Denver Direct: “Japan Dolphins Day” Activists to Demonstrate Outside Denver Japanese Consulate

Protesting Slaughter of more than 20,000 Dolphins in Japan Each Year

Denver-A group of local activists plan a peaceful demonstration against the slaughter of dolphins in the coastal waters of Japan, which annually resumes in the first week of September. The demonstration is to draw attention to the annual killing of thousands of dolphins and small whales.

Date: Thursday, September 1 Time: 11a.m. to 3p.m.
Place: Japanese Consulate, 1225 17th Street, in Downtown Denver

The Denver rally will be held in conjunction with demonstrations in over 28 cities worldwide for ‘Japan Dolphins Day 2011’. The date coincides with the opening day of the dolphin killing season in Taiji, Japan, the village featured in the film, ‘The Cove’, Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary, 2009

“The Cove” was produced by Boulder non-profit, Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), who will be in attendance to show their support.

Ric O’Barry, who starred in “The Cove”, encourages volunteers to join the demonstrations.  O’Barry has founded an organization called “Save Japan Dolphins” (www.savejapandolphins.org)

Organizers emphasize they want to honor the dolphins and ask the Japanese people to give up the hunt. This is not an anti-Japanese demonstration, it is simply intended to end the largest single slaughter of dolphins still being held.

Reasons for the hunt range from; food production, “pest control” (the perceived notion that dolphins consume too many fish), time-honored local traditions, to the capture of dolphins who will spend their lives in captivity in dolphin shows. “Even if selling dolphins to aquariums makes money for the fishermen of Taiji and other Japanese coastal towns, it does not justify killing the remainder to obtain the most toxic meat in the world in terms of lead, mercury, and radioactive pollution”. Jim Drevescraft, Volunteer, Earth Island Institute  

For additional information, go here.