What Will it Take to End Japan Dolphin Slaughter?

By Hardy Jones

This is a slightly modified article I wrote last year for Huffington Post. It reflects the fact that Sea Shepherd pushed the Japanese whaling fleet out of the Antarctic during the 2010-11 season. But the principal issues are the same this year as last.

The dolphin hunt begins at the end of this week. Perhaps 100 police, coast guard and god knows what other form of policing will be present to greet the ever growing crowds of dolphin activists drawn to the scene of the killing.

On September 1st the dolphin hunts in Taiji, Japan are scheduled to resume despite unrelenting tsunamis of publicity around the world highlighting this brutal slaughter. In addition the village of Futo, just southeast of Tokyo, has announced it will resume dolphin hunts, mainly to secure dolphins for captivity. Dolphin hunting in Japan continues uninterrupted. NB: This did not happen last year, primarily due to absence of dolphins from their waters.

The resumption of the dolphin hunts followed a weekend, August 27 - 29, during which Animal Planet aired the two-hour season finale to Whale Wars, the fight by Sea Shepherd to stop whaling by Japan in the Antarctic, a two-hour presentation of The Cove, the academy award winning film by Louis Psoyhos featuring Ric O'Barry; and the premier of O'Barry's own three-part film series Blood Dolphins. This represents a media barrage of unprecedented dimension.

NB: The dolphin hunt continued through the entire 2010-11 season and was even extended.

While issues of cruelty are a highly important part of the argument against these hunts there is another compelling reason why dolphins and whales not only should not be hunted but instead demand greater protection than ever.

Growing evidence suggests that dolphins are becoming so contaminated by marine toxins that eating them constitutes a genuine threat to human health. Health officials in Denmark and the Faroe Islands have already recommended that consumption of pilot whale meat taken in the notorious "grinds" not be eaten due to high levels of contaminants in the meat.

The issue of heavy metal contamination in large predatory fish and marine mammals is becoming well known. Less widely known are the high levels of organic pollutants such as PCBs, PBDEs, DDT, and other chemicals that suppress mammalian immune systems and disrupt normal endocrine function. Some of these chemicals are known to be estrogen imitators that act to feminize men and superfeminize women; in some cases raising the percentage of females babies born over male babies significantly.

Dolphins are already severely threatened by anthropogenic forces. During the last year numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published documenting a worldwide surge in incidence of diseases heretofore unknown in dolphins.

A team of researchers and veterinarians from the Marine Animal Disease Lab at the University of Florida have discovered at least fifty new viruses in dolphins, the majority of which have yet to be reported in any other marine mammal species.

Thirty new diseases have developed simultaneously worldwide resulting from what Dr. Gregory Bossart, Chief Veterinary Officer at the Georgia Aquarium, describes as profound immunosuppression leading to environmental distress syndrome resulting from chemical intoxication.

In addition, resistance to antibiotics has been found in dolphins in numerous locations around the world. Obviously antibiotics do not occur in nature. They come from people who take antibiotics and introduce them into the ecosystem through bodily elimination or simply throwing unused pills away. After they reach the watershed plankton ingest them and they bio-accumulate up the food web to concentrate in top predators such as dolphins. The dolphins then have the potential for breeding antibiotic resistant super bugs that may pass back to humans. The transmission of disease from one species to another is called zoonosis and is of great concern to the CDC. AIDS is one example of zoonotic transmission.

I first went to Japan to stop the dolphin slaughter at Iki Island in 1979. In 1980 cameraman Howard Hall and I filmed a barbaric slaughter of scores of bottlenose dolphins. Airing of the footage around the globe caused massive worldwide protest.

In that case exposure of the brutal footage of dolphins being hacked and stabbed to death essentially brought an end to the dolphin hunt at Iki. But such publicity has not produced a similar result since. NB: Dolphins are no longer found around Iki, This may be the result of changing water temperatures forcing their prey to other parts of the sea or it may be the dolphins around Iki were extinguished by the brutal hunts.

After Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherds vanquished the Japanese whaling fleet from the Southern Ocean Japan may believe it has to dig in its heels on the dolphin issue. The massive deployment of police to Taiji certainly indicates they are not backing down. I have been told by highly knowledgeable Japanese environmentalists that sticking Japan's nose in it may be making it all but impossible for Tokyo to withdraw from dolphin hunting. A proud sovereign nation cannot allow small groups of environmentalists to be seen to make it kow-tow. If Japan stopped dolphin hunting now it would appear environmentalists had forced them to back down. But the knowledge that diseases such as brucellosis and papillomavirus are being found ever more frequently in dolphins may, ironically be what forces the end of eating dolphin meat. And if that isn't enough thirteen additional RNA-based viruses that cause intestinal disease and encephalitis in humans have also recently been discovered in dolphins

It baffles me that whaling and dolphin killing can persist in the 21st century. We know so much about these magnificent animals. Whale and dolphin watching generate over US$2.1 billion per year around the world, vastly more than whale and dolphin killing.

But human self-interest on the part of entrenched bureaucratic elites is a powerful force molding individual ethics and shaping short sighted policies. So in Japan and elsewhere whaling and dolphin hunting persist.

In the light of emerging threats to the marine ecosystem, dolphins and whales in particular, the deliberate killing of these curious, intelligent, sentient animals is tragic and will only hasten the extirpation of whole populations of these magnificent sentinels of the sea.

THE DAY WE SAVED THE DOLPHINS

From the soon-to-be released book The Voice of the Dolphins
by Hardy Jones

In 1980 Howard Hall and I were on our way to Iki, Japan to attempt to stop the slaughter of dolphins there. En route we were diverted.

We woke up our first morning in Osaka and saw a story on the front page of the Japan Times, an English-language paper published in Japan. The story’s headline reported “200 Rare Whales Captured at Taiji.” The animals were melon-headed whales, actually a species of dolphin. The story went on to say that the dolphins would be killed to provide food for lions at the Shirahama Zoo. It struck me as extraordinarily perverse that these magnificent wild dolphins would be killed to feed captive lions.
We changed plans on the spot and headed for Taiji, a small village of some thirty-five hundred people on the coast east of Osaka. We arrived in Taiji, found accommodations in a small hotel, and walked out to the small bay where the pitiful dolphins were being held. The coast there is magnificent with endless bays and coves formed at the juncture of mountains and sea.
Our presence disturbed the fishermen who had driven the dolphins into the bay. They were aware of the international outrage provoked by the slaughter at Iki the year before and didn’t welcome any foreign observers—especially those with cameras.
There wasn’t much Howard and I could do directly, so we just hung around the bay with our still and movie cameras at hand. The fishermen seemed stymied. They held meetings. Two days passed. Some of the dolphins succumbed and sank into the depths of the cove, but most remained alive. Howard and I worried that while the fishermen were talking, the dolphins weren’t eating and might starve. Dolphins do not drink and depend entirely for their hydration on the fish they eat.
On the third day of captivity for the melon-heads, the fishermen informed us that as a gesture of goodwill, the dolphins would be released. I believe they were afraid of attracting the same kind of international outrage that had been focused on Iki. The following morning, the fishermen drew back the net separating the melon-heads from freedom. But the dolphins didn’t budge. Confusion or shock or the knowledge that members of their pod were sick or injured kept the group huddled at the end of the bay farthest from the net.
The fishermen brought a small skiff driven by an outboard motor in behind the dolphins and began revving the engine. The dolphins started to move. The skiff herded them until they were past the net line. Once out of confinement with a clear vision of open ocean ahead, the whole pod erupted into spectacular porpoising leaps across the face of the sea. I remained poker faced, but inside, I was wild with joy. Maybe our cameras were all powerful.But that was long ago.

Mercury/Health Expert Slams Taiji Mercury Findings

By Hardy Jones

Dr. Jane Hightower is author of Diagnosis Mercury. She's a San Francisco based internist famous for discovering the effects of mercury on many patients suffering unknown medical symptoms. At the request of BlueVoice she comments on the results of tests of mercury levels in citizens of Taiji, Japan, the village made famous by The Cove for its heinous dolphin slaughters. The tests were carried out by the National Institute of Minamata Diseases (NIMD).

The NIMD concluded that while a significant number of citizens, especially those who ate dolphin meat, had very high levels of mercury, there was no evidence these mercury burdens were causing health problems. BlueVoice points out that internationally recognized tests for neurological function were not carried out by the NIMD researchers.

It should be also be pointed out that the tests conducted by the National Institute for Minamata Diseases were paid for - wait for it - the town of Taiji!!!

Dr. Hightower's statement:

There are many studies that confirm that methylmercury is toxic to humans and can adversely affect health in a number of ways. Of most concern with long-term over exposure is non-specific symptoms, neuropsychiatric symptoms/damage, autoantibody induction, infertility, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, and elevated heart rate.

These adverse effects have been seen with much less exposure than what has been reported with the people of Taiji. It would be unconscionable if the Japanese government chooses to look the other way.

The Japanese government’s approval of consumers’ exposure to high mercury content as a result of a limited and inadequate study has potential for disaster.

Japan Mercury Whitewash: Report on Taiji Dolphin Meat

By Hardy Jones

Sakae Hemmi of Elsa Nature Conservancy and a long-time associate of BlueVoice, reports from Taiji, Japan that the National Institute of Minamata Disease has found extremely high levels of mercury in people who eat dolphin meat in that village made infamous by the award winning film The Cove. But they claim to have found no evidence these high levels of mercury have done any harm to those people. Results were released in a press conference Sunday in Taiji.

Unfortunately the NIMD had not conducted tests necessary to determine the impact of high mercury levels on humans including neurological tests and IQ tests. In the absence of such tests their conclusions are meaningless.

From the report faxed to me by Ms. Hemmi this morning: 1137 hair samples were tested in summer of 2009. In 43 persons the levels of mercury were higher than 50 ppm. As a reference point 1 ppm is considered the top level acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The highest tests results were for TAiji citizens who eat meat such as pilot whale.

In 2008 a Japanese journalist, Hiroshi Hasegawa, received data developed by BlueVoice that documented high levels of mercury in four dolphin-eating Taiji citizens. He then conducted additional testing that found even higher numbers for mercury among the dolphin-eating population. The results were published in AERA, a major Japanese magazine. His article spurred the NIMD to propose testing citizens of Taiji for mercury.

In a second article this reporter wrote "Through possible intentional error or plain negligence, the examination itself was outside standard neurologically based testing standards that take the brain deteriorating effects of methyl mercury poisoning into account." Those tests include the two-point discrimination test and a test for ability to discriminate three-dimensional objects by touching them. They also neglected to do IQ tests.

The upshot is that Taiji will take no action to control the sale of dolphin and whale meat.

The only good news is that studies will continue under the auspices of another organization. Those studies will particularly focus on the circulatory systems of children in Taiji.

We are seeking comment from Dr. Jane Hightower, a widely recognized experts on the impact of mercury of people who accumulate excess quantities of this heavy metal on whether it is possible to have such high levels of mercury in a human body without it causing harm.

Bottom line is that the NIMD report is a whitewash. Perhaps the scientists who conducted the studies on the dolphin-eating citizens of Taiji learned their trade from those who conduct "scientific whaling.

A Day at BlueVoice Home Base

Email is both a bane and the source of our ability to make a worldwide impact. When I arrive at my desk about 8:30 each morning I download 50 to 80 emails. After trashing the junk I’m still left with maybe thirty pressing communications from around the world. Next I have to make an evaluation of those that are “burning” - something that needs immediate attention.

Here are the email transactions for December 28,2009.

Email from Dieter Hagmann, video of bottlenose dolphins that have been killed. Dolphin hunters appear to be using a new way of killing dolphins so there will be no blood. How do we use this information? Who will pay attention over the holidays and with so much other news breaking.

Email from Sakae from ELSA Nature Conservancy (our ally in Japan). Email sent 3:00am her time. As always she’s burning the midnight oil. She confirms what I also see in Dieter’s video – that some of the dead dolphins are bottlenose.

Query prompts me to do a quick Google on Brucellosis in dolphins and whales around Japan. There are many cases. How do we prove there is disease in dolphin meat at Taiji? That would really whack the market for dolphin meat.

Video arrives reporting death of a dolphin named Rasca, attributed to Navy sonar. Seemed to be a news report but had an air of fakery. Put out word to list serve Cetacean Freedom Network for verification.

Sue Arnold (Australians for Animals) email via CFN. She’s working on getting world religious leaders to go to Taiji to bear witness.

Word comes through that the dog we fostered has been adopted. Beautiful picture of Sunshine with her new family.

Email from Jim Abernathy (who runs the dive boat Shearwater) discussing impact of high mercury in human tissues on human sexual dysfunction. BV is sending him video of a shark fishery in Japan for use on his website re his new book on sharks.

I email Dr. Jane Hightower, world class authority on mercury contamination on humans and author of “Diagnosis Mercury” for analysis of mercury impact on human sexual dysfunction.

Email from Dr. Sidney Holt, one of the original and longest workers on behalf of whale and dolphins. He lives now in Italy and we reconnected through the internet. We back-and-forth on diseases such as brucellosis in whale and dolphin meat. Danger to humans? Tool to destroy the market for whale and dolphin meat?

Email reporting a major article will come out in Japan on mercury in dolphin meat and in those who eat it. Japanese scientists testing people of Taiji appear to be covering up results on who has mercury poisoning.

Email from several CFNers – the video on Rasca is not genuine news. Turns out to be a clip from a feature film in the making.

Dr. Hightower replies to my inquiry - there is ample reason to think high mercury impacts sexual function. Certainly lowers sperm count and affects nervous system.

A $400 dollar donation arrives. Nice lift for us. We appreciate the money but also the support.

More video arrives from Dieter. I take a deep breath and open it. Starts with three men hauling a bottlenose into the cove. The dolphin is brought under a green tarpaulin. No blood is seen. Soon a dolphin sling attached to the side of a boat comes out from under the tarp headed for the holding pens. This dolphin will be trained and sold for entertainment.

Rest of the afternoon will be reviewing three hours of Dieter's video of dolphin slaughter in Taiji. A grim prospect.

Dolphin Kills at Taiji Japan diminished

October 12, 2009
Hardy Jones

There is some good news regarding the level of slaughter of dolphins at Taiji. While some 80 pilot whales have been slaughtered during the first five weeks on the season this is far below the normal kill rate.

International pressure has been brought about by films such as The Cove. In addition revelations in international meetings that the Japanese government is subjecting its citizens to a major health risk by allowing the sale of toxic dolphin meat have put tremendous pressure on Japan to end the slaughter of dolphins.

Blue Voice will continue to test dolphins and dolphin eaters to show the extreme levels of contamination present in dolphin meat.

We are currently in Quebec at the biennial meeting of the Society of Marine Mammalogy where highly disturbing are being presented about the rise of new diseases among marine mammals and the danger of transmission to humans.

More on this in blog tomorrow.

My First Dolphin Massacre, Iki, Japan

My First Massacre
The Tragic Story of Dolphins at Iki

In 1978 I first heard of the terrible slaughter of dolphins at Iki Island, Japan. In Hawaii filming my first film on dolphins, I saw a picture in the local paper of hundreds of dolphins dead on a beach on an island off southern Japan.

By that time I was a bona fide dolphin lover, having just spent time swimming with and filming a pod of spinner dolphins off Lanai. The pictures from Japan shocked and horrified me. I could not imagine how people could deliberately kill dolphins.

I went to Iki in 1979 and 1980 as well as in later years, most recently 2006. Some interesting facts emerged from those visits.

Until 1971 dolphins had not been a problem at Iki. But in that year a current broke off from the main Kuroshio Current running from the Philippines past the eastern coast of Japan and changed the distribution of fish around Iki, bringing fish dolphins prey upon. At the same time the Japanese were overfishing their own waters and the Shichiriga Banks off Iki were one of the few areas where abundant quantities of fish could still be found. The dolphins may have been forced to Iki by shortage of fish elsewhere.

By the mid 1970s so many dolphins migrated through the area off Iki that fishermen began to worry they would consume too many fish. Their catch was falling and they were terrified. But overfishing was the culprit (plus pollution in the breeding areas) not dolphins. The Iki islanders brought in a fisheries expert who said there might be as many as 300-thousand dolphins passing by, each eating 20 pounds of fish a day. The fishermen did the math and concluded they were at war with the dolphins – a typical resource war. They began by shooting and harpooning them. Then they learned from fishermen at Taiji the Oi Komi technique of banging on metal poles stuck in the water to make painful sounds that would drive the dolphins into a bay where they would be slaughtered.

In 1978 the first mass murder of dolphins took place. The fishermen, surprisingly, had invited the media to record the event which resulted in the photos syndicated around the world, one of which I saw in Hawaii. Amazingly the fishermen thought that showing how many dolphins were in their fishing grounds would spur the government to action to eradicate the dolphins or to pay a bounty on them. Follow the money!

In 1979 I brought a film crew to Iki. We interviewed the fishermen, went out on their boats but never saw a dolphin. I made a film in which I tried to understand (not agree with) why these fishermen, who were astonishingly decent and hospitable people, would brutally slaughter as many as two thousand dolphins. They did it to protect their livelihood. It was a them or us mentality.

In 1980 I returned with Howard Hall, then a neophyte underwater cameraman, today one of the preeminent marine cinematographers in the world. We went first to Taiji where we turned our cameras on a group of 200 melonheaded whales that had been captured and were slated for slaughter. Fearing a worldwide scandal if the killing were filmed they let the dolphins go.

Howard and I then went on to Iki where we walked straight into a brutal massacre of up to 2,000 dolphins. We shot film. I got it to Tokyo where CBS News processed it and satellited it around the world, causing a massive backlash against Japan.

Dexter Cate, an environmentalist from Hawaii, untied some of the nets holding those dolphins not yet killed. He was arrested, tried and sent to prison but released fairly quickly. His action brought further attention to the situation at Iki.

Late in March of 1980 local and prefectural governments told the Iki Islanders they should not hunt dolphins – at least until things cooled down. There was no hunting until the mid 1980s when dolphin slavers came to Iki with money in hand and incited an oi komo roundup resulting in the taking into captivity of dozens of dolphins and the slaughter of hundreds.

During my most recent visit to Iki I learned that there are no dolphins in the waters around Iki today. There is no consensus as to why. One plausible answer is that water temperatures have changed, removing the prey that first attracted dolphins to Iki during the 1970s. Squid boats now find their catch far to the north of Iki and report there are dolphins in those waters. The fish that have left Iki waters have been replaced by more southerly species as the waters warm. The fishermen are catching tuna for the first time.

The irony is that dolphins for captivity have become so valuable that the Iki Islanders wish they would come back so they could capture and sell them.

At Futo, where dolphins had been hunted for years, the latest hunts occurring in 1999 and 2004, bottlenose dolphins have disappeared and are found on the other side of the Izu peninsula. This certainly has to do with a change in water temperatures. I can’t say the dolphins learned to avoid Futo because they were hunted for decades and always appeared offshore until very recently. But larger forces are at work in the oceans today.

Taiji - No Time to Relent Pressure

No Time to Relent at Taiji – A Thirty Year Perspective by Hardy Jones, BlueVoice.org

I’ve been going to Taiji since 1980 as well as to other ports where they kill dolphins such as Futo. My first visit to Japan was in 1979 to the island of Iki where a horrific massacre took place before our eyes and more importantly our cameras.

The huge international pressure brought about by the release of our film footage caused the Japanese fishing authorities to withdraw quotas to kill dolphins at Iki and there was no further killing there until the mid 1980s when an emergency permit was granted because dolphin captors from several countries came to the island with money in hand.

When I last visited Iki two years ago I was told there are no longer dolphins in the waters of Iki. I don’t know if they were exterminated or whether warming waters has driven the prey elsewhere. At Iki they would love to have dolphins again – to sell to aquariums.

In 1999 approximately 100 dolphins were captured at Futo, Japan. Some 14 were taken into captivity, others were killed for meat but many were released – probably due to quota restrictions.

THE COVE has caused a huge international outcry and the Japanese are very sensitive to this. Japan is not monolithic on dolphin hunting and whaling. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Tourism all oppose those bloody businesses. But the hugely powerful Japan Fisheries Agency (JFA) prevails and encourages the hunts to continue.

A major fear they have at JFA is that the bloody pictures of the dolphin slaughters will further swing international opinion against whaling which is of far greater importance to them than dolphin hunting.

When the dolphin hunting season opened this year Ric O’Barry brought a busload of reporters to Taiji. No hunting took place while the press was there but very little can be read from that. The dolphin hunters would not kill in front of such a gathering of world media.

Then a group of dolphins and pilot whales was taken. The fifty pilot whales were killed. Some thirty bottlenose dolphins were taken for captivity and the rest let go. This release may or may not indicate a change in policy.

It may help to clarify Taiji’s and the Japan Fisheries Agency’s intentions at Taiji to know that the Japanese use the following words:

Dolphin: iruka - bando iruka for bottlenose dolphins
Pilot whale: ma gondo
Risso’s dolphin: hana gondo

They define the latter two as whales. So they could say they are giving up killing dolphins and still kill pilot whales and other “gondo” in large numbers.

Also, it may be that the Taiji coop is now realizing that they should not kill bottlenose dolphins for meat as they fetch such a high price in the captivity trade. Remember the Iki islanders now wish they had dolphins back and the lesson may not have been lost on the fishermen at Taiji.

Finally, it is not unprecedented for dolphin hunters to release bottlenose dolphins after taking a number of them as captives as at Futo in 1999. Many bottlenose dolphins were released after some taken for captivity and others slaughtered for food.

There is a quota limit on each species which factors into the decision of whether to kill or release so they may release in order to be able to capture more for captivity later in the year.

The Cove has been a bombshell in the faces of dolphin hunters but they may stop killing “dolphins” and turn their blades on “gondo” or simply tone down the kills in the expectation that The Cove will run its course.

The final nail in the coffin of dolphin hunting may be the growing recognition that dolphin meat is highly toxic. The market for it is dwindling. At BlueVoice we continue to test dolphin meat for mercury and organochlorine contamination. We also test human hair for mercury and will soon test the blood of dolphin eaters for organochlorine contamination.
http://bluevoice.org/news_dolphinmeat.php

For now it would be a grave mistake to tell the world that the killing of dolphins at Taiji is over.

Why Taiji, Japan Fishermen Kill Dolphins

By Hardy Jones

Taiji, Japan, Nov 8, 2007


We all search for reasons why the fishermen at Taiji continue to hunt dolphins despite massive international protest and revulsion, and despite the fact that the name of Japan is besmirched by allowing such atrocities.

There are several reasons. One is that the dolphin fishermen make good money doing this, especially from selling the live dolphins they capture. The second is that the Japan Fisheries Agency never retreats, never surrenders any resource. This is the same agency that has said they will allow the Japanese Antarctic Whaling Fleet to hunt Humpback Whales this December. They thumb their nose at the world (actually it’s the middle finger they use).

The third is that those who carry out or give permission for these heinous slaughters simply lack empathy for dolphins. They do not project themselves into the skin and minds of the animals they grab from the sea, confine in nets and then slaughter in front of their families without the slightest care for their pain. Perhaps it is a simple lack of imagination.

Or perhaps their financial self-interest simply governs where they will allow themselves to experience empathy.

If they would suddenly realize that dolphins are sentient, loving, socially close, highly intelligent animals, who probably experience the world pretty much as they do, they would have to quit their dolphin killing business. They would lose money and they would have to admit to themselves the unspeakable pain they have caused. They would have to admit that they are mass murderers.

Taiji Dolphin Slaughter Draws World-wide Condemnation

By Hardy Jones

Taiji, Japan Nov. 6, 2007

SEE VIDEO OF SLAUGHTER OF RISSOS DOLPHINS AT BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. Warning, it is highly graphic.

“This place is now a battlefield,” is how a police inspector assessed the current situation here in Taiji, Japan.

To my mind this is a huge exaggeration but shows the mind set of the people who live in this beautiful, remote and extremely quiet coastal village where local fishermen routinely capture and kill thousands of dolphins.

The dolphin hunters have been stunned by the appearance of wave after wave of filmmakers, environmentally concerned surfers, Hollywood celebs and journalists. On Monday, October 30 they had corralled some thirty pilot whales in the killing bay. As they began their grizzly slaughter 38 surfers paddled into the picture. Cameras rolled and then a remote controlled helicopter flew over bearing a small camera that recorded the butchery. The footage was soon appearing on TV and computer screens around the world.

The fishermen were apoplectic. What they fear and detest most is public exposure and here it is in spades.

For years BlueVoice operated in Taiji alone. Our documentaries appeared on National Geographic and PBS and caused avalanches of protest generated through the BV web site. The fishermen hate us and consistently tried to wrest our video from us. But they were powerless to stop us. Over the years others have joined the fight to save the dolphins here. They are welcome to the fight.

I received a very nice note from one of the surfers who had participated in this demonstration of support for the dolphins:

hi hardy having part of the surf crew into Taiji i appreciate even more the great work you have being doing all these years and we will be sure to put bluevoice out to people. with thanks, howie surfersforcetaceans.org

But this year a critical mass seems to have been reached. Just as the surfers were escorted out of town for crossing the dolphin hunters nets, BlueVoice arrived. The dolphin hunters have not ventured out since we appeared – seven days with no dolphin hunting.

My notion is that the fishermen are reeling. I think they have always imagined that interest in this abomination would melt away. But the reverse is happening. Each time word about the tragic and brutal killings here reaches the world more attention is attracted.

The combination of television and internet exposure of the dolphin slaughter here and mounting evidence of the toxicity of the dolphin meat ought to bring an end to this savagery. BlueVoice will soon publish the results of tests of both dolphin meat and fish caught in the Taiji area. Early results show the dolphin meat is contaminated by both mercury and organic pollutants at levels far exceeding Japanese health standards.

Exposing Toxic Levels in Dolphin Meat Key to Ending Slaughters. bluevoice.org/sections/ocean/doltoxin.shtml

Taiji, Japan Councilman Opposes Mercury in School Lunches

Nov 1, 2007

by Hardy Jones

If you want a hero, I’ve got one for you. My colleague, Sakae Hemmi of Elsa Nature Conservancy, and I interviewed this humble but extraordinary man for two hours yesterday - a man who has virtually written off his political career by simply pointing out that the local school district was feeding mercury-laden dolphin meat to school children.

Taiji is the last holdout among villages regularly hunting dolphins off the Japanese main island. Its people do not want their dirty laundry aired outside of Taiji. It’s understandable – there’s plenty of filth. But Mr. Junichiro Yamashita, an Assemblyman in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, is the first official to come out and take a stand against the utterly idiotic practice of poisoning school children in their formative years with methyl mercury at a time when they are most susceptible to learning disability and neurological problems.

He called the meat served to the students exactly what it is - “toxic waste” - and that is not exaggeration. He has had pilot whale meat obtained in Taiji tested for mercury and PCBs and found the levels shockingly high.

He has had the courage to go before the international press and tell this sordid story of dolphin hunters trying to create a new market for their contaminated goods. And he has his own blog, written in Japanese. The local people hate this.

Mr. Yamashita was told he would not win reelection if he spoke of the dolphin issue. He and his wife have been socially ostracized. She is very disappointed about this but totally supports her husband’s work.

Yamashita-san is a formidable man. He has a huge collection of data on toxic chemicals in the marine environment and how it affects human beings. He uses the internet with great facility over ADSL. This is not the last we will hear from this highly intelligent and dedicated man.

What he has done is put the community’s interests ahead of his own. He has gone out of his way to make things better – something politicians, something all of us could practice more.