Did you know that Japan is trapping and slaughtering wild dolphins by the hundreds? You probably didn’t unless you watched the documentary, The Cove, where a committed group of people risked serious jail time in order to secretly film footage of one of these killing sprees.
Once you see whats going on there and you realize how flagrant Japan is in its attempts to destroy the dolphin and whale populations, you will want to boycot Japanese imports until they change their policies. But boycotting will only hurt the Japanese people who are unaware of this large scale slaughter, because their government and media are covering it up.

Whats worse, the Japanese people are the ones who are suffering from this, because a lot of the dolphin meat is sold under the label of whale meat. (Dolphins are actually whales, look it up.) Dolphins are at the top of the food chain, and thanks to industrial pollution, this means that they have the highest levels of mercury.
Mercury is equivalent to Plutonium in its toxicity. So, if you ate dolphin meat regularly, your nervous system would start to shut down, until you finally died. We don’t know how many people have really died from Mercury poisoning in Japan because their government is trying to cover it up, just like their real murder rate (read or watch Freakonomics).
You can do something about this, that doesn’t involve traveling to Japan and protesting. A dead dolphin is worth only about $500 in meat, but a live bottlenose dolphin can be sold for as much as up to $150,000. Everytime that you go to one of those “swim with the dolphins” or a Seaworld type of attraction, you are helping to support the slaughter and captivity of dolphins. If we boycott and protest these f-ing animal-prisons near us, then we can bring enough attention to it and make it un-worthwhile for the fisherman to trap and kill dolphins anymore.
So next time that you hear about someone talking about their trip to some animal prison (aka Seaworld), let them know that they are helping to support the slaughter and captivity of one of another being who is self-aware like us.