As we have witnessed the torture endured by 250+ dolphins in a cove in Taiji, Japan the past four days, as their families have been torn apart, and as our Cove Guardians continue to witness and show the world what is happening, we would like to share a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a pioneer of human as well as animal rights:
“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”
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The world is not looking the other way, but will Japan listen? Eleven more dolphins were taken into captivity yesterday, bringing the total taken from this hunt to 51 (though two died). These dolphins do not belong to Japan. They belong to all of us—to the oceans and the planet and they matter in their own right. Though these dolphins face death today, in the spirit of Dr. King, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and our Cove Guardians will never be silent about what they, driven into the shallow waters of Taiji, have faced. The eyes of the world are now laser-focused on Taiji’s cove, and many will hear the cries of the dolphins.
Five separate pods of Bottlenose dolphins totaling more than 250 individuals—including juveniles and babies—were driven into Taiji’s infamous killing cove on Thursday, where they have endured four days of a bloody and traumatizing captive selection process. The remaining group of about 200 dolphins, who were left to survive a fourth night in the cove without food or shelter, now face brutal slaughter at the hands of the Taiji Fishermen’s Union. Among the original “superpod” was a rare albino calf and his or her mom. In some cultures, albino animals are considered sacred “spirit” creatures, and it is thought to be bad luck to harm them.
The unique albino calf, a rare and lucrative find to exploit as a spectacle in captivity, was the very first dolphin to be snatched away from her mother’s side and taken captive on Friday and transferred directly to Taiji Whale Museum. Japanese press is reporting that the mother rejected the calf and so they rescued her, but that is a blatant fabrication as the thousands who watched our live stream of the kidnapping can attest. The baby is possibly blind and/or deaf, as is the case with many albinos. If so, this could be one of the reasons that this terrified calf clung so closely to his or her mother in the cove and now clings to a dolphin companion sharing the calf’s tiny tank.
There is widespread speculation that the mother of the albino calf committed suicide after her baby was violently taken from her. Our volunteer Cove Guardians documented and witnessed the grieving mother repeatedly spy-hopping, looking for her calf, before lowering herself into the water, never to resurface. Dolphins are highly intelligent, socially complex beings who form close bonds with their family, and the trade for captivity regularly rips through these bonds in Taiji.
The captive selection process is as violent as the killing in Taiji, and during the past four days, dolphins could be seen on our Cove Guardians live stream with blood on their faces as they desperately tried to escape the grasp of the killers and trainers. Dolphins repeatedly became entangled in the nets in their frantic efforts to escape or get to separated family members, the nets cutting through their flesh. The dolphins were further injured when run over by the skiffs being driven right over the pod. At one point, propeller blades of a skiff backed into a huddled grouping. The killers regularly use the outboard motors to intimidate and herd the sound-sensitive dolphins. All three Taiji captive facilities—Dolphin Base, Hotel Dolphin Resort and Taiji Whale Museum—have had trainers in the cove taking dolphins to line their pockets and fill their tanks. Some captives caught in Taiji’s hunts remain there in the local captive facilities, and others are transported to aquariums and marine parks around the world.
Yesterday, 11 more dolphins were taken captive, bringing the total number of dolphins torn from their families to 51 over the past four days. Friday and Saturday’s selections each saw a captive dolphin succumb to the stress and injuries of the day. The greed never stops in Taiji, and it feeds a global captive trade. Some of these dolphins could remain in Taiji while others could be sent to marine parks in the Middle East, Mexico, China and elsewhere.
After enduring such horrific cruelty at the hands of the Taiji Fishermen’s Union, the remaining 200 dolphins will continue to suffer, as today many of them will likely face a long and painful death. Dolphins who have already endured separation from their now captive family members will soon see other loved ones killed before their eyes. They will be forced to swim in water turned red with the blood of their family. The larger family members are killed first. Others may be driven back out to sea, including infants and juveniles who are too small and the fishermen don’t want them counted against their self-imposed quota, where the young ones stand little to no chance of survival without the protection of their pod and mothers, especially after the violence and trauma of the last four days.
The flesh of those slaughtered will be sold for human consumption by the Taiji Fishermen’s Union, despite the fact that it contains high levels of mercury and other harmful toxins.
The drive hunt and slaughter of 20,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales occurs throughout Japan each year. Japan refuses to sign on to many protection efforts and regulations for marine mammals, despite most of the world recognizing the need to protect these imperiled animals. The most well-known among these annual hunts occurs in Taiji from Sept. 1 and usually continues through March of the following year. Fishermen herd entire cetacean families into shallow bays where they are mercilessly stabbed with a metal spike inserted into their blowhole to sever their spine. The dolphins slowly and painfully bleed to death or drown in the blood of their family. These inhumane killings would not be allowed in any slaughterhouse in the world.
Taiji’s annual dolphin slaughter was virtually unknown until Sea Shepherd released covertly obtained footage and photographs taken at the Cove in 2003, followed by further international attention due to the Academy Award-winning film The Cove.
CALL TO ACTION: Join Sea Shepherd in speaking out for the largest Bottlenose pod ever driven into Taiji’s killing cove. Click here to find contact information for embassies and consulates, and for more information on what you can do.
Visit EcoWatch’s BIODIVERSITY page for more related news on this topic.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.