Over 675 wild dolphins have been stranded in the northern Gulf of Mexico since February 2010. Most of them were found dead, but 33 were alive and seven were taken to rehabilitation centers. The average number of dolphin strandings for the northern Gulf is 74 per year, according to NOAA. So the numbers documented since 2010 are much higher than they would be normally.

Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held a session on expanding rights for dolphins and whales. Since cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are highly intelligent animals and very social, some scientists and ethicists argued cetaceans deserve legal protections as "non-human persons." The panelists outlined a "Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans," which among other rights, would recognize whales and dolphins' right to life, an undisturbed natural environment, and the right to not be held in captivity. So say goodbye to whale sushi and SeaWorld.

Visitors to this city’s burial ground learn more from the dead, particularly about the whale shark and other endangered sea creatures.

The 12-year-old “fish cemetery” of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has become a field school all year round, even to the curious, according to Westly Rosario, chief of the agency’s National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center here.

Body of a dead humpback whale is seen in Omonville-la-Rogue, north-west France, a rare species to the Channel. A French fishermen brought the whale back in his nets, saying that it was already dead when it was caught in the nets. Entanglement in plastic bags and fishing gear have long been identified as a threat to sea birds, turtles and smaller cetaceans.

In Japan, fishermen round up and slaughter hundreds and even thousands of dolphins and other small whales each year.

In the small fishing village of Taiji, entire schools of dolphins are driven into a hidden cove after a prolonged chase. Once trapped inside the cove, the fishermen kill the dolphins, slashing their throats with knives or stabbing them with spears. The water turns red with their blood, and the air fills with their screams.

From: Julian Ryall, Telegraph UK

An animal rights campaigner who trained dolphins for the 1960s television series Flipper has managed to disrupt the first two days of the annual dolphin hunt in the Japanese town of Taiji, but accepts that as soon as he leaves the fishermen will resume the killing.

More than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered every year in a cove in Taiji, Japan. Their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food, often times labeled as whale meat. Courageous documentary filmmakers infiltrated the heavily guarded cove to uncover the truth about what's going on there, expose it to the world, and protect the 20,000 dolphins that will swim by Taiji next year. The movie they made, The Cove, is in theaters now so we have an incredible opportunity to take action and put a stop to this.

Please sign the petition End the Brutal Killing of 20,000 Dolphins in Taiji, Japan today.

Now that The Cove - the documentary about dolphin slaughtering in Japan - has officially rolled out to most U.S. cities, people's awareness about dolphins' precarious position on this planet has risen to new levels.

Films like this are incredible in that they can literally shock viewers into action - and it has certainly worked. As one reviewer wrote, "Rarely does an investigative documentary have such immediate impact that it results in observable change," referring to the claim that the movie is responsible for mercury-tainted dolphin flesh being taken out of school lunch menus in Japan.