“Cove Guardians stood in rain to capture footage of dolphin trainers and dolphin killers working together. Despite extreme weather conditions four small skiffs entered the cove at sunrise. The killers managed to corral the pod into the shallow waters of the cove while trainers selected three pilot whales for captivity. Two juveniles and possibly a female of the pod. The process is quite simple. Once selected, rest of pod in netted away from captive whales. They await their fate. Today the captive whales were taken in slings via skiffs to the Taiji harbor captive pens and the remaining pod will be held again until tomorrow morning and at that time the murder will begin.”
-“It tells us that if humans break up a group of sperm whales or killer whales or dolphins, we are destroying not just individual lives or a population of animals; we are also destroying a unique dialect, a hunting strategy, a social tradition—an ancient, living culture.”
-“until a few hundred thousand years ago most of the culture was in the ocean. Certainly the most sophisticated cultures on Earth were whales and dolphins, until the strange bipedal hominid evolved.”
-“Whales are arguably the most socially connected, communicative and coordinated mammals on the planet, including humans.”
-“Killer whales, for instance, do not kill or even seriously harm one another in the wild, despite the fact that there is competition for prey and mates and there are disagreements. Their social rules prohibit real violence, and they seem to have worked out a way to peacefully manage the partitioning of resources among different groups. That is something we humans haven’t done yet.”
