Act Now to Help End Japanese Dolphin Drive Hunting

Posted 24 July 2006 by Wesley R. Elsberry

Dr. Lori Marino, a colleague of mine at Emory University, sent out a call for action to end the Japanese drive hunts that annually kill dolphins and small whales. I got it relayed from Dr. Brenda McCowan at UC Davis. The short version is that scientists and zoological park professionals have gotten together to condemn Japan's small cetacean drive hunts and are looking to collect a million signatures on a petition to try to get it shut down before the next scheduled drive hunts this coming October. The petition site is ActForDolphins.org. Please visit it soon. I've converted the three MS Word documents that I received as attachments to the safer and more portable Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Call For Action Press Release Statements from Scientists I'm proud to say to two of my committee members, Bill Evans and Sam Ridgway, are on the "Statements" page above. I'll append the text of the email I got. Please pass on word of this to your friends and acquaintances. Please also note here or on O.Z. in the comments if you sign the petition. (Continue reading at Online Zoologists)

14 Comments

Alice · 24 July 2006

Omg! I so agree with you! Down with the japanese killing the whales and dolphins. That is so cruel and they just do it for food don't they? I don't know why they do this because it's soo cruel. I will sign the petition because I agree with you so badly. NO MORE WHALE KILLING AND DOLPHIN KILLING. It's outrageous, I hate them for doing that. I hate them, I'm glad I haven't met them!!

Wesley R. Elsberry · 25 July 2006

Meta-talk stuff goes off to the Bathroom Wall.

Inoculated Mind · 25 July 2006

Hah, I know who Brenda McCowan is, I had her grad student on my show. I'm so signed.

Corkscrew · 25 July 2006

I fully support the cause, and am gonna go sign the petition in a moment, but I could wish that they'd talked less about the horrifying nature of the slaughtering process and more about the unnecessariness (sp?) and the dolphins' cognitive ability.

See, we had the anti-animal-testing rabble protesting outside my uni for a couple of years, and the talk about water in the coves turning "red with blood" pings my emotionally-charged-rhetoric meter.

The key question that visitors are going to be asking isn't "how cruel is the process" (very) or "how many are killed" (lots) - it's "why is this different from the killing of, say, cod". And the email does address that, but in a very roundabout way with lots of fairly irrelevant emotive language thrown in. The point isn't that they're being butchered unpleasantly, or that some are being used in the entertainment industry; it's that they're among the most sapient creatures on the planet. They're like us in their capacity to understand what's going on. And we wouldn't want hunters killing us, would we?

Anonymous_Coward · 25 July 2006

Let's not forget that the Dolphins are also running a campaign to save us from annihilation. We should at least respect their efforts.

Where is the PETA website? · 25 July 2006

In my area of the US entire prarie dog communities are brutally poisoned and shot because developers and ranchers say they compete with then for grazing and land use.

These killings, which are overseen by branches of the US government, inflict pain and suffering on these socially complex animals.

Where can I sign a million signature petition to save them?

Anonymous_Coward · 25 July 2006

In my area of the US entire prarie dog communities are brutally poisoned and shot because developers and ranchers say they compete with then for grazing and land use. These killings, which are overseen by branches of the US government, inflict pain and suffering on these socially complex animals. Where can I sign a million signature petition to save them?

Why should we save THEM? They're not petitioning against the plans to build a Hyperspace Expressway through our planet like the Dolphins are.

Necro · 25 July 2006

Don't forget about the river dolphins:

http://www.wdcs.org/dan/publishing.nsf/allweb/E8ADCC3DEEE1556E802568F8004DF252

http://www.isptr-pard.org/dolphin.html

http://www.whaletimes.org/wharvdl.htm

Very interesting stuff.

Where is the PETA website? · 25 July 2006

Maybe we could change the name of this website to "Save the Panda's Thumb"?

mark · 25 July 2006

Not that online petitions do any good anyway.

A text file of thousands of names? Like that's hard to generate with a simple piece of script. Not impressed. Next!
— The recipients of an e-petition

It's pointless. If you agree with the cause, do something concrete like writing an actual letter. Sheesh.

Anonymous_Coward · 25 July 2006

Jesus Freak, I've answered your post in another thread that you infected.

Maybe we could change the name of this website to "Save the Panda's Thumb"?

Or maybe petition to have more funding for the University of Ediacara.

Anonymous_Coward · 25 July 2006

It's pointless. If you agree with the cause, do something concrete like writing an actual letter.

That way, we would busy ourselves with the environmental problems caused by a lack of trees, thus leaving the dolphins in peace.

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 25 July 2006

It's pointless. If you agree with the cause, do something concrete like writing an actual letter.

But tape it to a brick first.

Lauren Warren · 22 November 2006

Where do i sign the petition? I support you.