Dining with the dolphin hunters

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/3956355.stm

 

Last Updated: Monday, 8 November, 2004, 00:54 GMT

 

Dining with the dolphin hunters

 

By Paul Kenyon/producer/reporter, Dolphin Hunters

 

 

Most people deplore the mere thought of hunting and

killing dolphins, but in Japan it is legal and,

arguably, traditional. So, is the process known as

drive hunting symbolic of a cultural gulf, or does it

simply amount to mindless slaughter?

 

The thin, dark slivers of meat were prepared in a fan

shape, and had started bleeding in the high humidity.

 

This was the only bar in Taiji, a small town in

southern Japan with a strong suspicion of outsiders.

 

The meal that faced me was raw dolphin.

 

The locals jab at it, and slurp it down with the local

beer. It is one of their favourite foods, cheaper than

whale, and more flavoursome.

 

It looks like tuna, but black. After some prodding, I

swallowed a single piece... and won a little trust.

 

We had come here after an American marine mammal

specialist with One Voice, Ric O'Barry, told us about

the annual mass slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

 

It has been going on for 400 years and the process is

called " drive hunting " .

 

The fishermen surround a pod of dolphins at sea. They

lower metal poles into the water and bang them with

hammers.

 

The clattering noise carries through the water, and

confuses the dolphins' sonar. In their panic, the

dolphins are driven into shallow water. Then the

killing begins.

 

There is little finesse about it. The water runs red,

as the fishermen use knives and ropes to capture them

and hoist their thrashing bodies onto the quayside.

 

From there, they are dragged, many still alive, to the

slaughter house, chunks of flesh ripping from them

onto the tarmac.

 

Hunters' logic

 

Two days after arriving in Japan, I was in the dolphin

hunters' co-operative in Taiji.

 

All they know of Westerners are the handful of

protesters who turn up each year, trying to stop their

hunt.

 

In a town of 500 fishermen, only 27 are allowed to

catch dolphins. It is an elite club, membership of

which is chosen by Masonic-style ritual.

 

" Even if you were the prime minister's son, you

wouldn't necessarily get in, " said one former mackerel

fisherman, guzzling a plate of dolphin in The Whale

Bar.

 

But, the dolphin hunters surprised me. They were not

the callous animal rights abusers I had been led to

expect.

 

They were dignified and philosophical about their

trade.

 

They were also confused. Dolphins to them are just big

fish to be treated like any other.

 

" You'd think nothing of slicing off a tuna's head

while it was alive, so why the outcry over dolphins? "

one of them said.

 

That night, in the dolphin bar, I showed them a BBC

film about the latest research on dolphin

intelligence.

 

I wanted to understand the cultural gulf dividing

Japan and the rest of the world.

 

They sat in silence, watching bottle-nose dolphins

master up to 60 words of sign language and demonstrate

some pretty mind-blowing problem-solving skills. They

were not impressed.

 

" They're just like dogs, " said one. " You could teach

dogs the same tricks; it doesn't mean they're clever. "

 

 

International outrage

 

The dolphin hunting season began at the start of

October.

 

As the fishermen prepared their boats, marine mammal

specialist Ric O'Barry prepared his plans to stop

them.

 

Each year he flies from his home in Miami, and takes

up residence in Taiji for six months.

 

He and his colleagues wake early in the morning, and

shadow the fishermen, trying to film their activities.

 

 

The confrontations between the two sides can descend

into scuffles. Mr O'Barry says he has been threatened

with a knife. The fishermen deny it.

 

They wonder how we would feel if a group of Japanese

turned up each year in the English countryside to

picket a fox hunt.

 

Greater impact

 

Further up the coast, we discover the real cost of

dolphin hunting, something that goes beyond the

cultural arguments batted backwards and forwards by

protesters and fishermen.

 

In the town of Futo, we meet a man who used to hunt

dolphins, but stopped.

 

His reason? He says his colleagues were breaking the

government-imposed quota; they were killing too many

dolphins.

 

The quota is there to prevent damage to the species,

but he said his colleagues cared little about that.

 

He now takes tourists out to observe dolphins in the

wild. On our day-long trip, we did not see a single

one.

 

Not only that, his colleagues have not carried out a

drive hunt here for four years. They have not been

able to find dolphins either.

 

It seems the fishermen have simply fished themselves

out of a job. But, back in Taiji, the hunt is going

ahead this year as it has done for the last four

centuries.

 

The fishermen say they need it to survive. It is the

only business they know.

 

The activists trying to stop them are likely to be

exclusively outsiders.

 

That is not necessarily because the Japanese support

the trade. During the three weeks we were there, we

found no one outside the dolphin hunting towns who

even knew that dolphins were eaten.

 

So, perhaps the challenge is not to change minds, but

to inform them.

 

Dolphin Hunters was broadcast on Tuesday, 9 November,

2004, in the UK on BBC Two at 1930 GMT.