Madam, - Recent shocking reports from Japan in The Irish Times have highlighted once again the gruesome practice of dolphin drive hunts. Fishermen chase dolphins and small whales into bays using boats and loud noises, which frighten the animals. The dolphins and whales are then brutally slaughtered using knives and sold for food or fertiliser.
These hunts have been going on for many years in Japan and unfortunately still continue legally today. Recent hunts reportedly involved the death of 60 dolphins in one day.
Voluntary organisations such as the UK Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) condemn Japan's dolphin hunting as inhumane, unnecessary and a potential threat to dolphin conservation. For many years we have been campaigning for the Japanese government to end both its drive hunts and the hunts using harpoons that kill tens of thousands more dolphins, porpoises and whales each year.
I hope to help stop these hunts for good by protesting to the Japanese government. In some areas of Japan international attention to this cruel practice, alongside the development of whale and dolphin watching as an alternative, has already brought an end to drive hunts. I hope your readers may help campaign to bring other such hunts to an end. - Yours, etc.,
NANCY F. ERSKINE,
Ardenlee Avenue,
Belfast 6.