Red October Begins

My third day here in Taiji and it begins. today started out like the others, up at 4am to be out by 5am to watch the boats leave. we then went to the look out post and waited, it took about two to three hours before we saw them. me and mum were in the toilets when they were first sighted but in the 2 minutes it took for us to get back they had passed the shipping lane and where straight on their way in, driving a large pod of bottlenose dolphins with them. though they lost them many times because this pod was a large one they had to surface more, so they were more easily spotted. halfway through the drive ( very close to shore) the pod split, we are assuming because of the baby's they couldn't swim fast enough and their mothers wouldnt leave them behind. eventually they got trapped in the harbour, where the rocks helped the fishermen to trap them into the cove, we stayed at the look out point to watch the rest of the fisherman as they chased the other half of the pod, after another hour they gave up. and something amazing happened, we saw the pod behind the boats swimming to freedom. the fishermen had no idea.

we then rushed to the cove to see what was happening and when we got there we were rather suprised to see more than 20 officials... for 4 people. we watched as they rounded the dolphins into the cove but not before we saw something magical, a baby dolphin, a newborn! jumping 3 metres into the air. they were then taken to their death. only one was chosen for a life of captivity and to me, he was the unlucky one. we could hear the screams.