BlueViews - The
BlueVoice Blog
Introduction
November 15, 2006
- THE DOLPHIN HUNTERS FEAR US
By Hardy Jones
The Risso’s dolphins captured Friday were slaughtered
Monday morning before first light. It is impossible to photograph
these events today as they take place in the dark and behind
tarpaulins. My feelings of helplessness were nearly overwhelming.
But succumbing to those feelings would betray the dolphins
killed that day and those that will die in the future. The
only appropriate reaction is to keep documenting these killings
and bringing them to the world’s attention.
But we have plenty of footage from years past and if they
preclude us from photographing them now we will simply show
what these hideous deeds look like using archival footage.
We spent two days in Futo letting them know that we are
still watching them. When we asked for an interview with
the head of the fishing cooperative were told they hate BlueVoice
and would not grant us anything. Well, you can just imagine
how my feelings were hurt.
Actually that is the same thing the dolphin hunters in Taiji
said – they hate BlueVoice for putting their grizzly
work on television and the Internet. This came out as anger
against us. Oddly we were even asked to not photograph the
slaughter because that might mean the infamous Japan Fisheries
Agency would withdraw their permit to kill dolphins. This
is still our main avenue of attack – to videotape and
expose the dolphin kills embarrassing Japan internationally
and costing them business, credibility in environmental issues
including whaling, and in image.
The fishermen in Taiji were very alarmed that our films
about them had appeared not only on television but on YouTube
and Google Video. (By now we have had 357,000 views on YouTube).
They just hate the Internet exposure. TV happens once and
disappears. The video on the Internet is there day-after-day
for them to look at.
We came to Tokyo from Futo to give footage to Reuters news
agency for a major story on the dolphin hunt in Japan.
On this expedition to Taiji our reports have gone out through
The Japan Times, Reuters, Kyodo News service, YouTube, Google
Video, BlueVoice, Terra (a podcasting service of PBS) and
will soon be on Ocean.com. There is also a podcast on the
National Geographic site including an interview with Diana
Reiss, based on our twenty-five years of work.
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