What Will Be the Fate of Another Rare Albino Dolphin Captured by Japanese Hunters?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/11/26/what-will-be-fate-second-rare-albino-dolphin-captured-cove-japanese-hunters?cmpid=tpnews-eml-2014-11-29-lunchtweets

The white dolphin, the second taken this year at the cove, could be sold to an aquarium for hundreds of thousands of dollars.



Angel, an albino dolphin catured at the cove in January. (Photo: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty)

November 26, 2014 By David Kirby

David Kirby has been a professional journalist for 25 years. His third book, Death at Seaworld, was published in 2012.

bino dolphins are extremely rare, yet fishers at the cove in Taiji, Japan, have somehow managed to capture two of the exotic creatures in just one year. Each of them may be worth up to a half-million dollars.

On Sunday, fishers rounded up a pod of 16 Risso’s dolphins and drove them into the killing cove, the subject of the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary The Cove. Three young calves were released, and all but two of the others were slaughtered, their meat destined for domestic and foreign markets, according to members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

One of the captured animals was the albino, a juvenile of unknown gender whom volunteers from Sea Shepherd’s Cove Guardians named Shiro, Japanese for “white.”

Shiro is now the second albino dolphin held captive in Taiji. The other, a young, pinkish-white female bottlenose dubbed Angel by opponents of the dolphin drives, was captured last January after witnessing the killing of her own mother.

FULL story at link.

[Socal31]

1. Probably a conveyor belt in Tokyo if they get their way.