Article on Japan's Dolphin Hunt

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http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=580860 & host=3 & dir=71

 

A very murky business

 

Japan's fishermen have begun their annual dolphin

hunt. While most will end up as sushi, marine parks

are blamed for perpetuating these brutal culls

 

By Paul Kenyon

09 November 2004

 

Fidori is trying to squeeze the air pockets from her

ill-fitting wetsuit. She's milling around with 10

other Japanese women, silent and apprehensive as they

wait to fulfil their lifetime ambition. Before them is

a pool of dolphins. " I've got pictures of them all

over my walls, " says Fidori. " I just want to touch

them. " Now isn't the moment to tell her that just a

few days earlier, I ate one. Not a whole one, but

large, crimson slabs of dolphin meat, washed down with

a glass of sake.

 

Pressure from the animal rights community meant that

the last British dolphinarium closed in 1993. In

Japan, however, they've never been more popular. There

are now more than 50 across the country, and in

Yokohama, where Fidori is being dragged through the

water by a bottlenose, the marine park has taken over

an entire island. But there's a reluctance to talk

about how the dolphins got from the sea to the pool.

When pressed, one of the trainerssays " from Taiji " .

When asked to elaborate, a press officer intervenes.

 

The secret of Japan's dolphin supply is only now

starting to leak out to the rest of the world. The

marine parks are worried that, if the details become

known, international pressure on the Japanese

government might put an end to the business.

 

Taiji is a small fishing town on the south-east coast

of Japan. It's the country's main supplier of

performing dolphins. And just down the road from two

dolphinariums, the dolphin hunters are preparing their

boats. This is " drive-hunt " season. The hunters take

to the water armed with metal poles. When they find a

pod of dolphins they surround it and bang the poles in

the water. The clattering noise confuses the dolphins'

sonar, and they thrash around in confusion as the

hunters drive them towards the shore. Unlike

harpooning, this method can pull in a hundred or so

dolphins at a time. But death is slow. The animals are

knifed and slashed until the water runs red. Still

conscious, they are then hoisted on to trucks.

 

But not all the men dragging dolphins from the water

are fishermen. Some are from marine parks, here to

choose their latest performers. They get first pick,

while those not chosen are butchered for food.

Although many of us have idealistic notions that

marine parks in some way protect sea life, in Taiji

they are in direct alliance with the fishermen who

kill it. It's a strange interdependence that the

aquariums would rather we didn't know about. But worse

than that, animal rights activists argue that

drive-hunts not only serve the dolphinariums but are

actually dependent on the money coming in from the

sale of live animals. In other words, they say it's

the marine parks that are behind the world's biggest

slaughter of dolphins.

 

The main proponent of this view is American activist

Ric O'Barry, from the conservation group One Voice. He

flies from his home in Miami each year to spend six

months protesting in Taiji. " It's the captivity

industry that is driving [the killing] today, " he

says. " The dolphinariums are paying more for the

high-value dolphins. That money is what keeps this

thing going. "

 

O'Barry says a live dolphin can sell for $30,000

(£16,200), while those caught for meat fetch as little

as $300 (£160). Last year the dolphin hunters of Taiji

sold 78 animals to marine parks, a trade that would

appear to have netted them far more than they could

hope to make from the meat. If true, it would mean

that the marine parks fuel the drive-hunts - and every

dolphin-lover visiting a marine park in Japan is

inadvertently propping up the trade for meat, too.

 

Those allowed to catch dolphins are a small,

privileged elite - membership of which is usually

passed from father to son. The diminutive figure of

Akira Takeuchi, the leader of the dolphin hunters,

isn't the barbaric animal rights abuser one might

expect. He's a quiet dignified man, overwhelmed by the

recent appearance of protesters. He, like the others,

doesn't see dolphins as mammals. To him they're just

" big fish " to be caught and turned into sashimi. " How

would people in the UK like it if a group of Japanese

turned up to picket a fox hunt? " he says. The dolphin

hunters are dismissive about their relationship with

the marine parks. " The main reason for the hunt, " they

say, " is for food, not to supply the aquariums. " The

prices we've been quoted they dismiss in gales of

laughter.

 

Almost every dolphinarium in Japan is reliant on the

annual blood bath at Taiji and that of another town a

little further up the coast, Futo. Here some dolphins

are dragged, still alive, behind trucks, their skin

ripping off on the tarmac. At the slaughterhouse, the

men from the dolphinariums pick out the lucky ones who

will live.

 

The manager of the oldest dolphinarium in Taiji, who

would not give his name, takes me to see his prize

assets. Leaping and spinning in their tiny pool, he

admits these dolphins were dragged from the sea in a

drive-hunt. He also admits he eats them. From a

Western perspective, it's a seemingly grotesque

confusion of roles: dolphin-keeper and dolphin-eater.

I'm puzzled. He's puzzled that I'm puzzled. " Hunting

dolphins is different from killing other animals, " he

says. " It's completely different because we have been

doing this since we were born. We don't feel cruel to

the dolphins or feel sick. " He's thoughtful and

articulate, but we're not making much progress. The

cultural divide is too great. We leave him smiling in

his marine park's reception area, where visitors can

buy fluffy toy dolphins or the real thing - in steaks.

 

But, it's not only Japanese marine parks that source

from the drive-hunts. Tim Desmond, an American who's a

regular shopper in Taiji, chooses the best and then

flies them to his marine park in the Philippines -

Ocean Adventure - which is one of the most popular

attractions in the country. Desmond is reluctant to

talk, saying the animal rights activists have made him

a pantomime villain. It turns out that he and O'Barry

are old adversaries.

 

Desmond has the air of an excited academic, all hand

gestures and impressive-sounding theories on the

ethics of keeping animals in captivity. Outside, his

Taiji dolphins rip through the water as the children

whoop and pop music blares from speakers. But here's

the surprise: Desmond claims he's the conservationist,

not the demonstrators trying to stop the drive-hunts.

He says he's saving the dolphins from the hunters'

knives. " Every animal had a life expectancy of less

than one day when we acquired them, " he says. " These

animals were either going to be taken alive or die. "

He argues that Taiji is the most environmentally

friendly place to acquire dolphins. If he ordered them

from elsewhere - Cuba for instance, which is a major

supplier - the dolphins would be caught specifically

for him: in other words, he would be guilty of

interfering with the species. The drive-hunts, on the

other hand, are a pre-existing situation. His

dolphins, he says, are a bi-product of the catch.

 

But O'Barry says: " If Desmond was a conservationist,

he would be there with a sign saying, 'Stop the

killing'. "

 

Back in Yokohama, a delighted Fidori towels herself

down. I delicately suggest she might want to know the

origin of the dolphins. She watches our pictures

speechless; in tears. She, like everyone else we met

outside the dolphin-hunting towns, was unaware of the

drives, or that dolphins were eaten. It appears the

Japanese media prefers not to mention it. As O'Barry

says, public opinion here doesn't need changing, it

just needs informing.

 

Paul Kenyon's 'Undercover World: the Dolphin Hunters'

is on BBC2 tonight at 7.30pm