Background
Fishermen have killed dolphins, porpoises and small whales (‘small cetaceans’) around the coastlines of Japan for centuries with no regard for the sustainability or the humaneness of the hunt. Currently up to 20,000 a year are killed using knives and spears in ‘drive fishery hunts,’ using hand-held harpoons thrown from boats, and using full size harpoons fired from larger vessels in ‘Small Type Coastal Whaling’ hunts. Most commonly targeted species are the Dall’s porpoise, Risso’s dolphin, bottlenose dolphin, short-finned pilot whale, striped dolphin, spotted dolphin, false killer whale and Baird’s beaked whales. Increasingly, these hunts have come under international scrutiny and have prompted various expressions of concern from relevant management bodies, such as the International Whaling Commission (IWC), on both welfare and conservation grounds. In the last two decades, over 400,000 small cetaceans have been killed in and around the coast of Japan.
The ‘drive fishery’ in Japan is a particularly inhumane form of hunting. Dolphins (usually bottlenose, striped dolphins or pilot whales) are corralled and driven, sometimes by the hundreds, into shallow coves and then systematically slaughtered with knives or spears for their meat and other products, or taken alive for the aquarium and marine park industry. Dolphin products, including blubber and internal organs, are sold for human consumption in Japan or used for fertilizer or pet food. Sometimes they are killed as a means of ‘pest control’ resulting from a misconception that dolphins compete with local fisherman for their daily catch. Now fishing cooperatives are collaborating with national and international aquaria and marine amusement parks to hand pick dolphins from these drives to supply programs offering physical interaction with dolphins.
As an example of the numbers of animals involved in these hunts, in the 2003-2004 drive hunt conducted by one town alone (Taiji/Wakayama Prefecture), 1165 dolphins were killed for consumption and an additional 78 dolphins were captured and maintained alive for the captivity industry. Although these numbers are an increase from the numbers taken in 2002-2003, the actual drive quota for this one fishing cooperative is 2,380 dolphins.
Methodology
Drive hunts are conducted by a number of high-speed boats that spot a school of dolphins or small whales at sea. The boats form a semi-circle, and while generating loud noises by banging metal pipes together or slapping the water, fishermen are able to disorient and then herd the animals to a cove or harbor. Once in the harbor, the dolphins are surrounded by nets, which are gradually pulled tighter, trapping the animals into an increasingly confined space. Some dolphins are slaughtered in the shallows. Others are caught with a hook or a rope around their tail and are winched onto the quay or onto a truck. Sometimes they are taken to a nearby warehouse to be slaughtered. Because of increasing international scrutiny, and the presence of observers from animal welfare and conservation groups, the dolphins are more frequently killed within the cove without being driven to shore, or under the cover of tarpaulins and out of view in other coastal areas.
Welfare Issues
The main common principle applied internationally in slaughtering mammals for food is the need to achieve an immediate state of unconsciousness in the animal, followed by rapid progression to death. As a result, many countries have legislation requiring that mammals are stunned before slaughter in order to prevent pain during the slaughter process. Dolphins, like cows and pigs, are mammals. However the methods used to chase, capture and kill dolphins do not (indeed cannot) ensure instantaneous insensibility followed rapidly by death. As a result, many thousands of dolphins killed each year suffer extensive fear and pain and a prolonged time to death.
Small cetaceans, like pilot whales and dolphins, live in close communities with strong bonds between the individual members of the herd, most of whom are blood relatives. It can take up to several hours or days to complete the slaughter of the group in both the drive, during which time individuals may be swimming in the blood of their relatives or closely bonded companions, hearing and seeing their slaughter, and anticipating their own. Scientific research indicates that at least some dolphin species possess cognitive self-awareness similar to our own, indicating that these animals suffer unspeakable terror and agony at the hands of the fishermen deploying such crude and inhumane methods of slaughter. In other words, these sentient animals comprehend their circumstances and exhibit signs of great distress during their capture, roundup and subsequent slaughter or captivity.
Conservation Issues
In addition to using crude methods, the drive fishery hunts are also increasingly unsustainable. The hunts are contrary to the repeated recommendations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and its Scientific Committee, and contradict the Government of Japan’s frequently stated claim that it pursues a policy of ‘sustainable utilization of marine resources’. The IWC has passed several resolutions expressing its concern over the directed and continuing take of depleted striped dolphins in the drive fisheries, and has issued these concerns since the 1970s when it first noted the overexploitation of this species in the coastal waters of Japan.
Human Health Issues
For decades Japanese government toxicologists have known that cetaceans and particularly those in coastal waters and heavily contaminated oceans, bio-accumulate high levels of toxins, including heavy metals, such as mercury, and organic compounds, such as DDT and PCBs. Although developmental problems in children are directly associated with their mothers’ consumption of contaminated whale meat in the Faroe Islands, for years the Japanese authorities did not make a connection between the thousands of tons of whale and dolphin meat entering the market annually for human consumption in Japan, and potential risks to human health.
Japan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare has conducted its own tests on whale and dolphin meat and the results published in 2002 identified similar levels of contamination to those found in 1999 and subsequently through independent toxicological studies. Despite these studies indicating dangerous levels of mercury and other toxins, since 2000 the government has actually increased the amount of whale meat entering the market place, promoted its consumption, and even subsidized its sale to school lunch programs. The government finally issued an advisory notice in 2002 recommending reduced consumption of certain species, but it omitted several species hunted in large numbers that are known to be equally contaminated.
Click here to download the Drive Hunt Report.
Click here to read the WDCS Press Release. Watch dramatic video footage here (You may find some images disturbing)
