Saturday, February 12, 2011

What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

“Traveling is a brutality.  It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends.  You are constantly off balance.  Nothing is yours except the essential things...air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky...all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”--Cesare Pavese 

I have no idea how long it took me to get to Katsuura, the town I'm staying in near Taiji, but I finally made it.  This trip has been some six months in the making, and the day I left was arguably the longest day of my life.  

Due to a de-icing fiasco in Norfolk, I missed my first connecting flight in Atlanta.  Now, that fight was supposed to take me to Seattle, and then I'd make the final long leap to Osaka.  Well, things changed once I got to Atlanta.  After I got to the gate in Atlanta, and saw that the jetway door had already closed, I knew that was it.  Since there is only one flight a day from Seattle to Osaka, I figured my trip had already blown up in my face, and I hadn't even crossed the Mississippi River.  Fast forward to Korean Air, and a re-booked fourteen and a half hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea.  I've done a lot of traveling, but fourteen and a half hours on a plane is just about my limit.  Kudos to Korean Air, though,  Their service is awesome, and the in-flight amenities in coach are nice.  After I got to Seoul, I had a connecting flight to Osaka.  By the time I got to Osaka, it was five hours later than when I was supposed to initially arrive.  No train to Katsuura at that time of night, so onto the Best Western.  The trip to the hotel on the shuttle bus was interesting.  I'm just sitting there trying to figure out if my phone is going to work, and out of nowhere the bus just comes to a slammed stop.  Now I have no idea why the driver hit the brakes the way he did, but it was like a scene out of movie when the guy in the backseat of a taxi slams his face into the partition.  I was that guy!  I watched my two carry on bags slide all the way across the luggage rack, and my Klean Kanteen ended up by the driver's foot.  I totally slammed the metal pole in front of me with the side of my face.  I'm thinking, what else can possibly happen today (or whatever day it was).  I get to the hotel, get a room, and then start trying to figure out what the hell my phone is actually going to do.  Mind you, I've had no shower in close to twenty four hours.  By the time I put my head on the pillow, and 8000 miles later, it's about 2:15 a.m. on the 12th...I left on the 10th. 

I slept maybe two and a half hours, but I was really anxious to get to the train station, get my ticket, and get to Katsuura.  The word came down that the boats didn't go out, so Libby with Sea Shepherd could meet me at the train station.  

The train ride from Kansai Airport to Kii-Katsuura was about four hours.  I've never traveled anywhere in the U.S. by train, so to see another country by train was really interesting.  I was amazed at how many little farms and gardens I saw.  So many homes had their own gardens.  It seemed like any available land had something growing on it.  My father-in-law would've really appreciated that.  While a lot of the dwellings I saw looked older, everything was very neat.  Quite different than the United States, where yards or apartments with maybe the same type housing would resemble more a junk yard than someone's home.  It's obvious the people that lived in the houses I was passing took care of what they had.  Not to mention, there aren't a lot of Wal-Marts in Wakayama Prefecture.  At one point I look up and notice there's a windmill farm on top of the cliffs.  It was very much like seeing yesterday and tomorrow in the same place and time.  The dolphin hunters claim this great tradition of hunting and killing dolphins, and yet they do so these days with boats built by Mitsubishi that are guided by GPS systems.  You can erase the image of the town fishermen hopping in some sort of manually powered boat to search for dolphins and whales on the open ocean, that tradition doesn't exist.        

I step off the train in Katsuura, and I'm met not only by Libby, but Nicole, Greg and Georgia.  I drop my bags off at the hotel, and then we head to lunch.  Nicole (who's been assisting Libby during her time here), Greg and Georgia are from Australia.  It was really cool talking about some of the cultural similarities and differences our countries have.  And since there were no dolphins captured and slaughtered today, things were pretty relaxed. 

Since when are wild animals property of anyone?
After lunch, Libby took me around town for a quick tour of the key spots.  Having seen The Cove many times now, I was familiar with how the process works, and where everything happens.  But to see everything in person, it was almost like being on a movie set.  Problem is, this is not make believe.  When dolphins are in the Cove, the death and destruction is very real.  Libby tells me you can hear the dolphins crying out, and the splashing of their tails after their spines are pierced with a metal spike just behind the blow hole.  The dolphin hunters then insert a wooden peg into the hole to minimize the mount of blood that fills the water.  They know that more and more people are watching and paying attention to what's going on, and their change in tactics reflect that.  The fishermen are definitely in full PR mode now when it comes to not showing an entire pod of dolphins being slaughtered and gutted.  Tarps are drawn to cover the killing Cove, and now the fishermen will bypass the gutting barge and take the dead dolphins directly to the butcher house to have their heads, tails and guts removed.  That's what happens here in Taiji.  Wild dolphins are herded into the Cove, and after the trainers have their pick, the rest are slaughtered.    

Around the corner is a dolphin's worst nightmare.
I've had people ask me why the fishermen just don't release the dolphins that aren't taken by the trainers.  That's a great question, considering how little money is made from selling the dolphin meat. I'm not sure if anyone knows the answer to that question.  It's clear that the live capture trade is what keeps the drive going.  And this is where you can help, by doing absolutely nothing!  All you have to do IS NOT buy a ticket to a dolphinarium, swim with dolphins program, or live dolphin show.  In the U.S., the folks at Sea World, the new dolphin exhibit being readied at the Georgia Aquarium (sponsored corporately by AT&T), and other places will say that the dolphins they have are not from Taiji.  That would violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act.  They'll also say they do not condone drive fisheries, such as the one in Taiji.  Yet organizations like IMATA (International Marine Animal Trainers Association), the organization that provides the "oversight" for the marine animal trainer industry, and who's membership includes parks all over the United States and world, allows representatives from facilities that obtain dolphins directly from Taiji to join their organization and attend their annual conference.  So on the one hand, the animal trainer industry will publicly condemn the slaughter in Taiji, yet within it's own ranks apparently does nothing to discipline or punish the trainers that are directly benefiting from the very same dolphins.  The success of places like Sea World has helped perpetuate the industry around the world, and that means a demand for dolphins.  One does feed the other.  They will tell you it doesn't, but it most certainly does.   

As I finish this blog up, it's about 4:30 in the morning. I managed to finally get some meaningful rest, but I'm very anxious.  In a few hours, we will head down to the harbor to see if the boats have gone out.  The movie ends, and the reality begins.  The death I might witness is very real and very disturbing.  It's all about exploitation and greed.  There is no respect in the Cove.  Like many of the factory slaughterhouses back home, it's a well-oiled killing machine that doesn't see the red, but the green.       

       





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad you arrived safely.... well sort of... the bus ride sounded hairy but at least you have a good story. Hoping for dolphin free days. Thank you for taking the time to travel to Taiji and join the ranks of the SSCS Cove Guardians. (Don't catch the cold they seem to be fighting)... looking forward to more blogging.
Suzanne