A Partial Victory Against Taiji's Dolphin Slaughters!

By William Rossiter

CSI congratulates Ric and Helene O'Barry for their brilliant strategy to fight Japan's infamous "drive hunts". The slaughter began 1 September, and by the end of April Taiji intends to capture up to 2,380 bottlenose, striped, and Risso's dolphins, pilot whales and false killer whales. Pacific whitesided dolphins may be added to the next permit. Some will survive the slaughter to be sold for captive display. The profits from these sales motivates the killing of more dolphins, almost all of which will end up packaged for sale in supermarkets. But is the meat safe?

During Ric and Helene O'Barry's ordeal in Taiji they took their team to supermarkets in Taiji, Katsuura, and Shingu owned by the Okuwa Supermarket Corporation, the largest supermarket chain in Japan. They asked the managers, on camera, several significant questions:

· Would you sell imported American or Australian beef if you knew mercury levels were the same dangerous levels as the dolphin meat caught in Taiji?

· Why don't you conduct an independent test on your products to see if the mercury levels are safe?

· Why do you continue to sell the tainted dolphin meat after the Japan Times reported the unsafe mercury levels in the dolphin meat on November 1, 2006?

· Are you not concerned by potential lawsuits by consumers that are buying your mercury-tainted dolphin meat?

The O'Barrys told the managers about the three-year joint study on mercury levels in dolphins caught off the coast of Japan, including Taiji. The study, by the Hokkaido Health Science University, Dai Ichi Health Science University and New Zealand Health Science University, concluded that no one should consume dolphin meat. They questioned why the Japanese Minister of Health and Welfare has known about the danger, but has made no public announcement. Then in mid December, in a typically brilliant O'Barry move, they bought packages of striped dolphin meat from the Shingu Okuwa Supermarket and asked the Japan Times in Tokyo to test them. One sample was found to be 14 times above the official advisory level of 0.4 ppm.

On December 26, 2006, the director of food products for the Okuwa Supermarket Corporation banned the sale of all dolphin meat in all of their stores pending independent tests in Tokyo of their own samples. Based on all the testing so far, the ban on dolphin meat in this supermarket chain is expected to be permanent, with a tsunami effect on other markets throughout Japan. Is this the beginning of the end of the cetacean meat market in Japan?

Maybe, but the Taiji fishing community will continue to justify the slaughters of the ocean "pests" they say are eating all the fish. Totally fallacious of course, but they actually believe it, and the government would prefer to permit the dolphin killing than admit to the real problems of over-fishing and pollution. But the public is beginning to catch on to the health issue, the trends suggest that change is inevitable, and the fishermen are terrified that the public will wonder how contaminated Taiji's fish are as well.

But the fundamental public and official attitudes supporting the slaughters and captures are unlikely to be overcome in this generation. While western witnesses may bear emotional scars from their efforts to stop the slaughters, there is a dolphin watching cruise that 100% guarantees its paying tourists views of dolphins by visiting the Dolphin Base sea pens at Taiji! We cannot imagine how anyone could enjoy the spectacle, which goes a long way to explaining why we cannot convince them to stop.

The captive trade profits local fishermen and the Taiji Whale Museum, which is planning to export twelve bottlenose dolphins to the Dominican Republic and four bottlenose dolphins to Guangzhou, China, where at least one previous Taiji dolphin had died in 2005. The dolphins, captured in earlier drives, were sold for US$45,000 each. The Dominican Republic has some of the world's worst display facilities, and after several problems were publicized supposedly had decided in early 2006 to stop further imports. Taiji refused to reveal the purchasing facility.

The Taiji Town Mayor has requested a permit to capture a related family of orcas. While this could be up to twelve individuals, the previous decimation of Japan's coastal orca populations has left only small, remnant families; any effort to capture a whole group, under the assumption they were related, would probably result in deaths and injuries, and may destroy the last surviving orcas on that coast of Japan.

CSI also commends Sakae Hemmi of Elsa Nature Conservancy, Hardy Jones (Bluevoice.org), and Courtney Vail of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (wdcs.org) for also being in Taiji at great sacrifice to document, witness and protest the slaughters. We ask that you look at their web sites for recent information, in part because you just might have more suggestions for stopping this horrific tragedy.

What else can you do? Join the thousands of concerned citizens and scientists in the urgent ACT FOR DOLPHINS campaign! Go to http://www.theoceanproject.org/actfordolphins/ today! If you are a scientist, offer your professional opinion about the request to capture a group of orcas, or the health hazards from contaminated fish. CSI will gladly help you direct your comments to the right officials.