In an interview last month with the journalist David Kirby, Mark Palmer, the associate director of Earth Island Institute's International Marine Mammal Project, estimated that the dolphin hunters of Taiji killed nearly 900 dolphins and
pilot whales this season and kept nearly 250 to sell for alive to the aquarium trade (which is booming in the Middle East and Asia).
As an added bonus,
whale shark
season in the Galapagos also offers encounters with humpback
whales,
pilot whales, reef sharks and the resident hammerheads,