Stop the dolphin drive fishery in Japan!

IMMP has partnered with leading French animal protection society One Voice and the Japanese environmental organization Elsa Nature Conservancy in an effort to stop the annual massacre of dolphins in Japan.

Approximately 20,000 dolphins and other small whales are slaughtered each year in Japan. Some are killed at sea with handheld harpoons; others are killed in a "drive fishery," in which fishermen drive pods of dolphins into a small cove and kill them with butcher knives and sharp hooks.

It's a small minority of fishermen in remote fishing villages that carry out the hunts. The fishermen take extreme measures to prevent anyone from witnessing and filming their activities. As a result, the vast majority of the Japanese population is unaware that the drive fishery exists. It is vital, therefore, to document the dolphin massacres and help the Japanese people gain access to the information that has been systematically withheld from them. Teams of videographers have just spent several weeks in two remote fishing villages where the hunts are carried out.

The town of Futo became the center of controversy in 1999 when fishermen there captured some 70 bottlenose dolphins. The massacre caused an international uproar and due to the resulting media attention, no dolphins were killed there between 1999 and 2004. Unfortunately, however, fishermen in Futo announced that they would resume the dolphin hunt this year. The chairman of Ito Fishing Cooperative Futo Branch told members of One Voice that several Japanese dolphinaria had placed an order for young bottlenose dolphins. He further stated that a few of the dolphins would be butchered for human consumption and at least one killed for research purposes.

The fishermen are paranoid about being photographed while killing dolphins and in Futo, where the drive fishery season starts September 1, they didn't carry out a single hunt for the two weeks during which they were monitored. But on November 11, they drove about one hundred bottlenose dolphins into the harbor, where representatives from six Japanese dolphinariums chose the best-looking ones. Coalition member Sakae Hemmi of Elsa Nature Conservancy was able to document the capture. She reported that members of the captive dolphin industry yanked 19 dolphins out of the water and selected 14 that fulfilled the ideal criteria for captive dolphin swim programs and dolphin shows. One of the dolphins died flora shock and was processed into meat for human consumption along with three of its pod members. Many dolphins were caught in the capture nets and in their struggles to disentangle themselves suffered severe injuries.

The Fishing Cooperative later reported that 80 dolphins were released, but an eyewitness questions this claim. Many pressing questions remain unanswered: How many of the dolphins had been injured so seriously that they had no chance of survival? And how many were in such a state of shock that they couldn't find their way back to the open sea?

Live dolphins sold to aquaria bring a much higher profit than do dead dolphins processed into meat. By ordering dolphins from Futo, the dolphinariums enticed the fishermen to resume a practice they had not carried out since 1999 "The high value of dolphins for public display has added a new, high value driver to a despicable industry that would otherwise discontinue," says One Voice's Ric O'Barry.

This season, fishermen in Taiji have been given a permit to kill approximately 2,400 cetaceans of various species. On two occasions, representatives from local dolphinariums Dolphin Base, World Dolphin Resort, and Taiji Whale Museum were witnessed encouraging the dolphin hunt. Aided by the fishermen, dolphin handlers forced dolphins into shallow water and selected the ones they estimated to be of the desired "show quality." The old, the blemished, and those still dependent on their mothers' milk were butchered. Dolphin handlers hauled the selected dolphins away to steel cages in Taiji harbor. But the dolphins were still in shock and didn't eat. One week after capture, they had to be force-fed.

Taiji City Hall has implemented laws banning photographers from climbing the mountain from which one can see the killing cove. Fishermen have tied barbed wire around trees used to climb to photograph the scene, and they have erected an enormous canvas wall at the top of the mountain to block the scene. They have even erected a large tarp across the entire cove, making it impossible to film the massacres from the air. A fisherman from the fishing village of Katsuura said that it costs the fishermen a lot of time and money to hide from cameras. "You are making their work extremely difficult," he said, adding that media presence in Taiji has created a debate in nearby villages and that not everyone here supports the dolphin hunt.

The strategy is working. The slaughter of dolphins in Japan will continue for only as long as the fishermen are successful at keeping it a secret. Our team will keep returning to these remote fishing villages to document and expose the dolphin massacres.

Visit our Web site for more information: www.savetaijidolphins.org.

--Helene O'Barry, One Voice