Worth a read

[Batz]

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/dolphinkilling-town-to-open-marine-park-20131008-2v5aw.html

 

[Airgead]

Great. swim with a dolphin during the day then eat it for dinner that night.

 

[manticle]

No different to feeding the ducks on a small farm.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Yes, all they're doing is trying to soften the image of the town. The difference is it's pretty brutal, ducks are killed in a much less traumatic & prolonged way. It'd be nice if they put a bit of energy into using a quicker & less cruel method of slaughter.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/taiji3a-japane28099s-town-for-the-slaughter-of-dolphins/4802326

 

[Dave70]

The Cove, bestowed with an Academy Award for 'Best Documentary" by the same people who voted sensationlist garbage 'Supersize me' worthy of the same accolade.
Granted, seeing dolphins corralled and stabbed to death is about as heartwarming as watching baby seals bludgened, but if they were lobsters being boilled alive, sea bream being rendered comatose by having wire shoved into their spines or even an ugly old stonefish crushed under the fishermans boot heel, nobody would give a ****.

Good to see the brutal inhabitants of dolphinkilltown attemting to make amends however.

At least they're eating the dolphins and not wasting them on scientific research like the wales.

 

[Forever Wort]

The Cove is hardly a great film but I am glad it exists for the attention it brought to the dolphin slaughter in Taiji.

My general disposition is that dolphins are intelligent, social creatures who do not deserve to be farmed, tortured, bled out or slaughtered. They are not the only species to be abused or exploited by us, of course, and I don't know if they necessarily constitute a special place in the animal kingdom. But there it is.

The marine park idea is, well, dumb.

 

[manticle]

Latest research suggests dolphins' intelligence has been overestimated: not that IQ should be reversely correlated to levels of cruelty to which a creature is subjected.

 

[djar007]

They do eat the whales they slaughter. I thought that was the point. The research was just a ruse.

Edit: didn't see the sarcasm straight away.

 

[Dave70]

Latest research suggests dolphins' intelligence has been overestimated: not that IQ should be reversely correlated to levels of cruelty to which a creature is subjected.

Maby. Maby not.

 

[spryzie]

Pigs are smarter and we eat them.

I don't see the problem.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

it's not about whether we eat them, you've missed the point.

from the ABC science show podcast I linked to:

Robyn Williams: Pigs are pretty smart you know.

Alastair Lucas: Yes, I know, pigs also have intelligence. But the rules in modern Western nature for abattoir killing are for humane killing using stunning. The fundamentals of ensuring that an animal is not aware of its impending death and that it is stunned, becomes insensitive to all feeling instantly is the fundamental of abattoir killing. We all know that doesn't always happen, we are all very aware of some of our animals in the live export trade.

But the way dolphins are first herded, so they have an awareness of their impending death 24 hours before they are killed…I mean, these animals know something terrible has happened, they've been trapped in these tiny enclosures, they know something very bad is happening. And then the animals are killed one by one, each animal takes up to six to eight minutes to die, the others can hear the screaming.

With whales we watched a pod of pilot whales being killed, and those animals are very hard to kill, they can take 20 minutes to die. So I don't want to put so much weight on the issue of intelligence but I think it is important because these animals have such understanding of their fate. But just the sheer method of killing is so profoundly cruel, it does distinguish it from the killing of farm animals.

 

[manticle]

To pretend that killing in and of itself (for any reason) doesn't have some inherent level of cruelty is naiive but I do very much agree with the idea of reducing pain and trauma when it occurs.

That becomes an argument with the method of slaughter rather than the recipient of it and we do have a tendency to run around taking the moral high ground about other culture's choice of foodstuff while stuffing ourselves with bacon from pigs that have been deplorably treated.

More humane methods for slaughter of all creatures used for food + sustainability gets my vote. Humane methods for farming before slaughter is also important. Could be seen as being facetious but at least the dolphins are more free range than most chickens or pigs.

Often it's merely about levels of hypocrisy and righteousness we can deal with - cognitive dissonance suits some people more than others.

 

[spryzie]

That is the most efficient way to harvest them however.

I didn't miss the point.

If we could take food from the sea with a bolt gun, we would.

Other living things must die for you to live. Fact of life..

 

[Forever Wort]

Props to The Science Show and Mr. Williams.

Other living things must die for us to live but there is a difference between killing to live and exploiting, ravaging, torturing, etc.

 

[pcmfisher]

Dolphin tastes better than penguin.
Just try and avoid the bit around the blow hole.............

 

[WarmBeer]

Pigs are smarter and we eat them.

I don't see the problem.

Yeah, but bacon is delicious.

Dolphin just bland & chewy.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Dugong is supposed to be good, nice and fatty, and better than dolphin since they graze on sea grass.

 

[pk.sax]

It's not surprising animalistic behaviour is such a common thing that people look for human like intelligence in these animals. It's getting rarer in the race of animal it is most recognised in.