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Overview |
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The
Case Against Captivity | Amusement
Parks | Cetacean-Free
Facilities | Orca Capture
| Achievements |
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Eyewitness Account of Orca Capture at Taigi, Japan I arrived at Taiji at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 9. It had taken 5 1/2 hours to get there from Tokyo. I went to see those orcas at once. I couldn't see them very clearly because it was already dark. However, I could hear the sound of their blows. The fishermen had been watching them all day. At 6:20 a.m. I heard that people from the marine parks had already gone to the spot, so I rushed over there. When I got there, they had already driven those orcas into the shallows. I was surprised that the dorsal fin of the biggest male had curved over after just a few hours.(It was straight in the evening when I saw him first.) The first orca had run aground. Several fishermen ran to him and held him down. Then they measured and checked the sex. He was a male, 4.5m long. They didn't want to have him, so had him isolated. Meanwhile, the others had been carried (guided) to the shallows by eight fishermen for each one. The orcas couldn't (didn't) resist, and they twisted their bodies sometimes. Eventually, three of them had been hung by a crane and carried onto a big truck. The first one (the 4.5m male) kept crying "pee pee" all the time. While he was being held in the shallows, the biggest male and the biggest female had stayed close by, hitting the surface of the sea with their tails and twisting their bodies when he cried. While those three orcas were being moved onto the big truck, two other orcas had been held by some fishermen. One of them was a baby. The baby had also been crying out all the time. It seemed sea water had got into his blowhole... his voice was not a clear "pee pee", but more like "pee pyuru pyuru." Then the fishermen hung the baby by a net between two boats and carried it farther out. One of the remaining orcas nestled close to the boat. The last one had kept struggling. He was bleeding. At last, he was also carried out into deeper water by the boats. Soon after 10:30 a.m. the remaining five orcas were released. The fishermen removed the net. However those orcas didn't move. The fishermen went into the sea with their boats, trying to run the orcas off by threatening them with the outboard motors. Then one young orca swam farther off shore and hit the surface of the sea with his tail. The other four orcas followed him. Groups opposed to the Japanese Orca capture |
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