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TechnoratiJapanese Town Starts Dolphin Hunt Under Global Spotlight
TAIJI, Japan - To animal rights activists it's a cruel and bloody slaughter; for Japanese it's a long tradition: this week fishermen in a picturesque coastal town embarked on their annual dolphin hunt.
![[This file shows Japanese fishermen riding a boat loaded with slaughtered dolphins at a blood-covered water cove in Taiji harbor, Japan's Wakayama prefecture. US environmentalist Ric O'Barry has filmed dolphin hunting at the town of Taiji as an eco-documentary called "The Cove" which has started screening in the US.
(AFP/HO/File)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/slaughtereddolphins_japan.jpg "slaughtereddolphins_japan.jpg")
Every year, crews in motorboats here have rounded up about 2,000 of the sea mammals, banged metal poles to herd them into a small, rocky cove and killed them with harpoons, sparing a few dozen for sale to marine aquariums.
But this year the small southwestern town of Taiji was shunted into the global spotlight with the release of the hard-hitting US-made eco-documentary "The Cove".
In the film, years in the making, a team of underwater cameramen, free divers and other experts used hidden cameras and other technical devices to covertly capture the hunt in graphic detail.
The film shows angry confrontations between residents and the lead activist, Ric O'Barry, who in the 1960s trained dolphins for the US hit television show "Flipper" but now argues the animals should be free to roam the oceans.
The film won numerous international prizes, including the Sundance Festival's audience award, and last month led the Australian city of Broome to announce it would cancel it sister-city relationship with Taiji.
"Dolphins are a large-brain creature," O'Barry, 69, told AFP during a recent return visit to Japan. "They are highly intelligent, they are self-aware, like gorillas and humans. I nursed them, I watched them give birth.
"And for me, to kill them, is extremely, extremely..." He paused, then simply added: "I don't see the purpose."
In Taiji, where about 3,700 people live, the global uproar stirred by "The Cove" has met with equal incomprehension -- and anger.
"If it's cruel to kill dolphins, it's also cruel to kill cows and pigs," Hiromitsu Taniguchi, a 41-year-old house painter, told AFP during a recent interview as several of his friends nodded in agreement.
"I can never understand those Westerners' argument. They eat cattle, pigs and chicken. We eat dolphins and whales. That's it."
Fishermen and town officials declined to speak with AFP about the film, citing what they described as widespread media bias against them.
"We've been betrayed for years by reporters," said a fishing cooperative official. "If we explain our opinions to them, editors cut out the parts giving our views and the result is stories supporting anti-whaling activists."
Taiji is filled with monuments to dolphins and whales, which are commonly grouped as 'whales' in conversations here, and has a museum dedicated to hunting the sea mammals, a practice it says started around the year 1600.
At a monument, people from the town pray for the souls of the dolphins, porpoises and whales killed in the hunts.
The film's director, Louie Psihoyos -- a veteran National Geographic photographer and co-founder of the non-profit group the Ocean Preservation Society -- says he doesn't buy the tradition argument.
"The dolphin hunters told us that they are proud of their tradition," he told AFP in an email. "This 'tradition' has been only going on with fast diesel power boats" since the early 1900s, he wrote.
Psihoyos suggested that some traditions need to end. "In America we had a much older tradition of slavery and not allowing women to vote."
Amid the raging controversy, Taiji's fishermen started their annual hunt Wednesday, catching about 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales, said Wakayama prefectural official Yasushi Shimamura.
They plan to sell about 50 dolphins to aquariums nationwide and release the remainder back into the sea, while the whale meat will be sold for human consumption, an official at a local fishermen's cooperative said.
Officials said they would not slaughter any of the dolphins caught on Wednesday, but denied it was due to international pressure and did not say whether or not they would hunt or cull more of the animals this season.
"We didn't decide to release the remainder of the dolphins because there have been protests against dolphin hunting from animal rights activists," said a fisheries cooperative official who declined to give his name.
"From the viewpoint of resource control, we've been occasionally releasing them on our own judgement in the past."
This year, Taiji was allocated a cull quota of about 2,300 small cetaceans, or hairless aquatic mammals such as dolphins, whales and porpoises.
O'Barry made a return visit to the town, accompanied by media, at the start of the hunting season, September 1, but the hunt was delayed by officials citing inclement weather conditions.
He was an unwelcome guest, blocked at one stage by a fisherman from entering a supermarket that sells dolphin and whale meat.
O'Barry has stressed that his message is not anti-Japanese but intended to protect them because dolphin meat, once served in school lunches in Taiji and still sold elsewhere in Japan, is toxic.
He told AFP that he came back "to get this information out about mercury poison in dolphin meat," referring to the heavy metal that concentrates in the marine food chain and is often found in dolphin meat.
People in Taiji say they already know about the mercury risk.
"The Cove", which has not been shown in Japanese cinemas, features interviews with two Japanese experts who speak about the heavy metal.
Both now say they are angry their comments were used in the film.
Hisato Ryono, 52, an assemblyman in Taiji who raised the alarm over dolphin meat being served in school lunches, said: "It's a betrayal. I thought (the film) was about marine pollution, but it's about anti-whaling."
"Showing the scene of the slaughter is not fair."
Tetsuya Endo, of the Health Science University of Hokkaido, who also spoke about the mercury risk on camera, said: "The overall tone of the film is an insult to the Japanese people and the people of Taiji in particular."
Psihoyos told AFP: "'The Cove' is not an attack on the Japanese people... I believe stopping the killing of dolphins is a win-win situation for both the dolphins and the Japanese people."
16 Comments so far
Show AllAfter a recent visit to Tokyo and Beijing, one of the major things that changed for me was my realization of how hypocritical Westerners seem to folks in other countries when we criticize their behavior... especially in regards to environmental issues.
If the US was some sort of eco-utopia and bastion of socio-economic justice perhaps I would feel OK urging other countries to alter behaviors.
As it stands, I feel I have no high ground saying anything in regards to the way other countries do things. If Japan is to stop whaling it will come as a result of internal pressure.
I don't buy the arguments that dolphins and whales are somehow less deserving to be slaughtered than other animals based on their intelligence. This seems silly. Life feeds on life. If a species is on the verge of extinction then we should probably not hunt it anymore... that should be the argument. Period. Dolphins and cockroaches have an equal right to existence.
That said, let's fix our own factory farming problem before criticizing other countries' eating-habits. And let's fix it by promoting vegetarianism for those who don't much care for meat and local, free-range options for those who want to eat ethically-sourced meat. For the most part, veganism comes off as dogmatic and silly... especially to someone like me (a CSA member/vegetarian who eats organic dairy/eggs).
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
As the author of this article noted, dolphins are large brained mammals, and have been referred to as the people of the sea. They aren't food animals, whatever that may be seen as, they are remarkable creatures with advanced communication skills, profound learning ability, and amazing family structures. To compare dolphins with chickens is like comparing a person with a chicken, Although neither deserves to be killed and eaten, it may just be a lot more like cannibalism to eat a dolphin or whale. This is not a matter of "tradition", it is a matter of disregard and ignorance, which people seem to show all over this great globe.
Think twice next time you want to buy something that is "Made in Japan".
Cruelty of any kind is evil whether it be to animals or humans, physical or emotional. And don't think that animals do not feel emotion: any being that can fear has emotion.
Killing for food should be done in the most humane way possible and there should be a world wide effort toward this end. PETA does good work but they loose people because of their principle of total prohibition.
It may seem odd to say this here. The greatest good we can do is to better the life of another being; the greatest evil is the opposite.
If you were being killed (for food) how would you wish to die?
I will admit that Americans are hypocrites par excellence. They point at Chinese eating Sea Horses while chomping down a bacon and cheese burger, and blame Japanese while slaughtering Iraqis and filling themselves with billions of pounds of butchery. With as much slaughtering as Americans do, they really should not point at anyone. No doubt the movie maker was himself smacking down wieners, and the actors slurping up hamburgers everyday.
That being said as a person who recently went completely vegan (I gave up milk and eggs) I can say that this is cruelty. It is like the animal slaughter in American factory farms. The slicing of cows while they are alive or the grinding of male chicks alive. Stop stuffing your face with meat first before you point fingers.
We, as human beings, are all destined to cruelty. It's part of the total package. Oh, here's my gin and tonic.
The first commentator hits the nail on the head. Animals are used by humans all over the world for food. Hauling a fish up from the sea via a hook through its mouth or some other body part and then releasing said fish is also cruel. At least they pray for the whales' souls. Food is food, period. Piggys are cute, so are cows, etc., etc. The bottom line is; eat 'em up yum! Also a good point on the opening statement being racist/xenophobic. By the way, seems to me that Mr. O'Barry made a living off of utilizing dolphins as he saw fit. Were his "Flippers" not imprisoned and trained to perform tricks for human entertainment? Typical American hypocrisy, now that he doesn't "abuse" dolphins anymore, no one has a right to kill them for food.
OOPS! I said "The first commentator". I meant the post by staying_sane_in.
"To animal rights activists it's a cruel and bloody slaughter; for Japanese it's a long tradition:"
A nice racist/xenophobic remark right at the start of the article. I didn't realize ALL the Japanese slaughter dolphins as some kind of tradition. I also didn't realize the Japanese are all clones of each other, with the same minds and the same behavior.
Funny how foreigners are NOT permitted to blame Americans for the slaughter in Iraq - a slaughter that dwarfs the scale of Taiji "massacre" - but Americans ARE allowed to blame any group of foreigners for anything they want in order to keep up the pretense that they are morally superior.
Americans are permitted to shoot animals for sport. How is that any better?
As for the Japanese not caring about the suffering, I suggest Americans take a look at industrial-scale factory farming. Animals, including pigs, which are as smart - or smarter! - than dogs, brought up, from birth, knowing nothing but suffering. At least the dolphins get some pain-free existence before being killed.
Americans (and Westerners generally) needed - and still need! - to be educated on animal suffering. Historically, it has always been THE FEW amongst us who have tried to bring about change. The Japanese - as a people - are no different.
In anticipation of those who will claim that shooting animals for sport is not as bad as what is happening in Taiji - this assumes you get a clean shot; if you don't, you've maimed an animal, potentially, for life. The animal could also be seriously injured as it runs in panic. And, even if you do kill the creature almost instantly, if the animal is a parent, its young offspring are going to endure a long, slow, painful starvation - or become easy prey for predators. Finally, if you're just killing for sport or gluttony, then that's obviously worse.
The movie is extremely powerful. I don't believe it is an insult to the Japanese people because most were totally unaware of this terrible slaughter. I would accept the argument that it is the same as killing pigs, chickens and cows here in the "West" if killing the dolphins wasn't done with such cruelty and disregard for their physical and emotional pain. I was appalled at the lack of compassion of the fishermen. The film needs a wider audience; it is a must see for everyone. It is time for everyone to consider how we treat animals, all animals, whether they are slaughtered for consumption or not.
Yes. Raising cows, chicken, pigs, for meat, in cramped filthy conditions, so cramped and filthy that they are often literally standing in and eating in their own shit, pumping them full of growth hormones to force fast growth, pumping them full of antibiotics because if you don't they would die from the filthy conditions they are raised in, is not cruel, and doesn't disregard their physical and emotional pain.
Anyone who eats any mass factory farmed meat, has no grounds to lecture anyone on animal cruelty.
i don't think anyone who eats mass factory farmed meat has any idea of the cruelty that preceded their 'bloody' steak being served.............
you obviously haven't seen the film 'meet your meat' from 'peta'............
there you will see equal cruelty and disregard for the physical and emotional pain of the pigs, chickens and cows................
and don't talk about compassion of the fishermen...............employees in factory farms are no less guilty.
Hi coco. I do see a mitigating circumstances for a woman who works in a chicken processing plant because that is the only job in her rural area, and she is responsible for a family. It is disgusting, ugly, low-paid work that I doubt anyone would take if there were alternatives.
Those of us who have a little more leeway should try to get worthy enterprises going to provide opportunities for decent and fulfilling work.
Joe
well yes joe, it's certainly a dilemma. and one which i feel will not be solved until this 'epidemic' of greed and stupidity is annihilated and homo sapiens get back to basics of living/interacting with nature/animals...............and the myth perpertrated by mega corps that we need to eat meat is shown for what it is.......a myth.
what that will take is anyone's guess...............