Spinner dolphins better watch out- their pearly white teeth are once again a fast growing currency in the Solomon Islands, the Wall Street Journal reports. Economic troubles and years of ethnic strife have undermined the country’s economy and rekindled attachments to ancient customs.
Many villagers are killing Spinner Dolphins for their teeth to use as currency. “Dolphin teeth are like gold,” says the governor of the nations central bank. ”You keep them as a store of wealth.”Over the past year one spinner tooth has soared in price from 50 solomon island cents to two solomon island dollars (26 u.s. cents). The teeth were used before the Europeans colonized the islands, and are still the preferred currency for buying brides.
The Solomon islanders hunt the dolphins by surrounding them in boats, banging the water with flat paddles to chase them into the shallows, sticking their heads in the mud to cover their blow holes until they drown and then chop off their heads to harvest their teeth.
This is so upsetting… such cruelty and human ignorance of the true value of the precious aliveness of the dolphins. My God!!! What is it going to take for these people to wake up!!! Dolphins are not fish… they are sentient beings that have strong emotional social bonds, are highly intelligent, and are spiritually evolved.
The islanders must believe they get manna from the dolphins which fills the hole of their own personal sense of deficiency and lack of value. Why can’t they value their own human manna and be satisfied with that?
I do not think Mother Earth is going to allow this to continue.
My brother just returned from there (he is a travel photographer) and just told me how he swam with dolphine and then 100 were culled and hacked and beheaded and left to die with blood filling the water, with out any sacredness or any care. Even the cove guy has given up on them changing their minds as my brother met with him aswell…so deeply sad. This needs to be reported to the media in a big big way. It makes me feel incredibly sick.