This film "The Cove"... watched the
trailer and here is my response:
FACTS
Taiji Town dolphin catch / yr in 2010 = 2,000 dolphins
(source: Guardian)
1950s - 1990s: dolphins killed worldwide = 25,000,000 est.
1950s - 1990s: dolphins killed by US (Eastern Pacific only) = 4,500,000 (20% worldwide kill)
1950s - 1990s: dolphins killed by Taiji Town = 100,000 (2% US kill)
(source: US government)
* Today and every year, French & UK Fishermen kill 1 Taiji Town worth of dolphins in the English Channel (2004 data) - no Oscar-winning film on this one as of yet
* Today and every year, 150 Taiji Towns worth of dolphins, porpoises and whales are killed worldwide (2004 data) - no Oscar-winning film here either
(source: Greenpeace)
CONCLUSION
By focusing on the strange and barbaric killings of a tiny minority of dolphins (since when is Japan a big dolphin breeding ground?), an attempt is made to portray Japan and the Japanese as alternately ignorant of the dolphins' plight, lacking in the moral fibre to stop this happening in their own country, and apologists for ill treatment of animals generally, which is defamatory and discriminatory.
If you're going to make a film on a fishing village representing only 2% of Eastern Pacific Ocean US dolphin kills over the last 50yrs, let's see the Oscar-winning film on the remaining 100%. By all means make films about the plight of mammals worldwide, just leave the cheap Japan bashing out of it.
SUPPORTING DATA
Taiji Town dolphin catch / yr in 2010 = 2,000 dolphins
(source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/08/dolphin-hunt-village-defence)
* Total dolphin killed in the UK Channel in 2004 = 1,900 dolphins -> 1 Taiji Town /yr killed by French and UK fishermen
* Total porpoise, dolphin and whale population killed worldwide in 2004 = 300,000 dolphins -> 150 Taiji Towns / yr killed by fishermen worldwide
(source:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/dolphin-killing-trawlers-stopp/)
In the late 1950s, [US] fishermen discovered that yellowfin tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (ETP) aggregated beneath schools of dolphin stocks. Since that discovery, the predominant fishing method in the ETP has been to encircle schools of dolphins with a fishing net to capture tuna concentrated below. Hundreds of thousands of dolphins died in the early years of this fishery.
It became significant in the 1950s when tuna fishermen began to exploit the unique relationship that existed between the tuna and the dolphin. In this zone, the tuna schools swam below the surface swimming dolphin. The fishermen took advantage of this by developing the purse-seine net fishing method. They also used the dolphins to track, chase, and encircle the tuna. Fishermen sealed off any escape routes, catching both the dolphins and the tuna in their nets and many dolphins were killed or injured in this process. While some suffocated due to flipper rostrum (beak), and fluke entanglement, others were crushed by the weight of the tuna or by passing through the power blocks during net retrieval.
Total dolphins killed by US fishing (in 1960s, in Eastern Pacific Ocean only) = 300,000 dolphins -> 150 Taiji Towns /yr killed by US fishermen
(sources:
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/ia/intlagree/aidcp.htm,
http://www1.american.edu/ted/TUNA.HTM)
International Fisheries Law (valid for US and Central America only)
In the fall of 1992, the nations participating in the ETP tuna fishery convened at the annual meeting of the IATTC and signed the La Jolla Agreement, which placed voluntary limits on the maximum number of dolphins that could be incidentally killed annually in the fishery, lowering the maximum each year over seven years, with a goal of eliminating dolphin mortality in the fishery.
* Country quota of US dolphins killable / yr (in 1993) = 19,500 -> 10 Taiji Towns / yr killable by US fishermen
* Country quota of US dolphins killable / yr (in 1999) = <5,000 -> 3 Taiji Towns / yr killable by US fishermen
(source:
http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/drwiltext/docs/The%20La%20Jolla%20Agreement.pdf)
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 160 million years and died out 60 million years ago. Our species has been here for 100 thousand years or so and will probably be extinct within a million years from now. We are to date, evolution's only experiment with technological intelligence that we know of. Maybe in another 60 million years another technologically intelligent species will evolve. If so they will find little or no evidence of our existence on Earth over such a long span of time. Our cities, metals, alloys, nukes - everything - will be just another thin strata in the rock. Nothing we achieve on Earth has the power to endure over geological time. A few fossils may remain and maybe some anomalous objects which may be interpreted as artifacts. But nothing of us and our achievements as a species will remain. Apart from on the Moon, where, barring direct meteor hits, nothing will have disturbed the remains of the Apollo missions since they landed there. There is no erosion on the Moon. The Lunar Rovers, the experiments, the launcher for the Lunar Lander, all of it will sit there in it's brand new state, as if just vacated by the departing astronauts.
Would not future intelligent species not wonder at our achievements when presented with this evidence? Apollo is our postcard to eternity on which we have written, We Were Here.
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