Lisa going to great heights in battle against dolphin hunting

That is the message from Southampton woman Lisa Richardson who is to scale Africa's highest mountain, Kilimanjaro, to highlight the plight of dolphins and whales being slaughtered in Japan for meat.

Lisa, 29, who works as a tour guide for Top Deck Travel, was horrified after learning about the annual dolphin and whale hunt from a TV documentary.

The hunt takes place off the coast of Taiji in south-east Japan.

About 20,000 dolphins and small whales are hunted for meat and so they can be captured and sold to sea parks, some with terrible conditions.

Lisa said: "A small group of hunters head out in about 12 boats to locate unexpecting families of dolphins.

"They use long metal poles to hit and scare the dolphins and then they herd them in towards a shallow cove where they are then sealed off.

"Hunters select the dolphins for either a life in a tank, or to be butchered as a slab of meat."

She spent three months working as a volunteer for Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project, a charity which bases itself on the ground in Taiji every year from September to March, to film the hunt.

Lisa witnessed the death of 250 dolphins and the capture for a rare albino which now lives in a cramped tank at the local aquarium.

Taiji has been a centre for whaling since the 17th century and hunters are known for their refined hunting techniques.

Once the agitated dolphins have been herded into the bay they are left to calm down overnight. The next day the fishermen catch the dolphins one at a time and kill them by driving metal pin into the animals' necks to sever the brain stem.

The Taiji hunt has attracted worldwide criticism for both the cruelty of the dolphin killing and the high mercury levels in the meat.

However, last year, Taiji's mayor Kazutaka Sangen told the press that the hunting of whales and dolphins has been carried out "since long ago and is performed on scientific grounds. I will protect this tradition".

Lisa said the Japanese government were "reluctant" to allow her to return so she had come up with an alternative way to help the charity.

She is to scale Kilimanjaro, the tallest free standing mountain in the world, in February 2016, accompanied by her friend Miranda Redmond, from Australia.

"It will be an amazing personal achievement for me, but more importantly, any money donated to me for this challenge will go to the Dolphin Projects.

"The money will assist the charity to get the items and equipment that they so desperately need in order to keep the world up to date with what is going on," said Lisa, from Aldermoor, who gained a Diploma in Sport and Exercise Science at Richard Taunton Sixth Form College.

To sponsor Lisa or to find out more about her climb visit crowdrise.com/LisasKilimanjaroClimb ForDolphins.