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.

Arriving In Taiji.

So today was my first day in Japan! I’m so excited! Anyway I couldn’t give the exact date we were going in case the government somehow managed to send us home. But the day went like this,

We were supposed to wake up at 5 am to leave at 6 am for Manchester airport; instead we woke up at 6:10 am and left for the airport at 6:30 am. We were rushing.

 We went through security, and in the waiting area I lost my passport, awesome right. I didn’t notice, it was when dad asked me for it and my face went black, I had left it by the Tester Ipad 2, luckily the shop assistant picked it up who found it hilarious to watch me run around the store in a panic before asking me if I had lost my passport.

On the flight to Japan we got to watch films and my true nerdy side showed because out of all the romance/comedy/horrors I could have watched I watched, Green Lantern, X-Men First Class and Transformers. I tried to sleep when we entered the night zone but the seats were too uncomfortable. On this flight dad managed to spill coke all over my phone and pants and blanket, we all managed to somehow switch seats and we figured out that being in a plane that big isn’t good if you have a weak bladder, if you ever needed the bathroom there was ALWAYS a queue.

Going through customs was easy, mum got through, I got through, and dad got taken to be interviewed for an hour and a half. Mum and I got our passports photocopied so that means I've been marked. The man who let mum through got into trouble we think because mum was already marked and should have been interviewed as well. One of the best answers my dad gave at the interview was this

Interviewer: will you send photographs to sea shepherd?

John Legg: no… there are already people out there doing that.

You know your proud of your parents work when they are pulled aside at customs for an hour and a half .I’ve got to admit I was a tad bit nervous but it passed when me and mum decided to read our books.

Anyway after all that we went to the car rental to find that out of all the silver, normal, average coloured cars we got the lime green one, we agreed that customs must have called the company and made them give us a car that was easy to follow and describe. But it’s amazing!

After the local police introduced themselves and our details taken within seconds of arriving we decided to drive to the hotel but along the way we saw  5 girls walking in a line wearing sea shepherd and save Japan dolphin shirts, so whilst I fell out of the car to run over and introduce ourselves dad had to turn the car around, twice because Marley said that they had just spotted a whale in the bay near the cove, what a place for a whale to swim too. We waited with our cameras and binoculars for 30 minutes but we couldn’t see him anywhere, so i'm praying he swam out of the bay and back to his family.

Cove Gaurdians Go Home!!!

so yeah, recently the face book page (cove guardians go home!)  has been noticed, it had 101 likes when i saw it last but i think most of them are activists posting messages on the wall saying well here's a quote 

'Sooo...this page must have been made to enrage all the kind people concerned about dolphins and whales.lol. good job, now they are just going to try harder. At least they are doing something for a positive change. this is truely infantile at best. i cant wait until FB shuts this visual pollution down.'

A lot of the stuff they post is wrong and they just make themselves look ,well stupid. 

Ive reported this page many a time but they just laugh. so i don't post on their anymore i watch and look for more information about the cove because to be honest i know more from this page about what happened in taiji last year than i did from the news feed and even if it is bad stuff ( its not) its also funny to read about them justifying the dolphin slaughter.

Typhoon strikes Taiji.

so today sucked, the japanese left the dolphins ( caught last season) in their pens whilst the typhoon struck taiji and the dolphins drowned slowly in their nets. even after hundreds maybe even thousands of activists begged japan to release them the alleged 14 dolphins died. unfortunately no one from taiji has confirmed the number so we are still unsure of the exact number of dolphin deaths.

If a typhoon were to hit a human in a cage it would be outragous, it is sick and cruel what they did. 

what i am saddened most to see though is the facebook comments made by my fellow activists today, some say how we should go to war with japan, or how the typhoon should have  out the entire village of taiji off the face of the planet, i think the worst ive seen is 'I am not in the least bit sorry for the earthquake there.. far more of them should be stopping this bullshit!' now that i think is just sick and cruel, i could understand if all this hate was directed at the goverment of japan or the fishermen ( who may i add do not actually catch fish) but not the rest of japan, these activists are blinded by what they hear and not what they see. 

since i am going to taiji later this year i brought out my dolphin book,  this is where i keep all the information on dolphins in taiji or in captivity and i must admit it took me a while ( 1 hour) to organize it as the last time i used it was 3 months ago in school and i rushed to pack it away so it was a jumbeled mess. but it holds a lot more information that i thought it did so my mind is all refreshed for japan.

So the Slaughter Begins

Yesterday was september 1st, the day the slaughter in Taiji begins.

 

1 year ago I Watched ‘The Cove’ and since then I have become an activist for the cetaceans, last year I wanted to go to Taiji but it was too expensive for me to go as well as my family, but this year I am going too, so I am starting this blog today.

I wish I could have started this blog yesterday but I was in London marching with others to the Japanese embassy to demonstrate. We live in Manchester so we had to leave our home at 4am and we only returned at 11pm because of traffic. Luckily I wasn’t driving so I got to sleep my dad (john legg) wasn’t as lucky.

Yesterday was a success, we stayed from the beginning to the end and ‘London for cetaceans’ were amazing! They brought a petition to be given to the ambassador Mr Keiichi Hayashi. As we chanted we saw him peeking out of the window, but unfortunately I could not get a clear picture of him. Our chants consisted of

‘Shame, shame, shame on you’ and ‘No capture, no slaughter’, after those we made a lot of noise.

This year I plan to go to Taiji in early October to blog the dolphin slaughter and let the world know what is happening as a cove guardian for sea shepherd. It will be blogged on this site and my face book account (get educated legg).