(JP) 'Secret' dolphin slaughter defies protests

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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fe20051130a1.htm

 

'Secret' dolphin slaughter defies protests

 

By BOYD HARNELL

Special to The Japan Times

 

Japan's annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins

began Oct. 8 in the traditional whaling town of Taiji

on the Kii Peninsula of Honshu's Wakayama Prefecture.

These " drive fisheries " triggered demonstrations, held

under the " Japan Dolphin Day " banner, in 28 countries.

The protests went almost entirely unreported in Japan,

where only very few people are aware of what goes on.

 

The culling, spanning a period of six months, is

officially condoned as part of traditional culture,

and is described as " pest control " by practitioners.

However, it is the inhumane way in which the mammals

are killed, by stabbing and spearing them, that

especially provokes such widespread revulsion.

 

Taiji fishermen begin the oikomi (fishery drive) by

going out to sea in motor boats to locate pods of

dolphins. They then place long steel poles with

flared, bell-like ends into the water and bang them to

create a wall of sound that amplifies underwater and

drives their prey into a narrow cove. Once there, the

dolphins' escape is cut off by nets strung across the

mouth of the cove. The following day -- after they

have rested so, it is thought, their meat becomes more

tender -- they are herded into another cove nearby

where the slaughter is carried out. Much of the meat

is then processed for human consumption -- even though

eating it could well be a very foolhardy thing to do.

 

A video with footage shot at Taiji in January 2004 by

One Voice, a French-based animal rights group, and

other footage from a similar oikomi in Futo, Shizuoka

Prefecture, by a cameraman who requested anonymity,

shows dolphins thrashing about wildly as they try to

escape and the water turns red.

 

Drive fisheries appear to be carried out in as much

secrecy as possible, and the killing cove in Hatagiri

Bay at Taiji is hidden between two mountains. There, a

gigantic tarp is strung over the shoreline to cut off

the view from land, and paths leading to the cove are

closed off with chains and posted with signs reading

" No Trespassing! " and " Keep Out, Danger! " said Ric

O'Barry an official with One Voice.

 

O'Barry, a former trainer of the dolphins used in the

U.S. television series " Flipper, " recently returned

home to Miami from Taiji after shooting footage of

freshly killed dolphins being lifted onto a pier in

the harbor there. Speaking prior to his departure,

O'Barry said that the Taiji dolphin-killers are proud

of what they do, and boast of a tradition dating back

400 years. " However, " he commented, " if they are so

proud of this, why do they take such pains to hide

their activity? "

 

O'Barry said he met with the local Taiji fishery group

and offered them a subsidy to stop the killings, but

was rebuffed and told the dolphins were " pests " that

competed with the commercial fishery. Noting that

there are no scientific studies showing dolphins are

responsible for falling fish stocks in the area,

O'Barry cited overfishing as the probable cause.

 

But it is not just those doing the killing who make

every effort to hide it from the world. Japanese

officials also strongly discourage outsiders from

seeing, recording or protesting the blood-letting.

 

During a fishery drive on Nov. 18, 2003, two members

of the Washington state-based Sea Shepherd

Conservation Society were arrested by police from

Taiji's neighboring town of Shingu for jumping into

freezing waters and releasing 15 dolphins trapped in a

net awaiting slaughter. The pair, Alex Cornelisson

from the Netherlands and American Allison

Lance-Watson, were held without bail and only released

on Dec. 9, 2003, after being indicted and fined for

" forceful interference with Japanese commerce. "

Meanwhile, two other Sea Shepherd members staying in a

trailer park in Taiji had their cameras, film,

computer and some personal belongings confiscated by

police, according to an online news release from the

group. Undeterred, Sea Shepherd is offering a $10,000

reward to anyone who provides the best footage of the

drive fishery.

 

In response to allegations that the oikomi dolphins

suffer from shock and die slowly, in a Sept. 19, 2005,

letter to British-based animal welfare and

conservation charity the Born Free Foundation, Jun

Koda, Counselor of the Japanese Embassy in London,

said: " In some small parts of our country we have a

long tradition of consuming dolphin meat. Japanese

fishermen are careful to minimize suffering as soon as

possible and cause as little pain to the dolphins as

possible. "

 

Koda went on to say that the dolphin " almost instantly

meets its end within a maximum of 30 seconds and does

not suffer any pain. "

 

A rebuttal from Born Free said the data in which Koda

based his claim is taken from Faeroe Island dolphin

hunts in the North Atlantic, which have not been

subject to independent scrutiny and hence have no

bearing on the Japanese culls. Koda's assertions are

also countered by observers from One Voice and Sea

Shepherd, who have reported seeing wounded dolphins

writhe in pain for almost six minutes before

succumbing to their wounds.

 

Meanwhile, another Japanese official was equally

forthright in countering critics' objections to

killing dolphins for food. In a telephone interview

this month, Hideki Moronuki, assistant director of the

whaling section in the Far Seas Fishery Division of

the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries,

expressed the view that, " If someone eats a cow, why

should one object to a dolphin being eaten; they're

all mammals. "

 

He added, " If Australians want to eat kangaroos, we

don't care. . . . Please do not care what Japanese do.

.. . . Dolphins and whales are part of Japanese food

culture. "

 

Furthermore, speaking in English, Moronuki expressed

his view that dolphins are killed humanely in the

fishery drives. Then, comparing the slaughter of a

dolphin to that of a cow or a pig, he declared:

" Killing is killing. "

 

O'Barry believes this is the attitude of most Japanese

fishermen. " They don't think of dolphins as

intelligent, highly complex animals that love to play

and interact with people, " he said.

 

But such sentiments are not confined to welfare and

conservation groups.

 

On April 6, 2005, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a

Democrat from New Jersey, sponsored Senate Resolution

99, " Expressing the sense of the Senate to condemn the

inhumane and unnecessary slaughter of small cetaceans

.. . . in certain nations. " The submission, currently

referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, not

only cites the fact that " those responsible for the

slaughter prevent documentation or data from the

events from being recorded or made public, " but it

describes how, " each year tens of thousands of small

cetaceans are herded into small coves in certain

nations, are slaughtered with spears and knives, and

die as a result of blood loss and hemorrhagic shock. "

 

C.W. Nicol, the renowned environmentalist, author,

whaling expert and Japan Times columnist, recently

made an M.B.E. by Queen Elizabeth II, witnessed the

Taiji dolphin slaughter while living there in 1978.

Speaking last week, he said: " It's been a cancer in my

gut ever since. It's no good to kill an animal

inhumanely, and to do so is not to the advantage of

Japan. "

 

However, not all the captured dolphins are killed.

Every year, an unknown number of healthy young

specimens are selected and removed from the killing

coves to be sold into the international dolphin

captivity industry, to be kept in aquariums, trained

to perform at dolphinariums or for swim-with-dolphin

programs. At Taiji, those involved appear to reap rich

rewards in this way, and O'Barry said he was told

there that the fishery drives would stop and those

carrying them out would go back to catching lobsters

and crabs if they were not offered huge sums for

" show " dolphins.

 

Echoing this, Nicol said he vehemently opposes the

dolphin massacre, adding, that " dolphins not selected

for dolphinariums should be returned to the sea. "

 

However, in a further, darkly ironic twist, serious

health issues would seem to surround meat from the

slaughtered animals, which is available at

supermarkets in Shizuoka Prefecture and Kyushu.

 

At present, Hiroyuki Uchimi of the Japanese health

ministry's Food Safety Division explained, the

provisional advisory safety levels set in 1973, and

still in effect for methyl mercury, are 2 micrograms a

week for pregnant women and 3.4 micrograms a week for

all others, including children, for each kilogram of

body weight.

 

But according to Tetsuya Endo, a member of the

Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty at Hokkaido's Health

Science University, mercury in a sample of the meat he

tested in 2003 from a supermarket in Ito, Shizuoka

Prefecture, was 14.2 times higher than the

government's maximum advisory level. " It is terrible, "

he said this month.

 

Endo's finding was amply supported by those of a

2000-2003 joint survey of small cetacean food products

sold in Japan by the Daichi College of Pharmaceutical

Sciences in Fukuoka, Kyushu, the university where Endo

works, and the School of Biological Sciences in

Auckland, New Zealand. Published in 2005, this found

that all dolphin food products " exceeded the

provisional permitted levels of 0.4 micrograms per wet

gram for total mercury and 0.3 micrograms per wet gram

for methyl mercury set by the Japanese government. The

highest level of methyl mercury was about 26

micrograms per wet gram in a food sample from a

striped dolphin, 87 times higher than the permitted

level. " Methyl mercury is a particularly dangerous

form of mercury, a neurotoxic metal.

 

The paper concluded, " The consumption of red meat from

small cetaceans . . . could pose a health problem for

not only pregnant women, but also for the general

population. "

 

Despite this -- and that Senate Resolution 99, which

cites " warnings regarding high levels of mercury and

other contaminants in meat from small cetaceans caught

off coastal regions " -- health warnings are not posted

on the labels of such food products sold in Japan.

 

In addition, critics of the drive fisheries claim

there is little monitoring of government culling

quotas, already the highest in the world. At present,

these quotas set by the Ministry of Agriculture,

Forestry and Fisheries -- with drive fishery licenses

then issued by prefectural governments to local

fishery cooperatives -- stipulate that in the current

2005/06 season, 21,120 small cetaceans can be killed,

besides those selected for captivity. O'Barry

estimates that " more than 400,000 dolphins have been

killed in Japan by dolphin hunters over the past two

decades. "

 

O'Barry, who added that he is passionate about banning

dolphin hunts, said he even reversed his position on

hunting cetaceans " to be clowns " in aquarium shows

after Cathy, one of the dolphins that portrayed

Flipper, died in his arms. As a trainer, O'Barry said

he discovered that dolphins were among the very few

creatures in the animal kingdom that were not only

highly intelligent, but also self-aware, like gorillas

and humans, as evidenced by recognition of themselves

when they saw their reflection in a mirror or watched

themselves on a TV monitor.

 

Perhaps a similar self-awareness on the part of

dolphin hunters would point a way forward. This may

already be happening, as film-maker Hardy Jones of the

California-based Blue Voice conservation group found

last month when he was in Futo, where recently there

has been a drastic decline in dolphin catches.

 

In a phone interview last week, Jones explained that

while in Futo he heard from a source close to former

dolphin hunter Izumi Ishii that " Ishii has switched

from hunting dolphins to conducting 'dolphin watch'

tours. So far this year he's taken 2,600 tourists, who

pay 4,000 yen each to enjoy seeing dolphins in the

wild. "

 

As Jones observed, " With Ishii making more money from

the tours than he ever did as a dolphin hunter, he is

setting a great example for the Taiji fishermen to

follow as well. "

 

Boyd Harnell is a Japan-based journalist who has

worked for Time Life TV, UPI, Kyodo News and other

media outlets.

 

The Japan Times: Nov. 30, 2005