centuries and its not nice to see an orka killing a sea lion but thats genetically his way of life although they can adapt but only to improve his hunting skills. A human does not have to hunt or breed the same way like he did centuries ago, most hunting or slaughtering or breeding methods have changed a lot over the centuries with ups and downs.

Still more important in this particular case is that whales and I do not care that the IWC say's a dolphin is not a whale, a dolphin is part of the family of whales. Whales in generally are becoming a very endangered species and you cannot deny that there are big movements around the world protesting against the still ongoing hunting of endangered species in our seas and on land.

Take the above together with the fact that the drive hunt of dolphins has been proven enough, is absolutely unnecessary for a) providing food? No, because the dolphin meat is poisenous and is not fit for human consumption and b) for supplying dolphins for marine parks? No, because after decades of experience with dolphins in captivity, the marine parks should have come up by now with a plausible solution and a good breeding program.

Are marine parks all over the world going to wait until they did with f.e. the mountain gorilla, only a few hundred left in the wild and then act? I strongly believe that marine parks do have a big responsibility in this matter. They can f.e. give a lot more educational programs about their marine mammals in captivity towards their visitors to start with.

Acira
 

Chip

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From what I've read the Japanese have been hunting whales and dolphins for centuries and are doing it today. In fact, with regard to the movie "The Cove", one Japanese said that "Westerners eat cows and Easterners eat dolphins".

While I appreciate some say that the meat is toxic, apparently many Japanese don't seem to care and I don't see where anybody has the right to tell them they can't eat it anymore than anybody has the right to tell Europeans or Americans to stop eating beef because it's not good for them. At any rate, the real reason the issue of toxicity is used as a valid reason to stop dolphin hunting is because many people are just opposed in principle and would use whatever information however suspect to that end.

Like I said before I don't agree with treating animals inhumanely more than necessary and certainly killing them without purpose but apparently the Japanese still eat them and even if all these parks quite buying dolphins from them they will continue on as they have done for centuries.
 
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belgiank

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Let us start on a positive note... only 40% of dolphins in dolphinaria around the world now come from the wild. So the breeding program established by the better dolphinaria seems to be working...

Let us now do some figures. I surfed the net, and the numbers of wild dolphins sold to dolphinaria vary from a couple of hundred to thousands per year. I will only take taiji as an example and be very, very cautious in my numbers. Let us assume taiji only sells around 50 dolphins to dolphinaria per year. At 150,000 us$ a piece, this represents an astonishing 7.500.000 us$. They sell the remainder of the 23.000 dolphins at 200$ a piece, which represents 4.600.000 us$. A quick calculation with those very cautious numbers learn us that 62% of the income of taiji is derived from the sales to dolphinaria.

The remaining 38% is derived from sales of dolphin meat as whale meat to the unsuspecting Japanese customers, who think they are buying the real stuff. The fact that this meat is extremely toxic does not seem to bother these people.

OK, this is horrible. What is also horrible is, if there was no restriction on whales being caught, this would probably not be possible. A sad truth, but nevertheless the truth. The simple fact is that the Japanese should adapt their food culture, realising and acknowledging the fact that whales should be protected as they are on the verge of extinction, and that they are not to be considered as a food source in the future.

The Japanese should invest more in fish farms, etc.. to supply their future food supply. And these farms do not include dolphins or whales...

To reply to Chip... yes we eat cows, and pigs, and chickens, and who are we to tell the Japanese what to eat. If you would know that beef contained 2000 times the amount of mercury, considered to be safe for human consumption, would you feed it to your children? And this is scientifically proven
 

Chip

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To reply to Chip... yes we eat cows, and pigs, and chickens, and who are we to tell the Japanese what to eat. If you would know that beef contained 2000 times the amount of mercury, considered to be safe for human consumption, would you feed it to your children? And this is scientifically proven

From what I've read there is a market in Japan for Dolphin meat and not just for whale meat. Therefore, the Japanese know what they are eating and in fact have been doing it for centuries if not millenia. No one has the right to tell them to stop eating it anymore than anyone has the right to stop you and your spouse from smoking.
 

Robert

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I think Conchman is too busy to get on here and debate some of you armchair critics, he's hard at work raising awareness about Dolphins and introducing them to 100's of people on a daily basis. What have you done for dolphin lately?

Projects like Ocean World here and Ocean World in Florida etc do a fantastic job of keeping flipper alive through public awareness programs, school education programs which in turn, indirectly put pressure on those that cull them.
 

belgiank

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Robert, read my previous posts... I can only applaud that dolphinaria around the world make people aware of the existing issues through public awareness programs.

But maybe they should advocate this more on their websites, on their tours, etc...

BTW... I have no beef with Conchman or with Ocean World. I'm pretty sure they mean well, and are doing a good job. Maybe the PR should be improved?
 

Robert

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This thread is not about smoking habits, so that topic ends right now.

Back to Dolphins...
 

Major448

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... and (on a lighter note) ... Are Our Children Learning Enough About Whales? :cheeky:

<iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/POi4rvN_Yts" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

.
 

luzcace

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I have been to Ocean World many times, always when I get visit I would take them there, dont have seen to many of these places, but I am sure that OW is the best invironment possible, it is almost like their natural habitat, talked to some of the staff and watched them taking blood samples of the dolphins. I remeber the baby dolphin born there a few years ago.
 

Acira

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Adventure marine parks, swimming with dolphins...you cannot deny that this is a theme that has become very popular the last decades.

The Cove is a movie along a long chain of a still massive increasing protest around the world that slaughtering of these dolphins and small whales in this way is just not accepted anymore.

Bluevoice.org f.e. has succesfully shut down the dolphin hunt in Futo since the 1980' with his ups and downs and a lot of diplomacy was involved to achieve this together with high International pressure. In 2004 there was another hunt there, ONLY because some marine parks approached the fishermen with money for live dolphins. They captured around a hundred of which 16 were shipped out for entertainment and the rest was let loose in the wild again thanks to the scrutinous eye watching of bluevoice representatives.
Bluevoice.org keeps an open dialogue with Futo's Fishermens society to maintain the status of zero dolphin hunting in Futo.

To give another example that has nothing to do with the Cove as such but does tell me that there is a growing awareness that we - as humans - are not being very responsible as to regard to sea mammals, is the drawing up of a paper by the NOAA to stop or at least make some boundaries for the growing business in Hawaii to go out in sea by boat to visit the Spinner Dolphins. The problem here is that Spinner Dolphins are night creatures so they sleep during the day and growing numbers of people visiting them during the day, has alarmed several organizations that this could be a potential danger for that population of type of dolphins.
Here we are talking about dolphins in the wild, not even in captivity.

Its a given fact that dolphins are very gentle creatures by nature. That gentle nature is definitely playing in their disadvantage these day's. They are easy to catch, easy to train and they don't tend to get angry, not even when in pain may it be of physical or of mentally nature.

Acira