Related Posts
Help put an End to Dolphin Slaughter and Captivity!A host of A-list celebrities have partnered up with the creators of The Cove to encourage people to...
Bloody Tide of Taiji Dolphin Cove may Finally be Turning for the BetterThis week marked the beginning of the annual Dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan. Taiji is where the award-winning...
‘Bullied’ dolphin finds refuge in California wetlands
A dolphin has spent several days apparently hiding out in Orange County, California’s Bolsa Chica wetlands reserve.
When rescue...
Animal suicide – are they ‘just like us’?
In The Cove, the Oscar winning documentary on Japanese dolphin slaughter, activist and former dolphin trainer Richard O'Barry...
Blood Dolphins: A New, Three-Part Series from the Makers of ‘The Cove’Last night marked the premier of an awesome new series on Animal Planet, starring none other than Ric...
Get your Eco Starter Kit
Create an account and start harvesting Carbon Credits! Exchange your Carbon Credits for green goodies, like the Eco-Hatchery Starter Kit!
-
Green network users
3,029 Users - Show All
Green Directory
Tip of the Day
Keep eggs out of the fridge to save energy when cooking them
Dolphin jumps out of aquarium in Japan
photo by OpenCage (Wikimedia Commons)
A False Killer Whale – a member of the dolphin family – leapt out of its tank during a performance at an aquarium in Okinawa, Japan.
Video, taken by an American visitor at the aquarium, shows the dolphin first attempting to leap over the barrier and then falling back into the tank. It then successfully jumps out onto the concrete surrounding the tank, where trainers rush to roll it onto padding and keep it wet by spraying it with hoses.
Dolphin activist and former trainer Rick O’Barry – who claims in the documentary film The Cove that he witnessed one of his dolphins commit suicide by self suffocation – had this to say about the video (from a report in the Telegraph):
The habitat of that false killer whale is so unnatural it leaped out in desperation. It wanted to end it. Why does a person jump out of a building?
O’Barry believes that dolphins suffer immensely from being held in small confined tanks and being exposed to noises that they would never experience in their natural ocean habitats.
Watch the video footage from ITN/Telegraph below:
Is this a case of animal suicide or rather an act of desperation, as O’Barry believes? Or is it simply an example of over exuberant play as one of the managers of the aquatic park maintains?
Graham Land
Tags: aquarium, dolphin, False, japan, jump, Killer, O’Barry, tank, whale
8 Comments
You can also log in to post a comment.
Other Greenfudge.org posts
Rising Sea Levels Swallow Tiny Island, Settle 30-Year Dispute
A small, Asian island has been completely swallowed by the sea—and it’s not part of the Maldives. New Moore Island is now completely submerged underwater. If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s located in the Bay of Bengal and part of the Sundarbans (the largest block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world). It was also part of a 30 year dispute between India and Bangladesh; but at least that’s finally been resolved. It may surprise you to learn that...
India blocks bauxite mining plans in indigenous homeland
The proposal by mining company Vedanta Resources to establish a bauxite mine on sacred indigenous land in India’s Orissa state has been rejected by the Indian Government. The Dongria Kondh tribe live harmoniously with nature and are ecologically dependent on the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, where Vedanta – an Indian and British firm – have been accused of breaches of environmental law. From an article in the Telegraph: There have been serious violations of environment protection acts. There is no emotion, no politics,...
Mark Boyle: ‘No Money Man’ keeps on
Mark Boyle, aka No Money Man, has been living out of an old donated caravan on an organic farm outside of Bristol, England for over a year and a half. He eats well, keeps fit, grows vegetables and forages for necessities. He also keeps up a blog and occasionally writes for the Guardian. He's even written a book while he's at it. Oh, and he's lived without money the entire time. From a CNN Eco Solutions report: Although it hasn't always been easy,...
Harry Potter threatens owl population in India
Popularity and consumption are strange things. No one can deny they go hand in hand, since at least to some degree that which is popular is, in fact, consumable. Consumerism… I hate the word. According to Wikipedia it “is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods or services in ever greater amounts.” I agree. Consumption is based on the ever-growing desire to have and to own, at...
Shark fin soup is bad for the environment and your brain
Consuming shark fin soup is a bad idea, not only because of the decreasing number of sharks, but it can also lead to a brain damage. "A new study has found high concentrations of BMAA in shark fins -- a neurotoxin linked to neurodegenerative diseases in humans including Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig disease (ALS)", informs sunnewsnetwork.ca. Patients with these diseases, tested before they died, had very high levels of BMAA - up to 256 nanograms per milligram - in their brains. Shark...
United Nations to Investigate Hacked E-mails
With all the tension and unrest that’s been created from a series of hacked e-mails, the U.N. has decided to take it upon themselves to conduct their own investigation into the matter—in addition to other investigations already underway. When asked about the issue, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said that the issue raised is serious and “we will look into it in detail. We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position...
Volcano videos: Popo pops off
Popocatépetl, meaning Smoking Mountain in the indigenous Nahuatl language of central Mexico, is at it again. Only 70 km (43 mi) southeast of the capital, the volcano is visible from Mexico City on a clear day – and by ‘clear’ I mean a lesser variety of extreme smogginess than normal. Popocatépetl started spewing lava rocks and columns of ash almost 10 days ago. The world-famous active volcano has also been roaring loudly, causing concern among local residents. Though so far no evacuations have taken place,...
Finnish Study Shows Carbon Emissions from Soil are Worse Than Previously Thought
For some, dealing with climate change can be a very dirty business. There are skeptics to deal with, slander, grueling expeditions and tedious research projects. In some cases, all that dirty work actually involves dirt itself, as a group of Finnish researchers recently found out. It would seem that these researchers discovered that soil emissions may contribute more to global warming than previously thought. In a statement, the Finnish Environment Institute said: “A Finnish research group has proved that the present standard...
When the economy suffers, rich countries eat worse, while developing countries often eat better
This headline is admittedly a gross simplification of what happens to the diets of certain countries’ populations in times of economic hardship and instability, but it does crystallize a very enlightening phenomenon. In essence, the diets of lower income people in developed countries are unhealthy compared with their counterparts in developing nations. The foods they eat are often processed and loaded with sugar, salt, fat, preservatives and chemical additives and their diets feature less fresh and fewer wholesome foods like...
Video report on Brazil’s contrasting environmental practices from ITN and CNN
Many of Brazil's ultra-poor survive by recycling in the cities or farming in the Amazon in underground economies that both harm and help local and global ecology. A similar dichotomy is reflected in Brazil's legitimate energy and farming markets. 'If the desecration of the rainforest is Brazil's carbon footprint, it is ethanol and hydro that ensure that 50% of the country's energy usage rates as renewable.' –John Snow, ITN ITN's John Snow reports from Brazil on the South American country's contrasting...
View all articles
Cheers, Scott. Will do!
Certainly, Graham. If you ever make it to Nantucket drop an email to me and the Nantucket Marine Mammal Conservation Program. We do have this thing about ‘whaling’ here… and I have always sided with Moby Dick.
Thanks again for your comments and information, Scott!
Sea Shepherd (www.seashepherd.org) has just released a covert video of the Faroe “murder.” It is as horrendous as anything that happens in Japan and should be stopped immediately. Alas, cultural identity — for humans — again trumps ethics, empathy and commonsense. We must continue to speak and act against such ‘cultural norms’ as we do with child labor, female circumcision, female education practices, etc… while acknowledging our own historic errors as a country built on the backs of slaves, which once ruled the whaling world. Sadly, Norway & Iceland opt out of the IWC rulings on whaling through ‘Objection.’ But, they do not use the mis-information tactics of Japan to spin their intentions. None of these nations (Faroe Islands are a protectorate of Denmark), take nearly as many cetaceans as Japan. While all are guilty of unethical mass killing of an intelligent, social being — to date, it is Japan that leads the global assault on cetaceans through whaling and capture. With a good deal of luck, the discussion which has finally begun in Japan with the screening of The Cove (see: savejapandolphins.org — blog), will open their public to both political and ethical questions beyond the profit incentive(s) and cultural clap trap currently guiding the monologue. The organization ‘Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts’ (mmcta.org), may also influence this new dialogue — as they have in Norway — if they are able to open an exhibit in Tokyo. In the mean time, to quote an Animal Welfare Institute flier, “Dolphins Are Dying To Amuse You.” And most of the participating public is learning nothing from it.
Good topic, Graham.
Yes, and I acknowledge there is a relationship between dolphin slaughter and the oceanariums/parks in Japan, as was shown in The Cove. That film also showed how dolphin slaughter and slavery are far from the public consciousness in both the US and Japan, though I bet the slaughter is more or less embraced in the isolated Faroe Islands. I also don’t read much press about tiny Norway and their whaling compared to all the press Japan gets.
No debate there Graham. My comments on Japan stem from the article’s focal point… plus the leadership Japan provides in the pro-whaling and captivity efforts. These tandem elements, capture and killing of cetaceans are very well established in Japan. Certainly, the dolphinarium industry is a global nightmare for cetaceans. (If you have not yet done so, watch the US Congressional Hearings earlier this year on the ‘educational merits’ of the dolphin captivity industry… a great panel of anti-captivity scientists and naturalists, against pro-captivity ‘profiteers’ — in a word). They refuse to speak to the points made by the anti-captivity advocates regarding that half of the equation which has no choice in the matter.
Thanks for your comment, Scott.
I agree that the FKW was probably not playing. She tried to get out of the tank two times in succession and I don’t believe she did it because she thought it would be a fun, safe thing to do.
/
However, I don’t see this as anything really to do with Japan specifically (these parks are an American invention) or the whaling connection because oceanariums are all over the world and they all do the same thing: make lots of money with dolphin shows. The public sees the cruelty with whaling – it’s obvious. Marine mammal parks, on the other hand, are very deceptive because it seems like the dolphins and KW’s are having a great time and at the very worst are getting a steady supply of fish. I don’t even think most trainers believe the animals are suffering.
/
Just how cruel these parks are I don’t know, but sure, it is a form of animal slavery involving a very intelligent species. What I’m certain of is that people and animals get hurt and die during these shows and half of that equation has no choice in the matter.
Ric is correct. While there is no black and white answer to this particular incident — we do not know what this particular cetacean was thinking, because we do not understand their communications even though they can understand quite a bit of ours — there is no argument about 1) like many animals — including humans — cetaceans ‘think’ 2) they are sentient 3) an aquarium is diametrically opposed to the open ocean. Further more, even giving the trainer quoted the benefit of the doubt, we must consider the exhaustive deceptions of the Japanese Whaling Industry (which is tied to the capture industry) — whether it be their research whaling, their toxicity reports, or the fraudulent claims that whale meat never leaves Japan. (We should also consider the bribery they conduct). Other than ‘financial,’ there is no good reason to keep cetaceans in performance, or military captivity. Slavery, is not an unacceptable condition confined only to humans. Nor, are the results of it. Was Tilikum, simply being over exuberant when he drowned Dawn? I believe, not. Self awareness and intelligence breed emotion.