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127 Million Reasons Why the Cove Dolphin Slaughter Continues
As the 2014–2015 killing season in Taiji, Japan, winds down, TakePart catches up with activist Ric O’Barry to talk about the future of the hunt.
Dolphins rounded up for slaughter in Taiji, Japan. (Photo: Courtesy Change.org)
Six years have come and gone since The Cove, the 2009 Oscar winner, cemented Ric O’Barry’s status atop the masthead of the global cetacean abolitionist movement.
While the number of dolphins killed and captured at the cove in Taiji, Japan, has beentrending downward in the wake of the worldwide attention wrought by the film, O’Barry is far from satisfied, refusing to take solace in such “one-off victories.”
O’Barry, 75, said he will not relent on his Taiji activism until he can stand “on that rocky shore, look out, and know [the drive hunt] is finally over.”
Until that day, O’Barry and his team of volunteers at The Dolphin Project will remain, as they have been since 2003, a highly visible, peaceful presence on the ground in the cove, monitoring and reporting the daily activities of the 30-odd fishers who conduct the killings. “There’s nothing easy about this fight, that’s for sure, and I’m not going anywhere, even at my age,” he said.
With the 2014–2015 Taiji dolphin-hunting season approaching its expected March 1 end, O’Barry spoke with TakePart from his home in Miami, engaging in a wide-ranging discussion on all things cove dolphin, including why the drive hunt still happens and what he believes will cause its downfall.
TakePart: The Cove premiered more than six years ago at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. You’re quoted as saying that when you sat in that theater in Park City, Utah, you were convinced the hunt would be over. And yet, here we are—it’s 2015, and the slaughter and capture of dolphins in Taiji is ongoing. What happened?
Ric O’Barry: Robert Redford told me afterwards it was the only Sundance documentary that he ever saw get a standing ovation. It won the U.S. Audience Award at Sundance and more than 100 awards at other festivals around the world, and at every screening there was a standing ovation. But it wasn’t the fanfare, nice as that was, that the film received that made me predict the hunt’s demise. It was because of how the film pulled the curtain back on the high levels of mercury in dolphin meat. But the hunt goes on. And it goes on because there are 127 million people in Japan who still have never seen the movie.
TakePart: Why haven’t they?
O’Barry: They don’t have access to it. Unfortunately, it never got to the Japanese people for free on the Internet. It went to a distributor, who owns the rights in Japan. And he hasn’t allowed it to be shown in the country for free. We—someone, anyone—would have to buy the rights back from this distributor, because every time someone puts it on the equivalent of their YouTube, it’s taken down immediately. And then there would have to be a campaign, a big one, to drive the Japanese to watch it. Then and only then will the pendulum shift. Why? The mercury angle. I cannot stress this enough.
TakePart: How much are the rights?
O’Barry: $30,000. Relatively speaking, that’s pretty cheap, considering how much we spend trying to stop this slaughter. We’re working on this particular facet of the issue; it’s not dead yet.
TakePart: U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy sent shock waves across the dolphin captive industry in January 2014 by tweeting her opposition to Japan’s drive hunts. You said at the time you wanted to get a meeting with her. Did you? If so, what happened?
O’Barry: I went to the embassy with a delegation including Izumi Ishii, a onetime dolphin hunter in the city of Futo who now runs sightseeing tours for dolphins. Ambassador Kennedy was out of the country. We met with her staff, and they were not very receptive, to say the least. I got the impression she got into trouble for speaking her mind. She was shooting from the hip, I think, and there was never any follow-up from her. Once we get the million signatures on our petition, we’ll go back to her and try again. We’re not giving up on Caroline Kennedy.
TakePart: Last year The Japan Times ran an op-ed condemning the hunt.
O’Barry: The op-ed pointed out what Izumi Ishii’s been saying for years—the hunt is not a centuries-long tradition, as the fishers say. It’s not culture. It started in 1969. It’s not old enough to be cultural or traditional. Even if it was cultural or traditional, there’s no reason for it to continue. It was our culture not to let women have the right to vote. We don’t do that anymore. It was our culture to own slaves. We don’t do that anymore.
TakePart: Eight children from Thailand observed the hunt last month from the ground as youth cove monitors for your organization, The Dolphin Project. Talk to me about the importance of handing the baton to a younger generation.
O’Barry: The best way to bring about change for the common good is by example. We’re hoping these kids set an example and, in fact, are seeing other schoolkids, ordinary citizens, and Japanese citizens coming to Taiji. They’re sort of pioneers in that regard. Traditionally, it’s been activists over there—the Dolphin Project or whoever. But now we’re seeing ordinary people come. I’ve been waiting a long time for this.
TakePart: What’s the state of the proposed marine park in Taiji?
O’Barry: They're moving forward with it. They have some sea pens built. Personally, I don’t think it will work. I don’t think tourists will go. Think about what they’re proposing: watching dolphins jump and do tricks in sea pens in a park, and then nearby fishermen are killing other dolphins. Really? Really?
TakePart: More than a year ago, Taiji fishers captured an albino dolphin that activists subsequently named Angel. Currently, she’s living in a tank in the Taiji Whale Museum. How’s she doing? What’s her fate?
O’Barry: I saw her just last month. I’ve been around dolphins for 50 years, so I can read her body language, and I can tell you her life is extremely boring. She’s trapped in a small tank with two other dolphins of a different species; they don’t socialize well. I’ve been told that she’s for sale for $500,000, and they’re waiting for a buyer. We talked about trying to raise the money and moving her to a sanctuary, but when you get into paying for hostages, dishing out ransom money—well, it doesn’t solve the problem. “Anguish” is the word that comes to mind; you just want to pull your hair out and scream, and that’s where we are with her.
TakePart: What keeps you going year after year?
O’Barry: If I stopped to think about it, I probably wouldn’t be. I really believed when I saw the film at Sundance that it would end the killings. But I also assumed that everyone in Japan would get to see it. They haven’t. They don’t have the information we Westerners take for granted. If you want to solve a problem, you first need to make someone aware of it, and then they can do something. We have to, we must reach the Japanese people—even if they watch the film and only believe the mercury poisoning segments, that’s enough. That will end it.
Revealing the Cove Dolphins' Toxic Secrets
As the killing season nears an end in Taiji, testing shows that dolphin meat sold at Japanese supermarkets is riddled with mercury.
(Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)
With the dolphin-killing season in Taiji, Japan, nearing its expected March 1 end, meat from striped dolphins slain last month in the notorious cove has tested positive for high levels of mercury and for trace but legally safe levels of radiation, said Ric O'Barry of the Dolphin Project on Tuesday.
O'Barry, star of 2009's Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, which put a global spotlight on the town's annual hunt, purchased the meat in January from a Taiji supermarket and sent it to a Tokyo laboratory for testing.
Even without a smoking gun radiation test—which activists would have wielded to pressure the Japanese government to end the hunt—the mercury results, coupled with comparable findings in years past, will be used to educate the Japanese people on the dangers of eating mercury-rich dolphin sashimi.
O'Barry said growing awareness of contaminated dolphin meat has led to a decline in its consumption.
"The more time I spend on the ground in Taiji, talking with local police and concerned citizens, the only thing, really, I find that's going to stop the hunt is if people realize they're eating poison," O'Barry said. "We must double down on this mercury angle—it's the weak link, the Achilles' heel, in the Taiji pipeline."
The meat O'Barry tested was found to contain 1.4 parts per million of mercury. The Japanese government's advisory level for the element is 0.4 ppm.
Tests in previous years have yielded similar results.
From 2002 to 2006, Tetsuya Endo, one of the world's leading experts on mercury levels in marine mammals, bought more than 50 samples of dolphin meat at Taiji markets. Tests conducted on the meat found "the average levels of mercury and methyl mercury in pilot whale meat were 9.6 ppm and 5.9 ppm," Endo told The Japan Times. The government limit for methyl mercury, the most toxic form of the heavy metal, is 0.3 ppm.
In 2012, dolphin meat purchased in and around Taiji by environmentalists from the Elsa Nature Conservancy, a Japanese nonprofit, was found to contain three-and-a-half times the country's maximum allowed level for mercury.
Both dolphin and whale meat contain high levels of the element because mercury is emitted into the atmosphere by coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities. That mercury is carried into the ocean, where it is absorbed by marine organisms and, over time, is passed up the food chain to dolphins and whales.
Fetuses and young children are especially vulnerable to mercury, which affects the development of the nervous system.
Humans aren't the only sentient mammals affected by mercury; it harms the dolphins too.
Mercury and other toxins "have been linked to increased rates of cancer, increased first calf mortality, immune suppression, and a higher susceptibility to infectious diseases, [and] are postulated to be a primary factor causing population declines," according to Toxic Catch, a 2013 comprehensive study on Taiji dolphin meat conducted by the London-based Environmental Investigative Agency.
"It's a terrible, terrible thing for dolphins," said Luca Giovagnoli, the resident marine mammal veterinarian at the Dolphin Project. "It particularly impairs their neurological function, just as it does for humans."
Environmentalists have been concerned about the possible presence of radiation in dolphin and whale meat since March 2011, when the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster released large quantities of irradiated elements into the ocean.
But the meat O'Barry tested was found to contain just three Becquerels per kilogram of radiation. The Japanese government considers anything higher than 100 Becquerels per kilogram to be unsafe. By comparison, three months after the Fukushima meltdown, two of 17 minke whales caught and killed off the coast of Hokkaido were found to contain 31 and 24 Becquerels per kilogram, respectively.
"If Dolphin Project—or anyone else—finds radiation levels in Taiji dolphin meat higher than 100 Becquerels per kilogram, it would be big news that would shut down the supply and demand of the industry," O'Barry said.
As the 2014–15 hunting season concludes on or near March 1—Taiji fishers will stop hunting dolphins the day after they see bonito, their next target, swimming under their boats—the number of dolphins slaughtered or captured for sale to aquariums is down from last season.
From Sept. 1, 2014, the start of the hunting season, through Feb. 8, 2015, there have been 654 dolphins slaughtered in the cove, according to data compiled by the website Ceta-Base, from estimates given by Cove Guardians, the on-the-ground volunteers for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, volunteers for O'Barry's Dolphin Project, and the Japanese Fisheries Ministry. Last season, 831 dolphins were killed. The number of dolphins captured for sale in January 2015 is roughly half what it was in January 2014.
O'Barry cautioned there is still plenty of time before the season's end for the hunters to kill "far too many more dolphins" in a last-ditch attempt to reach their 1,938-specimen quota.
In January 2007, O'Barry and journalist Boyd Harnell tested meat from a dolphin killed in Taiji that they purchased at the Okuwa Supermarket in Shingu, about a 45-minute drive from the cove."If we continue testing for contaminates and publish the results wherever possible, it will have an impact on the consumers—it just will," he said.
It was found to contain high levels of mercury, so they confronted the store manager with the results. “A few weeks later the giant supermarket chain announced that they would remove all dolphin meat from all of their 137 supermarkets," O'Barry said. "It works, and we will do it again."
The Cove: Sign the Petition to Help Save Japan's Dolphins
To: President Obama, Vice President Biden and Kenichiro Sasae, Ambassador of Japan to the United States
I recently heard about the documentary film The Cove and was alarmed to find out that more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are brutally killed each year off the coast of Japan. In addition, Japanese consumers are being sold dolphin meat, containing dangerously high levels of mercury, often labeled as whale meat.
I ask that you urge the Japanese government to revoke permits that allow Japan's Fisheries Agency to continue this heinous, dangerous and illegal practice.
I also urge American leadership to ensure that the International Whaling Commission includes the proper management of dolphins and porpoises and a comprehensive plan to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
Your immediate action is needed.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
I ask that you urge the Japanese government to revoke permits that allow Japan's Fisheries Agency to continue this heinous, dangerous and illegal practice.
I also urge American leadership to ensure that the International Whaling Commission includes the proper management of dolphins and porpoises and a comprehensive plan to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
Your immediate action is needed.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
PHINFEST - Dolphin and Whale Filmfest
"I am constantly making videos to show to kids and that's what I try to do. I just give them information and open their minds and hearts to what captive dolphins go through and the effects of the captive trade and let them decide. Most kids totally get it and don't want to go to dolphin shows any more." - Cynthia Fernandez; PhinFest '15 VideoHero
WINNER of PhinFest '15 VideoHero of the Year:
#IHEARTDOLPHINS by Cynthia Fernandez
PhinFest '15 VideoHero of the Year winner by Cynthia Fernandez as voted on www.phinfest.com - Here is the speech on the PhinFestival Youtube Channel "Phinfest Day 3 Livestream" PhinFest is the Dolphin & Whale Film Festival that took place this weekend in Dana Point California (a more comprehensive report soon). PhinFest Official Trailer 2015:
PhinFest; The Dolphin and Whale Film Festival is make history! Launching March 13-15, 2015 in Dana Point California at the Ocean Institute
@fragilewaters received #film of the #year at #PHINFEST @rglagunabeach @danapointwhalewatching @tomonaga.mizumachi #dolphins #SRKW #pacific needs your help with #salmon recovery #blackfish #thecove taught us well now let's take the message to further masses @zachisrisingsun @taj_project @empty_the_tanks_ @dolphinrescuer @loftie44 @lisacunningham61 @protestseaworldflorida @danapointwhalewatching @terran.baylor
