(JP) Activists comfort dying dolphins

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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071103f3.html

 

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

 

Activists comfort dying dolphins

 

By ERIC PRIDEAUX

Staff writer

 

Opponents of Japan's annual dolphin slaughter have

taken their campaign to a new level of confrontation

by paddling into the bloody waters off a western

killing cove to comfort animals moments before their

deaths.

 

Dave Rastovich, a champion pro surfer from Australia,

on Monday led a group of fellow antiwhaling activists

into the waters off Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, where

30 or so captured pilot whales — adults and calves —

were being held in a netted enclosure for butchering,

according to Richard O'Barry, of the United States,

who helped coordinate the event. Pilot whales are a

variety of dolphin.

 

Local fishermen shouted threats and brandished

propeller blades and a long wooden pole to chase the

activists away, said Barry, 68, who once captured and

trained the dolphins used in the 1960s hit U.S.

television series " Flipper " about a family and their

outdoor adventures with a dolphin, before becoming a

celebrity dolphin-rights activist.

 

" The reason we surfers were there was to share the

water, stained red with blood, at eye level, with our

ocean kin awaiting their execution, " Rastovich said.

 

He and 37 other activists visited Taiji to honor the

spirits of the hundreds of thousands of mammals

butchered there, according to O'Barry. The activists

came from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and

the U.S.

 

Rastovich was accompanied by his wife, Hannah, a

model; actress Hayden Panettiere of the U.S.

television series " Heroes " ; Australian actress Isabel

Lucas; award-winning adventure writer Peter Heller of

the U.S.; and champion U.S. women's surfer Karina

Petroni. They formed a circle in the water in a

time-honored ritual usually held to commemorate fallen

surfers.

 

In the last two decades, an estimated 400,000 small

cetaceans — mostly porpoises — have been killed off

Japan, according to yearly hunting quota data from

fishery co-ops. Taiji is home to about a tenth of

Japan's dolphin catch, and other cetaceans are hunted

there as well.

 

Japan's cetacean slaughter has come under mounting

criticism worldwide, not only on humanitarian grounds

but also because dolphin meat contains dangerously

high levels of mercury. A joint study by Japanese and

New Zealand universities in 2000-2003 found a sample

of striped dolphin that had 26 micrograms of

methylmercury per gram of meat — 87 times higher than

the permitted level.

 

Taiji Municipal Assemblymen Junichiro Yamashita and

Hisato Ryono in July told The Japan Times that they

had found extremely high mercury and methylmercury

levels in the meat of pilot whales killed by local

hunters. Those samples, which they termed " toxic

waste, " were similarly sourced to meat making its way

into lunches at Taiji schools.

 

Despite such findings, central government officials

have adamantly defended the cetacean hunt as integral

to Japanese culinary culture. Local fishery officials

in Taiji, though, were mum on the dramatic events

unfolding earlier this week.

 

" There's no comment, " said a spokesman for the Taiji

Fishery Association who declined to identify himself.

" Please leave us alone. "

 

Staff writer Jun Hongo and contributing writer Boyd

Harnell provided background information for this

report. Visit www.savejapandolphins.org for

information on the activists' campaign, and

www.jfa.maff.go.jp/whale/index.htm for the government

view on cetacean hunts.