Taiji: The new Minamata

by Richard O’Barry

Standing on the beach at Taiji, Japan, about six hours west of Tokyo down a winding road in the steep mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, you see a beautiful little cove where picturesque fishermen have for generations indulged in the cold-blooded atrocity of slaughtering dolphins by the thousands.

When a Save Japan Dolphins Team got involved in what was going on awhile back and launched a world-wide expose of this honored practice, we were outraged not only by the bloody horror of it but also by the protective silence of government and media alike—all this quite contrary to Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution, which prohibits the suppression of news.

You don’t need a degree in explaining things to understand how all this got started, the fishermen rounding up dolphins, slaughtering them with their long, sharp knives. It’s a business to them and it’s been going on for hundreds of years, fishermen selling the rich, red meat mostly to their Japanese neighbors.

But there is much new information which is ignored by the government of Japan. The hunts today would not be profitable if the global aquarium industry and “swim-with-dolphins” tourist programs were not subsidizing the dolphin killers by paying enormous sums for a handful of dolphins for captivity. And the government is helping subsidize the meat trade by using dolphin meat for school lunch programs, since it is not popular on the open market.

It might seem that exposing this to the light of day would in itself cause it to disappear. But not in Japan. When we went to authorities for an explanation, they turned a deaf ear to us. It was as if nobody cared. We were told that this was part of Japan’s tradition, its culture. Mayor S. Hamanaka of Taiji proudly announced that he and his fellow citizens are a whaling people, and they explain it like this: “You kill cows and sheep, and we kill dolphins and whales. You don’t understand us.”

But I think we do, and so our work began. Then almost immediately something that happened in Japan even more terrible came to the surface, the puzzling events of 50 years ago in Minamata Bay, where what was called Minamata disease broke out. It began simply enough. Citizens first noticed their cats wobbling around on the docks. The cats all went into conniption fits and keeled over into the water.

It was a village mystery and experts were called in. After a series of tests on the cats’ bodies, scientists determined that It was mercury poisoning, the result of many decades of dumping mercury-contaminated waste by a chemical company on Kyushu Island that spilled into the bay with other concentrated pollutants already there, including PCBs and heavy metals. But this was not just a disease of cats. It struck humans, too, as more than 100 local citizens, especially children, came down with Minamata disease, which had all the classic effects of mercury poisoning in the ensuing months. They got it by eating seafood and shell fish in the bay. Like the Mad Hatters’ Disease, this Japanese malady attacks the nervous system, causing the body to twitch and jerk around uncontrollably, affecting speech and often resulting in death. Pregnant women’s babies are particularly susceptible to mercury poisoning, often resulting in severe disabilities for their children. An estimated 10,000 persons were contaminated by mercury, more than 3,000 of whom died. Eating fish and shell fish from the area was banned.

This may have begun as a local contamination, but now it’s everywhere. And now not only are all the oceans of the world contaminated like Minamata Bay, every ocean on earth is full of it and practically to the same degree. Mercury in the bodies of dolphins in Taiji today is higher than it was in the fish when Minamata disease first struck. Recent independent studies at supermarkets in several areas of Japan show that the meat of dolphins and other whales range from about four times higher to nearly 36 times higher than the Health Ministry’s safe level of 0.04ppm (parts per million). There are only a small group of whalers in Taiji doing all this, and they feel betrayed because they are slowly realizing that their work product has become worthless. It is no longer fit for human consumption, nor for pet food, nor even fertilizer. All they can do with it now is treat it and dispose of it as toxic waste. But they don't do that. They continue to sell the tainted dolphin meat and export it to the unsuspecting consumers in other parts of Japan. Taiji has become the new Minamata.

The parts-per-million numbers tell the story. For general safety, 0.03ppm shouldn’t be exceeded. In Japan the number is 0.04ppm. But it doesn’t matter. Recent studies of meat from dolphin and other whales exceeds that by an average of about 13.5 times, sometimes ranging to more than 35 times. This is true of tuna, too. All large predatory fish or sea mammals are suspect. This is easy to explain. These predatory sea creatures eat smaller fish. The small fish often themselves feed on things in the ocean that are loaded with mercury and other contaminants. When the dolphin or tuna eats hundreds or more of these small fish every day, the mercury and other poisons in the small fish are stored in the large fish.

And does that drive the large fish crazy as it does the cats of Minamata Bay and the thousands of people who came down with the Minamata disease after eating the tuna or dolphin? Of course it does.

Most of the Japanese people know nothing about all this because the government of Japan is protecting its precious whaling tradition and an impressive portion of Japan’s economy that is based on whaling and especially commercial fishing, protecting all this from bad publicity by imposing a lid of silence on news about mercury poisoning threatening their nation. The only newspaper that has written about it in Japan is the Japan Times. But that newspaper is published only in the English language, and few Japanese read it.

So what happens next to the people of Japan? And what happens also to the rest of the people on earth who know nothing about what is going on in the sea?

We’ll know soon.

** The Oceanic Preservation Society has produced a documentary film about this issue. Tentatively titled The Rising, it will be in theaters in late summer of 2008. The film is expected to do what the Japanese media failed to do: inform the Japanese public about mercury posioning. Go to the web page for the film: www.opsociety.org.

The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition is Earth Island Institute, Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan, Animal Welfare Institute and In Defense of Animals.

Taiji – the Killing Zone

Between October 1^st - December 13^th 2004 the fishermen of Taiji reported the capture 609 dolphins (389 bottlenose dolphins and 220 Risso’s dolphins) to the Fisheries section of Wakayama Prefecture. While most of the 609 dolphins were slaughtered for human consumption, dolphin trainers selected some of the young and unblemished dolphins for use in captive dolphin swim programs and dolphin shows.

A huge amount of blood is swirling with the currents after a pod of Risso’s dolphins has been eradicated in the most gruesome way imaginable. The dolphins fought for their lives even as their guts were ripped from their bellies and blood gushed out of their blowholes. Photo by Genna Naccache

During the hunting season that began October 1st 2003 and ended March 30th 2004 the fishermen of Taiji killed 1,165 dolphins:

444 Striped dolphins
197 bottlenose dolphins
102 Pantropical spotted dolphins
293 Risso’s dolphins
117pilot whales
12 false killer whales

In that same period they captured 78 dolphins for sale to dolphinaria:

67 bottlenose dolphins
6 Risso’s dolphins
5 pseudo orcas

A measure of our success

Japanese fishermen kill the largest number of dolphins anywhere in the world and dolphins and porpoises face grave danger in Japan’s coastal waters when the annual hunt begins. This year the drive fishery, a method in which dolphins are forced ashore and hacked to death, has taken place in Taiji and Futo. We traveled to both of these fishing villages to document the massacres and expose them to the world.

In Taiji the annual dolphin hunt starts October 1^st and continues through March 30^th. Here, the massacre of dolphins is strongly encouraged by three local dolphinariums that purchase show-quality dolphins at a high cost and ship some of them off to othe facilities in Japan and abroad.

The slaughterhouse is covered with blue tarp to prevent us from videotaping the bloody scene. Photo by Helene O’Barry

We were able to film the entire capture procedure in January last year when more than 100 bottlenose dolphins were forced ashore and some 20 dolphins selected by dolphinaria. Several dolphins were killed during the selection process and our powerful footage was recently aired by the BBC in a documentary entitled "Dolphin Hunters" and has been viewed by more than 300 million people worldwide.

This kind of major international exposure is the last thing the fishermen and the dolphin captivity industry want, and it came as no surprise to us that they were fuming with anger upon our return to Taiji in October.

Since the beginning of our campaign to expose the barbaric methods used to capture and kill dolphins, the fishermen have gone to extreme effort and expense to prevent us from carrying out our documentary work. What they are doing to the dolphins is so brutal; they know they have to conceal it from the rest of the world to avoid a huge international outcry.

The fishermen have driven a large pod of bottlenose dolphins into the killing cove. They are cutting off the dolphins’ escape with two nets placed 50 feet apart. Photo by Helene O’Barry

They used to carry out the massacres in a large lagoon by a public road, but the mounting exposure has forced them into one last hiding place; a small cove hidden between two mountains. The cove is part of a public park and tourists from all of Japan come here to walk the picturesque trails along one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world.

During the drive fishery season, which lasts six months out of the year, the fishermen take the area into their possession, employing exceptionally hostile tactics to keep westerners and Japanese tourists away from the cove while dolphins are being killed. In doing so they have created a threatening and sinister atmosphere in an otherwise beautiful and friendly village.

Hiding their activities the best they can has been part of the fishermen’s policy for years but they have now taken their cover-up to a new, fanatic level. Supported by local authorities they have banned us from climbing the mountain from where we can see the killing cove.

They are so scared of our cameras; they have tied barbed wire around the trees we used to climb to photograph the massacres and at the top of the mountain have installed a hideous wall made of fabric and plastic to block our view. They have tied metal chains to trees everywhere along the paths leading to the killing cove. Attached to the chains are signs with hand-written words of warning: "Keep Out!" and "No trespassing!"

The fishermen have erected a tall canvas wall at the top of the mountain to prevent us from filming the dolphin massacres. Photo by Helene O’Barry

After the massacre the water remains red with blood for hours and the ludicrous signs warning people of non-existent dangers such as "Falling rocks!" and "Mud-slides!" are not removed until after the sea has washed the blood away and all evidence of the butchery has vanished.

The fishermen have even erected a large piece of fabric across the mouth of the cove to prevent us from photographing the bloodbath from a boat and as further proof of their deep-rooted fear of the truth being known to the world have placed a gigantic piece of blue tarp across the entire killing cove so we can’t film the massacres, not even from a helicopter.

The fishermen have succeeded in hiding the massacres almost to perfection but their strategy is backfiring in a way they probably did not anticipate. The dolphin slaughter is surrounded by so much contemptible deception and is so profoundly guarded; it has raised much curiosity among the visiting Japanese tourists who wonder what the secrecy is all about. We spoke to many of them and the one thing they kept asking was: "What are the fishermen doing behind the blue tarp that’s so terrible that no one is allowed to see it?"

The extreme cover-up is undermining one of the fishermen’s principal justifications for killing dolphins: That it’s a tradition they are proud of. If they are truly proud of killing dolphins, then why are they so frantic about hiding it? The fact that they hide the bloodbath behind blue tarp, chains, barbed wire and walls of fabric reveals that they are well aware that the dolphin massacres, once fully exposed, will be viewed as deplorable by the rest of the world, including the Japanese people.

The fishermen spend a lot of time waving large signs in front of our camera lenses, yelling, "Don’t take photos!" What they are really saying is, "We have something to hide."

By acting so hostile and secretive, they involuntarily bring more attention to themselves and the dolphin massacres. As a young girl visiting from Tokyo put it: "I never realized that dolphins are being killed here until I saw that creepy-looking blue plastic covering the lagoon."

The bloody cove after the massacre. Photo by Genna Naccache

© 2006, Earth Island Institute, Elsa Nature Conservancy, In Defense of Animals, Animal Welfare Institute. All Rights Reserved.