No Dolphins Killed in the Solomon Islands

No Dolphins Killed in the Solomon Islands

By Ric O’Barry

Campaign Director

Save Japan Dolphins & Dolphin Project

Earth Island Institute

Here’s some great news coming from our staff and colleagues in the Solomon Islands.

For the first time in 450 years, dolphins have not been killed in the Solomons in the past year!

On the island of Malaita, three villages have for decades been engaged in dolphin hunting.  The meat was eaten, and the teeth have been used as a form of money.  But the villagers told us the dolphins were getting harder to find, and they had to paddle out farther and farther to find them and haul them back to the island.

Last April, our staffer in the Solomon Islands, Lawrence Makili, Mark Berman, and I traveled to two of the villages and reached an important agreement.  The villagers pledged to stop killing dolphins, and Earth Island pledged to raise funding that could be used for to support projects for sustainable fishing, alternative energy, and sanitation/clean water.

To date, Earth Island has provided $21,000 each to two villages.  A third village, that is formulating a similar agreement, has been given $3,000.

Mark Berman recently traveled to the islands to visit with Lawrence to see how things are progressing.  Mark and Lawrence report that the villagers have stuck to their agreement and no dolphins have been killed.  Lawrence has done an excellent job coordinating communication with the villages.

Villagers are now compiling a list of potential projects that meet community needs for possible Earth Island funding in the future.

Traditionally, the villages have killed an estimated 2,000 dolphins annually.  Now, those dolphins are free and unharmed.

Earth Island continues to work to seek an end in the Solomon Islands to the capture of any dolphins for aquariums and swim-with-dolphins programs around the world.  The Solomons has been a major source of captive dolphins for dolphin traffickers for several years.  We are working to end that source of blood dolphins as soon as possible.

You can help us fund alternative projects to help the islanders of Malaita by donating to our campaign:

http://dolphinproject.org/donate

 

Working together, we can end the killing and captures of dolphins.

 

 

Photography by Douglas Marau, Senior Reporter, Solomon Star Newspaper