National Geographic examines issues surrounding 'The Cove'

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100308-cove-movie-oscars-dolphin\

-hunts-japan/

" Cove " Movie Assails Dolphin Hunt, Gets Oscar Boost

Patrick Walters

 

for *National Geographic* magazine <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/>

 

Updated March 8, 2010 (first published August 10)

 

*With **The Cove** movie* <http://www.thecovemovie.com/>* winning the **2010

Oscar* <http://oscar.go.com/>* for best documentary Sunday night, **residents

of the fishing village made famous in the movie are voicing their

disappointment*<http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/08/1518824/japanese-town-slam\

s-the-cove-oscar.html>

*, calling the film inaccurate and intolerant of other cultures. *

 

*The Cove'*s makers and distributors counter that the movie won the Oscar

because it was well made and worth seeing, and that the Oscar nod highlights

people's concerns about the controversial practice at the heart of the

movie—dolphin hunting.

 

Every year on the first of September, at a cove in a small town called Taiji

on the southeast coast of

Japan<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_japan.html>'\

s

Honshu Island, a new fishing season begins: the dolphin season.

 

Twenty-six fishermen in 13 boats corral a few dozen dolphins into the small

cove, where they kill the animals by stabbing them repeatedly with long

harpoons and knives. The 50-square-foot (4.6-square-meter) inlet turns

crimson, as if filled only with blood.

 

In the course of a six-month season, fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins

and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about U.S. $500 a dolphin. The

fishermen supplement their income by taking about a hundred dolphins alive

and selling them for tens of thousands of dollars each to aquariums in

Japan,

China<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_china.html>,

South

Korea<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_koreasouth.h\

tml>,

Iran<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_iran.html>,

and Dubai in the United Arab

Emirates<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_unitedara\

bemirates.html>

..

 

(Related: " Captured Dolphin With Four Fins Spotlights Controversial

Hunt. " <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061114-dolphin-hunt.html>

)

 

*Cove** Movie Reopened Wounds*

 

International media have not been kind to Taiji in the past, and the

Oscar-winning movie *The Cove*, which was released nationwide in the United

States in August, has reopened old wounds. The movie follows an

international team of photographers, divers, and activists on their mission

to document the dolphin hunt, facing opposition from Taiji town officials,

police, and fishermen.

 

(Read an interview with *The Cove'*s

director<http://ngadventure.typepad.com/blog/the-cove-filmmaker-louie-psihoyos.h\

tml>from

*Adventure* magazine.)

 

The activists are led by Ric O'Barry, who trained the bottlenose

dolphins<http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/bottlenose-dolphi\

n.html>featured

in the popular 1960s TV series

*Flipper.* After the show ended in 1967, O'Barry became one of the world's

most radical activists against keeping dolphins in captivity. For the past

several years he's been trying to stop the hunt in Taiji, one of Japan's

iconic whaling towns.

 

Others have also been outspoken: Blue Voice, a collaboration between

filmmaker Hardy Jones and actor Ted Danson, has opposed the Taiji hunt for

years. So has a Japanese environmental organization, Elsa Nature

Conservancy. *Heroes* star Hayden Panettiere protested in the Taiji cove in

2007.

 

Many scientists are also opposed to the hunt. Since 2005, Hunter College

animal behaviorist Diana

Reiss<http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/02_Faculty/FacultyPages/Faculty_Reis\

s.html>—famous

for discovering that dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors—has been

collecting signatures from hundreds of scientists around the world for a

petition she plans to present to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

 

(Read a *National Geographic* magazine article on animal

intelligence<http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-mor\

ell-text>

..)

 

" This [hunt] is an extreme case of animal cruelty, " said Reiss, who receives

funding from National Geographic's Committee for Research and

Exploration<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/grants-programs/cre.html>.

(The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

 

Reiss, *The Cove'*s filmmakers, and other activists working in Taiji all

have a clear mission: Stop this dolphin hunt. But dolphin hunting is a

complex issue, and focusing solely on ending it leaves some important

questions unanswered: How widespread is dolphin hunting? When and why did it

start, and why does it persist? And what effect, if any, is the hunt having

on the health of dolphins globally?

 

*The Cove** Movie Captures an Age-Old Local Tradition*

 

People in Japan have hunted dolphins and their larger cetacean relatives,

whales, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Glacial melting made Japan

an island chain 10,000 years ago, and as its population grew, the country

became highly dependent on the sea.

 

" Pretty much any edible sea creature has been exploited for food, " said

Harvard University anthropologist and Japanese fishing-culture expert Theodore

Bestor <http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~bestor/>. Whales and dolphins

became ingrained in Japanese food, culture, and religion. The animals were

the subjects of celebrations, rituals, and art. Ancient tombs and memorials

for whales and dolphins can be found across the country.

 

Unlike whaling—which became a large-scale commercial industry in the 20th

century, before a 1986 international moratorium—dolphin hunting has always

been primarily a local activity, said University of Oslo anthropologist Arne

Kalland. Traditionally dolphin hunts have been isolated to a handful of

small fishing towns, where dolphin meat is well liked.

 

Ironically, a Japanese town where dolphin* wasn't* popular became the first

to draw international attention to drive hunting, the practice of corralling

the dolphins into a cove. In the late 1970s fishermen in Iki, a small town

on an island west of Taiji, had come to believe that dolphins were depleting

stocks of a popular fish called yellowtail, though there's no data to

suggest dolphins have ever significantly reduced yellowtail stocks. In April

1979 *National Geographic *magazine published a picture of Iki's bloody

cove, showing bottlenose dolphins strewn on the beach.

 

The following year Hardy Jones visited Iki and filmed the slaughter. He sent

his tape to CBS, and after the network ran the footage, more than 200

reporters from all over the world showed up to cover the story. Iki hasn't

had a dolphin hunt since.

 

By the mid-1980s, Jones said, most other towns with drive hunts also gave up

the practice. Some stopped because they ran out of dolphins, which were

overfished, scared off, or both—but most were driven to quit by all the

negative attention. The drive hunts weren't worth the trouble.

 

Still, Taiji refused to stop: In 1980, fishermen killed 11,017 dolphins in

drive hunts.

 

*Dolphin Hunts Like Those in **The Cove** Persist Outside Japan*

 

Over the past 25 years, Taiji (population 3,600) has become a flashpoint for

animal-rights activists. But it's not the only place where fishermen kill

dolphins. It's not even the only place with a blood-drenched cove.

 

Every year, fishermen in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of

Denmark, also corral and kill hundreds of dolphins in small coves. Just as

in Taiji, the water runs red.

 

So why hasn't the Faroese hunt attracted the same kind of negative

international attention? For starters, it's only half the size of Taiji's

and sometimes smaller. In addition, the fishermen kill pilot whales, which

are technically dolphins but aren't as recognizable as their bottlenose

cousins. The hunt is also less commercial. The meat is divided evenly among

local families instead of being sold to supermarkets, and no animals are

sold to aquariums.

 

What's more, the Faroe Islands respect a worldwide commercial whaling ban,

though Denmark wants it lifted. So does Japan, and Tokyo's outspoken

opposition to the ban has made Japan a lightning rod for anti-whaling

activists—and, by extension, dolphin activists.

 

Even within Japan, the Taiji hunt is small compared to one that happens in

the north, where harpooners kill more than 10,000 Dall's porpoises every

year for food—five times the recent annual take in Taiji. But because the

hunt happens out at sea, it's hard to photograph and has received far less

attention than Taiji's bloody cove.

 

Dolphin hunts also take place at a small subsistence level in the Caribbean

and the Arctic. Fishermen kill dolphins frequently in Peru—where it's

illegal—but data on how many are killed is hard to come by.

 

*Solomon Islands Hunt " Completely Unsustainable " *

 

In the Solomon

Islands<http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_solomonisl\

ands.html>,

dolphins are regularly killed for their meat and their teeth, which are used

decoratively. As in Taiji, fishermen sell a small number of dolphins to

aquariums.

 

The Solomon Islands hunt is one of the smallest in the world—less than a

hundred are killed every year, and about a dozen are sold into captivity—but

it presents an urgent problem for conservationists since the local dolphin

population may number only in the hundreds.

 

" It's completely unsustainable, " said Natural Resources Defense

Council<http://www.nrdc.org/>staff attorney Taryn Kiekow. Former

*Flipper *trainer Ric O'Barry and the Earth Island Institute have lobbied

officials in the Solomon Islands to end the hunt.

 

Globally, most dolphin populations are safe. According to the International

Union for Conservation of Nature, there are likely more than six million

dolphins worldwide. A few species are at risk of extinction, but most number

in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

 

" Anybody who tells you these animals are going to go extinct because of

these hunts, there's no data to support that, " said NRDC marine mammal

scientist Liz Alter. Still, she cautions that it's possible that the Dall's

porpoise hunt in Japan may harm subpopulations of that animal, which numbers

more than a million worldwide.

 

*One Critic: " We Never Say 'Don't Eat a Cheeseburger' " *

 

Shigeki Takaya, assistant director of the Far Seas Fisheries Division

of Japan's

Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and

Fisheries<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100308-cove-movie-osca\

rs-dolphin-hunts-japan/Japanese%20Ministry%20of%20Agriculture,%20Forestry,%20and\

%20Fisheries:%20Whaling%20Section>in

Tokyo, which oversees dolphin hunting, said he hasn't seen

*The Cove* movie yet—just the trailer. But Takaya knows what the filmmakers

want, and he says they should give up.

 

" What difference is there between a cow, a pig, and a dolphin? " he said.

" There's no difference. There is a market for dolphin in Japan. It's not a

major market, but it's a market. Dolphin is a resource, and people have to

respect each other's cultures. In other countries they eat cow. But we never

say to Americans, 'Don't eat a cheeseburger.' We never, ever say that. "

 

Hunter College's Reiss counters that the Taiji hunt must stop simply because

it's inhumane. Dolphins are extremely intelligent creatures that experience

pain and suffering, she emphasizes. She has listened to underwater

recordings from the Taiji drive hunt and says the dolphins issue

sophisticated distress calls.

 

" Science has got to transcend cultural borders, " she said.

 

The Switzerland-based World Association of Zoos and

Aquariums<http://www.waza.org/en/site/home>(WAZA) has forbidden its

members from taking dolphins from the Taiji hunt.

The Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums is a WAZA member, but most

Japanese aquariums don't belong to the national association.

 

WAZA director Gerald Dick has visited several Japanese aquarium directors

and said it's hard to convince them to stop buying dolphins from Taiji when

doing so costs so much less than breeding them in captivity.

 

" They don't regard [the hunt] as particularly cruel, " he said. " They've been

doing it for years. "

 

The makers of *The Cove* movie argue that if Japanese aquarium-goers knew

where the aquariums were getting their dolphins, people might stop visiting.

The Taiji drive hunt is not widely publicized in Japan, the filmmakers say,

but they are seeking a Japanese distributor for the documentary.

 

*Could Mercury Fears End **The Cove** Hunts?*

 

Like most forms of fishing, dolphin hunting isn't regulated by any

international organization.

 

The International Whaling Commission <http://iwcoffice.org/> has for years

debated whether it should limit the hunting of small cetaceans like

dolphins, but it's been deadlocked. The commission was created in 1946 to

control the market for whale oil and later took on the duty of protecting

whales from being hunted to extinction. But global dolphin populations are

healthy.

 

In the end, it might be Japanese consumers who stop the Taiji hunt.

Activists, scientists, and the Japanese press have documented high levels of

mercury contamination in Japan's dolphins. *The Cove* features Oregon State

University marine biologist Scott Baker, a past National Geographic Society

grantee who tested Japanese striped dolphin meat and reported in 2005 it had

nearly a hundred times the amount of mercury permitted by Japanese

regulations.

 

But mercury poisoning doesn't show its effects immediately, and although the

Japanese government has warned pregnant women to limit their consumption of

dolphin meat, it would probably take awhile for people to give up completely

a food tied so closely to their history and culture.

 

So far, Japan—home to the world's largest dolphin hunt—has done nothing to

suggest it will stop this age-old practice.