Driven by DemandIn its search for live dolphins, the aquarium industry is helping to fund brutal hunts in Japan, known as ‘drive hunts’.
Every year, up to 2000 dolphins are killed in Japan’s drive hunts. Large groups are driven to shore using loud, underwater noises and trapped in a bay, or harbour. They are then killed in the shallows, or hauled from the water for transportation to the slaughterhouse to be processed into meat and other products.
Increasingly, the higher prices paid for dolphins captured alive are providing a motive for these brutal hunts to continue.
We research and document these hunts, exposing the link between the killing and the captivity industry, as well as highlighting the terrible suffering endured by the animals. With our encouragement, aquarium associations and governments around the world are speaking out against the hunts.