Quick Links
From JURNALO, The European Online Newspaper
Monday 26 February 2007 10:31
Despite protests from international environmental organizations, Japanese fishermen, with government approval, are currently conducting an annual dolphin hunt that kills thousands of the aquatic mammals.
Hideki Moronuki, spokesman for the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, said 16,000 to 17,000 dolphins are killed on average in the hunt every year, but environmentalists said the number exceeds 20,000.
Alone in the whaling port of Taiji, about 700 kilometres south of Tokyo, about 150 dolphins have been encircled with boats and nets in the past several days, driven into lagoons and killed with lances or knives for their meat.
The mammals that survive unwounded are sold to aquariums around the world.
The billion-dollar dolphin industry supports the hunt, which supplements the fishermen's poor salaries, said environmentalist Richard O'Barry, an American who was a dolphin trainer for the 1960s television series Flipper before becoming an advocate for protecting the mammals in 1970.
Fishermen in places where the hunt is carried out defend it as part of the traditions and cuisine of the region as well as their livelihoods.
"We kill dolphins because we need them to live," said Yoji Kita, chairman of Taiji's education committee.
The annual hunt, Kita said, cannot be carried out as with animals on land that can be quickly killed behind closed doors. The fishermen make an effort, however, to shorten the dolphins' suffering, Kita added, a claim that critics contest.
Environmentalists like O'Barry accused the Japanese of killing dolphins and small whales because they eat so many fish. He also charged that parts of the dolphins are used to make pet food and fertilizer, which Japan's media keeps quiet. The English-language Japan Times newspaper is an exception.
Boyd Harnell, whose reporting won the Times the International Genesis Award for raising awareness of animal mistreatment, called the story the most barbaric animal cruelty that he has ever researched.
Harnell accused the government of keeping from the public the fact that dolphin meat is contaminated with mercury.
He purchased dolphin meat at a supermarket chain in Wakayama prefecture, where Taiji is located, and had it tested in a government-accredited laboratory. It found mercury levels that were 13. 5 times the amount permitted by the government.
After Harnell's article appeared, the supermarket chain took dolphin meat off its shelves.