…the Chief Har­poon­ist took up his po­si­tion, a per­fect yoga War­rior Two, ex­cept that in this case what looked like an arm ex­tended over his bent front leg was ac­tu­ally his har­poon, ready to be un­leashed. But it’s hard to spot a dol­phin in a sea wine-dark­ened by the glow­er­ing sky. And the dol­phins weren’t help­ing. Though they could eas­ily bolt away from us, they criss-crossed in front of the War­rior, flick­ing his at­ten­tion first left, then right, then far right, then cen­tre left, un­til he didn’t know which way to look and he raised his har­poon straight up to the sky in de­feat. I con­fess that I was not overly thrilled at the idea of hav­ing to bail di­luted dol­phin blood out of the boat as our catch was butchered at my feet. But as the hunt went on I grew less soppy. To get caught on a day like to­day, a dol­phin would have to leap into a high arc di­rectly in front of the War­rior and push the slow-mo­tion but­ton on it­self as it breached the wa­ter to give the drunken har­poon­ist time to fo­cus. […]

Later, chat­ting with a cou­ple of the whale hunters, I showed pho­tos of the red plas­tic kayak that I like to pad­dle in the At­lantic, off the west coast of Ire­land. I said that I of­ten saw dol­phins from my boat, and some­times even a whale, but I wasn’t al­lowed to hunt them. ‘What, be­cause you are a woman alone in a boat?’ No, be­cause it’s for­bid­den.
 ‘Oh right, it’s that thing, those peo­ple – there’s a word for it, isn’t there? What’s the word?’ said the other bailer. ‘Kon­ser­vasi,’ prompted his friend. ‘Yes, yes, that Con­ser­va­tion thing!’
 Elizabeth Pisani; Indonesia, Etc.