Every single year, the tiny town of Taiji, Japan speaks volume by shocking the world of what they do. And it reeks of dolphin blood.
Taiji, a sleepy harbor town at the tip of the Kii peninsula south of Kyoto.
Taiji is a sleepy harbour town at the top of the Kii peninsula south of Kyoto. Tucked beyond narrow roads winding through the untouched Japanese wilderness, the town and it’s gruesome annual ‘festival’ (right. very right.) were nicely tucked beyond the attention of the world. A six-hour drive from Tokyo along the treacherous coastal road successfully kept the world at bay. Then came the Internet and cheap rail passes that provided easy, affordable access to the sleepy town, images and videos of their grotesque act soon drawn worldwide attention, attracting activists and protestors to the town.
But even that didn’t spell the death of Taiji’s annual dolphin massacre.
The annual massacre of 23,000
Bloodied water tainted with dolphin blood.
The autumn season marks the annual tradition – which I prefer to call it total bullocks as no sane individual would approve of the slaughter of dolphins being labelled as something of ‘cultural significance’ – of the mass-slaying of dolphins. Also known as dolphin drive hunting, the fishermen in small boats would disorientate the dolphins, drive them into a small cove boarded off underwater with nets and then kill them.
Annually, fishermen continue to plough the sea with their small boats. Spotting schools of dolphin, they will drop metal bars into the water and bang on them – the clanging sound of metals interferes with the hearing of dolphins, disorienting them and causing panic in the school. Fishermen would then drive the dolphins into a small cove, surrounded by net to prevent the dolphins’ escape.
The dolphins are not killed off after being ensnared – instead, the fishermen will leave them stranded overnight in an enclosed area, claiming that it makes their meat “sweeter”. The following day, dolphins were killed one by one by driving a metal pin into the neck of the dolphin, killing it in seconds. The problem is, the Japanese government banned slitting of the dolphin’s throat but the law is most probably weakly enforced – acts of evisceration and slitting of the throats of human-friendly creatures were recorded as late as October 2006. Look at the photo above – the dolphins were obviously not killed legally – slit lines, still bleeding, could be seen on the underbelly of the slain animals.
Mother and calves
Akira Takeuchi, the head of the Isana Union, denied the capture and separation of dolphin calves from their mothers, saying: “If it happens, female dolphins with nursing calves are always returned to the sea.”
This contradicts what Boyd Harnell witnessed at the museum and in the drives. Captured mothers and calves were apparently always separated — and the mothers usually slaughtered.
The next day, I saw only a few dolphin calves languishing in the bloodied cove. This was their sixth day of survival without their mother’s milk. They must have been starving. The skiffs were pulling in the nets, ignoring the calves. Some larger boats carried the final, freshly killed dolphins to the slaughterhouse. 1
Tension. Conflicts. Racism?
Arrest warrant out for Hayden Panettiere.
With the influx of activists, environmentalists, animal-lovers and protests, tension builds up before and during the annual dolphin hunt. Local fishermen speak with full of vengeance and hatred when foreigners were mentioned. They think we fail to recognize the economic and cultural implications of stopping the festival. They call the act of ours labelling their dolphin hint as ‘racist’ because we don’t understand their culture. Even if racist is marginally the right word for such context, I fail to find a logical explanation of why people who kill, torture dolphins and see them as pests (who compete with the locals for fishes)Â shouldn’t be discriminated against.
Many in the town of Taiji regard slaughtering dolphins as a normal part of daily life. They see the campaign against the hunt as an attack on their culture and traditions.2
In Taiji, fishermen say that dolphin meat tastes something similar to beef – but when eaten raw, sashimi-style, the dark dolphin flesh resembles liver with a coppery aftertaste. While the taste lingers long after one has ingested the meat, the tangy smell of dolphin meat stays even longer – so much so that Japanese fishmonger Motohata Toshihiro expressed his displeasure of cutting dolphin because “the stink stays on you for days, even after several baths.” 3
Irony is at it’s best at the Taiji Whale Museum – while tickets were sold to visitors for them to ride on dolphin-shaped boats for dolphin-watching (how lovely, you’d think), non-performing dolphins were crammed into a small pool where dolphin trainers will pick the best for training at marine aquariums.
Abundance is not a license to kill
Taiji fishermen claimed that the dolphins were abundant – not only do they pose a risk of depleting fishes for the local population but controlled killing of them will pose no harm to biodiversity and marine ecology. Flawed argument, indeed – abundance is not a license to kill. While we wait for February of 2012 for the birth of the 7th billion human baby, the dominance of human population had not only endangered wildlife but also the earth itself – not to mention we’re being extremely abundant in nature too.
So, does that give them the legal right to kill a perfectly healthy adult?
What goes around, comes around, people.
Culling of dolphins in a shallow cove.
Yea, go ahead and load yourselves with supposedly delicious dolphin meat. While fervently denied by many Japanese scholars, some dolphin meat may end up on the tables of Japanese households with 500 times more mercury 4than the legal limit. Japan as a highly industrialized country but a rather poorly regulated one during her boom had dumped millions of tons of toxic, mercury-rich waste into the sea for decades. The toxic compounds travel through and make their way up the food chain – and now it’s ending up all on your dolphin sashimi.
Despite the public awareness of mercury poisoning in Japan because of the Minamata disaster, the health and agriculture ministries have done little to inform people about mercury levels in whale and dolphin meat, Professor Endo and other biologists say. While the health ministry has conducted surveys of dolphins and pilot whales that show levels of 10 to 50 times the advisory level, the only warning it has issued is for pregnant women.5
“If the buying stops, the killing stops too”
But with dolphin meat being increasingly popular in Japanese and that dolphin-meat-eating being a deeply-seated culture among them, it’s hard to eradicate the demand for such meat. The buying never stops – so does the unethical killing of the dolphins.
Education and access to information is all they need – the Japanese people don’t need a boycott. If they knew the truth about the dolphin slaughter, they would help us to stop it.
The fishers who hunt and kill dolphins in Taiji agree with us. They revealed this to us at a meeting we had with them at Taiji City Hall. When they asked us why we had come to Taiji, we told them we wanted to document the methods used to conduct the dolphin massacres and let the Japanese people know the truth about their hunt. The fishers reply was, “The Japanese people have no right to know about the dolphin slaughter. It is none of their business.”6
- Eyewitness to slaughter in Taiji’s killing coves: A gruesome fate befalls thousands of dolphins in Japan every year by Boyd Harnell. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fe20070214a1.html ↩
- How the dolphins being massacred to satisfy a food fetish are poisoning the Japanese who eat them by Danny Penman. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1211311/Massacre-dolphins-How-dolphins-massacred-satisfy-food-fetish-poisoning-Japanese-eat-them.html ↩
- Taiji: Japan’s Dolphin Cull and the Clash of Cultures by David McNeil. http://www.japanfocus.org/-David-McNeill/2306 ↩
- Statement from Taiji Whaling Association. http://oceanicdefense.blogspot.com/2009/09/statement-from-taiji-whaling.html ↩
- Mercury Taint Divides a Japanese Whaling Town by Martin Fackler. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/asia/21dolphin.html?pagewanted=all ↩
- Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji, Japan by Richard O’Barry. http://www.ikjeld.com/japannews/00000239.php ↩
That is some crazy shit. Red water, my God.
Wow check out that bloody red water. How come they do that to lots of dolphins.. I guess human is like the most dangerous predator that ever lives on Earth. :(
You might want to check out this video, Teddy. Dolphin and Whale massacre id Denmark.. Gawd, I feel terrified and sick! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu8krRmDOeg
The red, bloodied water of the shallow cove speaks volume of the number of dolphins they’re culling every year – so much so that their blood turned the water red. Human is the living virus on Earth – we destroyed natural habitats, exploited animals, polluted the environment and even caused the extinction of species who would have been a lot better off without us.
There are still annual dolphin and whale culling over the world these days. I remembered a ‘festival’ in Europe which takes pride in killing dolphins as well, and men from the village are all required to take part in it – as well as adolescents as a ceremony to celebrate their entry into manhood. When I heard that I recoiled in horror – killing animals makes a man man? That’s stupid.
this is really uncalled for and shows another example of cruelty by human beings…sometimes i really do wonder if indeed human is the actual virus that are killing earth and all that are living on it
I feel like puking looking at the photo with all the blood. How can humans be so cruel? They are living creatures as well and they owe no one their life. Humans are dangerous. :(
Gosh! I wish I was there to get arrested protesting the ‘tradition’. Red river? You effing me?!
This sickens me.. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with those people. :| It’s awful and honestly.. I think those who eat the dolphin meat are just as evil as those who kill them. If people stopped eating it, maybe the killings will decrease? Ugh.. who on earth could eat a dolphin.. let a lone kill one??
Really great article, though, Teddy. Although super sad & depressing.. it was quite informative! I like to know what is going on in the world.. even if it’s horrid stuff like this. People sicken me beyond belief. I agree with Oridusartic about humans being to top predator! Ugh.
The photo of the red water is so terribly sad.. and frightening. Dolphins are such beautiful creatures. And what is up with this being a part of their culture?.. wth, just nuts!
Same sentiments here, Trina. I simply cannot believe why they are so cruel towards dolphins. They didn’t owe their lives to the residents and fishermen of Taiji, that’s for sure!
One reason of why there is still demand for dolphin meat in Japan is because it is considered a delicacy and a substitute for whale meat, which may be short in demand from time to time. The general population is also unaware of the killings in Taiji, but I hope the spread of this unlawful and unethical act of the Taiji people can educate the Japanese public on how refusing to consume dolphin meat will spell the death of this revolting annual practice of dolphin massacre.
Humans are the living virus of the world. We are the top of the food chain, and being as inconsiderate as we are, we modify, exploit and destory the natural surroundings for our own pleasure while being blithely unaware of the harms we are causing :(
Wow, your last paragraph hit me hard. It’s so true too. It really saddens me because I grew up rarely eating meat.. I still, to this day, hardly eat any meat. And when I do.. I feel like such a hypocrite.
I know there are so many meat-eaters out there and I have no intentions on telling them to become vegetarians.. but why dolphins? They are such beautiful creatures.. when I see a dolphin, I see this gorgeous and intelligent mammal. To think that people eat them!? It’s disgusting.. and down right evil.
What’s the worst is the way they kill them. It’s brutal and horrendous! It really needs to be stopped. They really need to be more strict on the laws!
Salutes to you, Trina.
I respect vegetarians for one reason – they’re saving the world. 1 kg of beef needs around 100,000 litres of water while 1 kg of hay and grain only requires 1,000 litres of water (uses 100 times less water than beef).
In a biochemical sense, the beef requires a lot more water because energy is wasted in growing the animals that make it – the great amount of grass and hay required for it to grow into an adult. For vegetables and fruits, a lot less water is needed to culture them before they’re shipped off for consumptions.
Oh and you might want to check this video out, Trina – Drop Machine Experience by ONE DROP Foundation.
Although I’m still a carnivore (sorry about that), I insists of being a vegetarian one day per week so that even if I’m not helping much, I’m cutting down on meat consumption and hope that I could convince my friends to do so as well :)
There are no laws against the harvesting of dolphin meat in Japan – a country that stubbornly exploits international law and hunts whale for food while insisting that the hunting is for “research purposes”. I simply don’t understand their logic. They claim that maintaining a stable population of dolphins and whales are enough (such that they don’t go extinct but will not grow in number too) – which doesn’t make any sense at all to me because what’s important is that we ensure the survivability as well as the growth of endangered species. What they’re doing will not drive whales to extinction, but will keep them endangered and not improve on the situation.
@Eli: Indeed, very crazy shit. I can’t believe why humans could do something so cruel to animals.
@med: Definitely. Such killings are uncalled for, and the excuses about dolphins depleting their supply of fish and how they are pests are total bullocks. Humanity IS the virus of planet Earth.
@Dayna: I reacted the same way when I first saw the photos – so much blood was spilled that they turned the cove red. They did not affect the way of living of humans and their killing is completely unjustified and inhumane.
@NoktahHitam: Many activists have travelled to the town these days that the local fishermen see foreigners as threats to their ‘culture’, and react in an extremely hostile way, even going lengths to break up peaceful demonstrations. If I’m bigger built I would’ve gone there and kick up a big effing fuss too.
That’s extremely cruel and sickening!
Besides killer whales, dolphins are another most beautiful aquatic animals to me.
and they can be more intelligent than a man.
When I was a kid, I always dreamed of having a killer whale and a dolphin as “pets”. So I can happily swim with them in the pool, or perhaps be as good as a swimmer like them.
Haha…
I think if people love dolphins as how much as they love their dogs, dolphins are definitely gonna be the greatest friends as well.
I find it very disturbing and more importantly, an insult to humanity. Humans, being the most intelligent life form on Earth, are actually killing life forms that have comparable intelligence capacity and in a very cruel manner. That is what hurts me the most.
I think you’ve watched too much film :P I remembered watching a film when I was a kid about this killer whale and a kid. It’s an idealized scenario (I don’t think the authorities would allow that) but then, it shows what humans are capable of.