"U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy has tweeted her concern at the 'inhumaneness' of a Wakayama Prefecture village’s traditional dolphin hunt."

The tradition: "Every year the fishermen of Taiji corral hundreds of dolphins in a secluded bay, select a few dozen for sale to aquariums and marine parks and then stab the rest to death for meat."

How "traditional" can something about aquariums and marine parks be?



I mean aquariums large enough for dolphins (presuming that there is such a thing).

Also... should an ambassador tweet? And if the ambassador tweets about dolphins, what should we say if she uses social media to express concern about something the Japanese are doing do birds? I think tweet : bird :: click : dolphin, so — being a fan of parallelism, I'd like to see it said that she's clicking her concern about birds.

On Chatter. 

ADDED: What's wrong with eating dolphin meat?

In most places, there is a taboo against eating marine mammals – because of their ‘cute’ factor, charisma and intelligence. But a decline in global fish stocks (in particular from the developing world to feed Europe) has driven many poor nation populations to eating bushmeat, including primates, and the ‘bushmeat of the sea’, including dolphins (which has a dark, gamey meat like venison)....

Only a handful of species of dolphins are listed as endangered...

Making the practice illegal doesn’t necessarily lower hunt numbers. When Peru took this path, it simply drove dolphin hunting underground, says Robards. “They’re still taking the same number each year,” he says. A better solution is to work with local populations to explore alternative food sources, and to educate people about the animals, he says. “In Bangladesh, people were moving to the coast from the interior who thought dolphins were a kind of fish,” he notes. A grass-roots project there used colouring books to teach children and parents that dolphins breathe air, can drown, and have their young like people. “That produces a real sense of wonderment,” Robards says.

It's good to be informed about biology, but unless you have a compunction about eating mammals, it's hard to see the problem. As for the "cuteness" factor, lambs are cute.