Japan’s controversial dolphin hunting season has begun, despite opposition from around the world.
The hunt, which started last week and lasts about six months off the coast of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture, could result in hundreds of dolphins killed for meat or taken into captivity.
While its defenders have previously insisted the tradition is no different to the far larger number of cows, pigs and sheep killed in the West, criticism continues.
Dolphin Project, a California-based non-profit organisation, argues the hunting of any species en masse is “troubling for environmental reasons”.
“The ocean ecosystem is a carefully balanced network of symbiotic life; removing large numbers of apex predators, such as dolphins, can upset that balance and affect overall marine health,” the group states on its website.
“Unlike fish, dolphins are mammals and reproduce slowly, making it more difficult for a population to be restored.”
Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), a charity in the UK, says hunters bang on metal poles to create an “underwater curtain of noise” and disorientate the dolphins.
They are then led to shore, where some are killed or taken to a dolphinarium to “perform tricks for their dinner”, according to the group.
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“Some of them, usually juveniles and calves, may be allowed to return to the ocean, alone, frightened and stressed,” WDC states.
Dolphin Project reported an estimated 415 dolphins were killed or captured last year, far fewer than the quota of 1,824 set by the Japan Fisheries Agency.
Japan was criticised in 2019 after withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission, which had ended 30 years of what the country called “research whaling” – slammed as a cover for commercial hunts banned by the commission in 1988.
The dolphin hunt was previously the centre of international controversy after the US ambassador to Japan tweeted about its “inhumaneness” in 2014.
At the time, a fishing industry official, who asked to remain anonymous, told the AFP news agency the outside world had no right to interfere in Japan’s traditions.
The event also drew worldwide attention in 2010 when it became the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.
