Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Don't do a swim unless you know

As you've learned in my other posts, dolphins are slaughtered just to get a few into captivity. The few dolphins whose lives are spared are sold to dolphin interaction programs everywhere, including the Caribbean. Thus, when you swim with dolphins, you never know if they came from Japan. If you do a swim with dolphins from Japan, you might encourage the killers to continue the brutality. It might sound confusing how that doing a swim encourages them, but take a minute to think about it. For every dolphin sold at an outlandish price (150 thousand dollars) to captivity programs, dozens are killed for meat. Now, I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad  for swimming with dolphins because most people don't know anything about Japan's slaughter. However, if you do know, think about the dolphins before you do a swim. It was hard for me to give up my decision to swim with dolphins on a Mexican Cruise. I really wanted to be able to interact with my favorite marine creature, but I decided that the dolphins were more important than my enjoyment. I didn't know how they acquired their dolphins, but I didn't want to risk it. I personally wouldn't do a swim unless the dolphins were rescued, but that's just my opinion. I'm not trying to make you not do something you've dreamed about. I just want people to think about the innocent dolphins that are murdered as a result of capturing a few "lucky" ones for captivity programs.

My decision to not give my money to a captivity program will NOT make a difference. But, if many of us decide not to give our money to captivity programs, we can stop the money machine that drives the killings.

2 comments:

  1. Well said Haley. I was very proud of your decision to not swim with the Dolphins in Vallarta. Hopefully you can rally many other kids and help put a dent in the Dolphin Tourism industry.

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  2. Yes, maybe if enough people don't do swims, swim programs will go out of business. If they all go out of business, it gives the killers in Taiji really not much reason to continue the slaughter.

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