The Yearly Dolphin Slaughter – Japan’s Best Kept Secret Until Now

by Spence Cooper on 03/03/10 at 6:06 am

As dolphins migrate through the waters of a small bay off the coast of Taiji, Japan, fishing boats scurry out to meet them. Fishermen pound on metal poles submerged beneath the water, using the sound as a sonar wall to confuse and corral the dolphins into a fortified cove where a series of nets are strung to imprison them.

Fishermen sift through the ensnared dolphins for live specimens that can be sold to aquatic parks for six figures. The rest are slaughtered — harpooned to death with spears, turning the cove’s water a blood red. The dolphin screams are silenced by the sea, and until last year, the wholesale extermination of hundreds of thousands of dolphins was one of Japan’s best kept secrets.

Imagine the horror of surviving the liquid killing fields only to be enslaved as a circus act in a concentration camp we call aquariums.

What makes the cold blooded massacre of these dolphins all the more tragic is that the dolphin flesh — contaminated with toxic levels of mercury — is fallaciously labeled as whale meat, sold to schools and eaten by innocent Japanese school children. Dolphins accumulate high levels of mercury because they can live to be about 40 years old. Tests of the Taiji population found that residents have up to twenty times the normal amount of mercury in their bodies.

This horrifying tale was widely exposed in a 2009 film documentary called The Cove, showcased at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

The Cove tells the story of how an elite team of activists comprised of filmmakers and divers armed like Navy Seals with thermal cameras, a miniature drone helicopter, underwater microphones, night vision devices, and an assortment of superior hi-tech spy gear, penetrate a hidden cove obscured from the public and fortified by high rock cliffs and a barbed wire fence. Their goal was to record the truth many activists before them had tried and failed to do because of corruption and secrecy.

The film idea was spawned by veteran National Geographic photographer-turned-director, Louie Psihoyos, and activist Ric O’Barry, who trained the dolphin actors for the 1960s television series “Flipper”. In an effort to redeem himself, and clear his conscience, O’Barry spent decades trying to free dolphins from marine parks around the world.

“I captured the five dolphins that collectively played the part of Flipper,” O’Barry tells New York Magazine. “I trained all of them, from the very beginning of the first show to the last show. I lived with all five of them in the Seaquarium. And on Friday nights, at 7:30, I would take the TV set, with a long extension cord, out to the end of the dock, so Flipper could watch Flipper on television. And that’s when I knew they were self-aware. I could tell when the dolphins recognized themselves and each other. Cathy, for example, would recognize the shots she was in, Suzy would recognize her shots, and so on. Dolphins are hard to read, because you have to look at body language. Almost all other animals you can read by looking at their faces. But dolphins have this built-in ‘smile’ that makes it look like they’re always happy.”

What seemingly changed O’Barry’s life forever was what the dolphin named Cathy did during his tenure with the T.V. show. “Cathy died in my arms of suicide. She looked me right in the eye, took a breath, held it and she didn’t take another one. She just sank to the bottom of the water. That had a profound effect on me.”

O’Barry — now campaign director for SaveJapanDolphins.Org — says Dolphins are not automatic air breathers like we are. Every breath for them is a conscious effort. “It was just before Earth Day, 1970. The next day, I found myself in a Bimini jail, trying to free a dolphin for the first time. I completely lost it.”

O’Barry claims that even though dolphin killing is legal in Japan, the dolphins are being herded and killed in a national park where the fisherman have no jurisdiction. “They’re just a bunch of thugs,” he says.

O’Barry insists the Japanese people have no clue this is all happening. Only one percent of the Japanese population eats whale meat, he says, and a very small percentage of that one percent eats dolphin or even knows that people eat dolphin. He believes it’s really about over-fishing. He thinks fisherman are killing the competition because each of dolphin eats 25 to 30 pounds of fish.

But the fact is, Japan is one of the world’s largest consumers of whales and dolphins. Commercial whale hunting is officially permitted in Iceland, Norway, and Japan. In Japan alone roughly 1,000 whales are caught each year under the guise of “scientific purposes”; much of the whale meat ends up on restaurant menus.

Furthermore, Martin Fackler with The New York Times characterized the village city of Taiji, Japan, as a town of 3,500 residents fiercely proud of its centuries-old tradition of hunting dolphins and whaling, where residents are used to the international scorn that accompanies the dolphin drive.

Dolphin meat is a prized local delicacy, served raw as sashimi or boiled with soy sauce.

Tens of thousands of dolphins are killed annually in coastal waters, according to Japan’s Fisheries Agency. But even the Times claims only a minority of Japanese eat whale, with dolphin meat being even less common, and only consumed in a handful of rural areas and regional cities like Osaka. Taiji is the best known source of dolphin meat because the people of Taiji have hunted coastal whales for 400 years.

“We are a whaling community, and we don’t want to lose that,” said Katsutoshi Mihara, chairman of Taiji’s town council. “Here, all boys grew up dreaming of hunting whales.”

Dolphin meat accounts for about a third of Taiji’s $3 million fishing industry, according to the fishermen’s association. Dolphin also brings higher prices than other locally caught seafood. In a Taiji supermarket, a pound of frozen dolphin meat sells for $14, roughly the price of sashimi-grade tuna.

WRITE TO THE JAPAN EMBASSY!
Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki
2520 Mass. Ave N.W
Washington D.C 2008-2869

Want to learn what else you can do…check out the suggestions The Cove has for you.