Japanese Dolphin Hunt

Japanese town starts dolphin hunt

Updated: 14:27, Friday September 11, 2009

To animal rights activists it's a cruel and bloody slaughter; for Japanese it's a long tradition: this week fishermen in a picturesque coastal town embarked on their annual dolphin hunt.

Every year crews in motorboats here have rounded up about 2,000 of the sea mammals, banged metal poles to herd them into a small, rocky cove and killed them with harpoons, sparing a few dozen for sale to marine aquariums.

But this year the small southwestern town of Taiji was shunted into the global spotlight with the release of the hard-hitting US-made eco-documentary 'The Cove'.

In the film, years in the making, a team of underwater cameramen, free divers and other experts used hidden cameras and other technical devices to covertly capture the hunt in graphic detail.

The film shows angry confrontations between residents and the lead activist, Ric O'Barry, who in the 1960s trained dolphins for the US hit television show 'Flipper' but now argues the animals should be free to roam the oceans.

The film won numerous international prizes, including the Sundance Festival's audience award and last month led the Australian city of Broome to announce it would cancel its sister-city relationship with Taiji.

'Dolphins are a large-brain creature,' O'Barry, 69, told AFP during a recent return visit to Japan.

'They are highly intelligent. They are self-aware, like gorillas and humans. I nursed them, I watched them give birth.

'And for me, to kill them, is extremely, extremely...' He paused, then simply added: 'I don't see the purpose.'

In Taiji, where about 3,700 people live, the global uproar stirred by 'The Cove' has met with equal incomprehension - and anger.

'If it's cruel to kill dolphins, it's also cruel to kill cows and pigs,' Hiromitsu Taniguchi, a 41-year-old house painter, told AFP during a recent interview as several of his friends nodded in agreement.

'I can never understand those westerners' argument. They eat cattle, pigs and chicken. We eat dolphins and whales. That's it.'