The Taiji season 2013-2014 is under way. I posted updates as they unfolded last season. That served to educate me about the situation and others who read my posts. This year I will be posting about Taiji on a weekly/fornightly basis to summarise updates. This season I want to focus more on encouraging people not to go to see captive dolphins. It is the live capture/training/selling for human entertainment module that is keeping the drive hunts afloat so we need to sink it. Logically this means that we need to find a way to stop the bottlenose dolphins from being caught…anyway this post is about a wonderful trip to the Moray Firth where I saw wild dolphins.This is the only way to see dolphins. If you go to a dolphin show when you know about drive hunting you are not seeing dolphins. You are seeing your own dark side.

A group of us called Mermaids For Cetaceans (there will be more information about this group in the following weeks) took a boat trip with a wonderful company called Ecoventures https://www.facebook.com/EcoVenturesCromarty?ref=stream

Viewing Dolphins

EcoVentures is committed to providing you with the best possible experience while ensuring the long term sustainability of our local marine environment. By minimising our impact on the wildlife around us, we hope that it will continue to thrive and be enjoyed by all for years to come.   http://www.ecoventures.co.uk/

I thoroughly recommend this crew, notably Sarah who has 20 years experience of taking the boats out. We took in the stunning view along the Moray Firth but what we wished for and what we saw were a magnificent pod of approximatley 30 dolphins. We cut the engine when we saw them and just floated. These dolphins came to us. They chose to interact. I cannot describe the emotions that registered as these beautiful free creatures surrounded us. After following Taiji last season (see my posts under Taiji Terror Tales) and seeing the bottlenose swimming freely and that they chose to come near us and surround us, I felt a mixture of awe, joy, peace and after we had left the boat, overwhelming sadness at what is happening to them in Taiji.

As we were going out to sea looking for them I could not help but think that this is what the Taiji drive hunters do. As my eyes scanned the waves for signs I was identifying with the hunters. But when we spotted the bottlenose the drive hunters and I parted company. When they find a pod their intent is to drive them, select those that fit the criteria for training and selling, tear the elect from their family and force the remaining traumatised pod back into the ocean in the early part of the season or inhumanely slaughter them in the main part.

Although we were trying to take pictures of the dolphins, it was a chance to just be in the now. Animals other than humans live in the now and these dolphins invited us to just be with them, just be with the lapping of the waves, the gentle motion of the pod, the gentle stroking of our hearts. In our love for the dolphins we all became one. They opened a space for us to imagine what it must be like to be in a dolphin pod, to feel harmony, to experience an existence that is not personal centred but group centred. I now call  dolphins the alchemists of the sea. Being in their presence they show us the way to transform ourselves and become peace. They remind us that what we are searching for  is already there within us. As within, so without. There is no chasm between us. There is no lack until we separate our consciousness from the whole and compare, judge, move out of the rhythym..

With many thanks to a friend Adele Sutherland, you can share this experience as she has agreed that I can post her video here:

After watching that can you imagine this encounter in Taiji? Due to fortunate birth circumstances these dolphins are swimming freely in the Moray Firth. If this pod were close to Taiji they would not still be together. They would have been driven, terrorised beyond belief and worse. These are loved and safe so they are acting as ambassadors for those of their kind in Taiji. They are the visuals and we are the voice for them. We want all of our species to be free they are saying. Tell people that you saw us. We come close to you because we have a message for you to impart. Enlighten your species. This is how we are, how you are seeing us now. Do we make you feel at peace? Do we put you in touch with your own joy? We cannot give you anything that is not already yours, within you. If you continue to take us from our pods and try to dedolphinise us by teaching us tricks for your entertainment and think that this will bring you joy you are deceiving yourselves. Unless we are allowed to just be we can never bring you joy. We can only show you your shame and the dark places of your soul.

The video is wonderful but you can have your own experience if you support those companies like Ecoventures and see dolphins in the wild. Please hear the message of this encounter and do not go to a dolphin show and try to dissuade others from going if they tell you that this is their plan. If you have seen this video and you go to see their fellow dolphins who are captive, expect to feel uneasy. The wild ones will call to you…

If you are in the Moray Firth area, there is a delightful shop called Seahorse that I recommend. The owner is a lovely person called Deb who does a lot of work to raise awareness for exploited dolphins and other animal causes. She makes jewellery and other excellent items from driftwood from the local beach. She and Adele have a beautiful Shar pei called Missy. There is a collection box for this often misunderstood and exploited breed in the shop.

http://seahorsehopeman.co.uk/