The Japanese government allows a few fishermen to slaughter thousands of dolphins and small whales in so-called drive hunts.
In a typical hunt the fishermen pursue pods of dolphins across open seas, banging metal poles together beneath the water to confuse their hypersensitive sonar. The exhausted animals are driven into a large cove sealed off by nets to stop them escaping and dragged backwards into secluded inlets the following morning to be butchered with knives and spears. They are then loaded on to boats and taken to the quayside to be cut up in a warehouse, the fishermen's work hidden from the outside by heavy shutters. 
Dolphins are intelligent, self-aware mammals with bonded social interactions. The Jananese drive hunts have been condemned by animal welfare experts around the world as brutal and inhumane, but pleas to stop them have been ignored. 

Please help by signing this petition against dolphin slaughtering in Japan.