Militiamen chase crew from dolphins

A New Zealand television crew covering the mass export of dolphins from the Solomon Islands ran from militiamen who then bashed their boat driver.

Journalist Ingrid Leary, her cameraman partner Frank Atu and their local guides were filming more than 30 dolphins crammed into a makeshift pen on the main beach of the capital, Honiara.

More than 200 of the mammals have been rounded up for export and trade by a foreign syndicate that paid fishermen about $450 per dolphin.

Potential buyers from Mexico, Taiwan and Thailand have inspected the dolphins, which can be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars as performing animals in entertainment parks.

Leary said the syndicate has hired militiamen to keep people from witnessing the crowded cages and distressed dolphins.

Their boat was chased away by up to five men who followed them to shore, where she and Atu fled with the footage, shown on TV3 last night.

The driver stopped and was punched until his face was bloodied. Leary said the local man, aged in his 30s, was recovering from bruising and would be fine.

Leary and Atu, a Fiji heavyweight boxing champion, were yesterday arrested with other media filming a cargo plane that will take about 30 of the dolphins to Mexico. Solomon Islands police also confiscated cameras but later released journalists and their equipment.

Animal welfare groups yesterday appealed to the New Zealand Government to stop the trade.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) believed it was the largest capture of wild dolphins recorded. Spokeswoman Kim Muncaster said they were being held in 1m-deep sea cages. "These pens are very small and overcrowded - dolphins don't react well to stress and it causes aggression and death," she said.

Australia and New Zealand have attempted to get the Mexican Government to block the importation of the dolphins.

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Phil Goff said yesterday New Zealand's Embassy in Mexico and the High Commission in the Solomon Islands had been asked to talk to those countries' governments about concerns over the dolphin trade.

However, Mexico informed the Australian Government last Friday it had already issued permits for their importation.

Australia and New Zealand are on the verge of sending a force of troops and police to help restore order in the Solomons.

The Solomons is not a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which restricts international trade in dolphins if detrimental to wild populations.

Muncaster believed the syndicate was using the Solomons to take as many dolphins as it could into Mexico before an impending law change there banned dolphin imports.

- STAFF REPORTER, NZPA