Special investigation Revealed: brutal reality of world's 'biggest dolphin hunt'
Special investigation Revealed: brutal reality of world's 'biggest dolphin hunt'
17th October, 2013
Undercover filming by the UK investigative agency Ecostorm has exposed - for the first time - the brutal hunting and killing of dolphins for use as shark bait off Peru's Pacific coast. Jim Wickens reports
The car glided swiftly out of Lima, skimming past brightly-lit barrios before plunging into the darkness of the desert road. We were heading for a midnight rendezvous with a shark fishing boat. The owner of the rough and ready vessel had agreed to show us how they catch sharks in Peru: by killing dolphins and using the bloody chunks as bait.
Rumours of an illegal dolphin harvest have swirled around Peru for years, a secret slaughter involving thousands of dolphins, dwarfing the high seas drama of the annual whale hunt in Antarctica. Known as "sea pigs" by fishermen in Peru, dolphins are reportedly harpooned and diced up on deck, before being skewered onto hundreds of hooks strung out on long-lines at sea to attract sharks. It's a bloody business but it can save fishermen hundreds if not thousands of dollars in costly fish bait every trip. Dolphin meat is particularly enticing to sharks, and while substitutes are available, to the hard-bitten men who brave these high seas, all that matters is that it is free.
Until recently, nobody was ever able to get close enough to prove the Peruvian dolphin hunt exists. The fine for getting caught would bankrupt a small fisherman. And so the hunt remained no more than a rumour, denied at every opportunity by both the fishing industry and the government in Peru.
More:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2122747/revealed_brutal_reality_of_worlds_biggest_dolphin_hunt.html