My granddaughter, Kaela, wants to be a marine biologist. She’s been hounding me for months to obtain from Netflix and watch a film called The Cove. It’s about how the Japanese harvest dolphins. I won’t pretend to have a lot of knowledge about the practice of killing and eating dolphins world-wide, since this film is the only information I’ve absorbed on the subject thus far. Viewing it did raise some interesting questions in my mind, however, and I’m eager to do further research. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog.
The Japanese manner of herding and corralling the dolphins reminds me very much of how we deal with cattle. They line up fishing boats near a pod of dolphins and create a “wall of noise” by banging on metal pipes that hang down into the water. At the end of the pipe, under the water line, is a foot that sends the vibration out into the water. The dolphins dislike the noise, in fact are frightened by it, and move away. The fishermen thus herd the dolphins into a cove, then quickly spread a wall of net across the mouth of the cove, barring the dolphins’ way back out to sea. Once the dolphins are corralled, some are marketed to research centers and amusement/education centers, such as Marine World or Sea World. The rest are harvested, killed and processed for human consumption.
Dolphin meat used to be featured in school lunches throughout Japan, but due to political pressure this practice has reportedly been discontinued, although the film alleges that dolphin meat still finds its way into the marketplace at large, disguised as one type of fish or another. Dolphin fishermen, again yielding to outside pressure, also claim to have made their killing methods quicker and more humane. These two facts, again, remind me of the beef industry in America. In recent decades, we’ve been urged to avoid too much red meat, and animal activists have protested and tried to bring about change in the way we treat and harvest cattle. Ironically, it’s the Japanese who have some of the most humane cattle practices, producing the famous Kobe beef, which is supposedly dramatically more tender and of better quality because the cows are treated kindly before they are swiftly and humanely dispatched, thus keeping harmful enzymes and chemicals released during stress from adversely affecting their muscle tissue.
Raising cattle for food is a long-standing part of our culture here in America, as in many parts of the world. Many of us think nothing of raising these animals expressly for consumption; they have no other function in our world. Japan is a small country, surrounded by ocean, and relies on fish for the mainstay of its diet. Raising red meat is too costly for a country with so little land to use; raising cattle takes a lot of acres. Dolphin herding and harvesting is probably a part of their culture from antiquity. In India, Hindus are appalled at our practice of eating cows; to them, cattle are sacred. In Korea and the Philippines, past, and in some cases present, practices include eating dogs. In parts of the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and South America, meat goats are common.
I tried to eat goat meat last year. I’ve grown up eating beef and chicken, but I’ve never raised a beef for slaughter and I’ve never killed my own chickens. I do own dairy goats, and friends who own meat goats urged me to try eating goat meat, so I did. It was difficult, and I have to say I just don’t want to do it—to me, the cooked meat tasted and smelled just like my little goats smell, and I couldn’t get past that. Maybe if I’d grown up with it as part of my culture I would be less bothered by it. I already know I never want to try to eat dog (even typing this is horrifying to me)—my dogs feel like my adopted children.
I think that’s a lot of Western civilization’s problem with dolphin harvesting—what dolphins are, to us. We see dolphins as these cute, amazing, mysterious ocean-dwelling mammals, not food. The film makes a point of stressing that they are MAMMALS, not fish, but so are cows, goats and dogs. Of course, there are those who shun eating any living animal, and perhaps eating any mammal is as repugnant an idea to them as eating goat or dog is to me. It’s culture, and individual choice and conviction. There are lots of good arguments for not eating meat, environmentally and for humane reasons, but that, too, is a whole ‘nother blog. I ate vegetarian, for the most part, for several years,but finally started eating meat again when I was diagnosed with anemia. I still eat very little meat, and prefer eating vegetarian a lot of the time. Food, like religion and politics, is something that people can get very emotional about.
I do know for sure that I never want to eat a dolphin. Like eating dog, it seems horrifying to even think of it. To me, dolphins are highly intelligent, almost mythical and mystical creatures. I’ve been telling my family for a long time that, when I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes poured out over the Pacific Ocean; I have this idea that what’s left of my cells will merge with the ocean and, ultimately, even become a part of a dolphin somewhere. So I get how some people are upset about what the dolphin fishermen are doing, and how some people won’t eat meat of any kind. Most of all, I appreciate the people who made The Cove for inspiring Kaela to want to learn more about marine biology.
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