Futo Harbor Dolphin Slaughter

4 Nov. '03 UPDATE ---- call to action from the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society: "Japanese dolphin hunts* - how you can help"* Up to 22,000 dolphins, porpoises and small whales are brutally killed each year by Japanese fishermen in three different hunts. In the last two decades, over 400,000 dolphins and small whales have been killed in and around the coast of Japan, for human food, pet food and fertilizer.

BLUE VOICE.ORG DOCUMENTS BRUTAL SLAUGHTER OF DOLPHINS IN JAPAN AND THE TIE TO THE DOLPHIN CAPTIVITY INDUSTRY. "More than twenty thousand dolphins have been killed each year in Japan - a process which is sanctioned by the Japanese government. Dolphins are killed for meat and to provide dolphins for aquariums and swim-with programs. Fishermen drive the dolphins into a bay, separate the number contracted by dolphin buyers, then butcher the rest in a manner brutal beyond description."
From the WDCS News: 20 Dec. 2002 (Click here for the complete report from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society) "A wind of change in Japan?" Change is now afoot in Futo as September saw the launch of a whale and dolphin-watching enterprise from the village. Izumi Ishii, former drive hunt fisherman and now reformed founder of the dolphin-watching expeditions, explained why he had such a change of heart: "I heard the dolphins crying as they were killed. I could not bear it. The value I now see in dolphins is not the value of their meat, but of the wonder they incite in us". "Dolphin Watch in Futo a Huge Success" (As reported by BlueVoice.org) 4 April '03 action update BLUEVOICE.ORG EFFORTS END DOLPHIN KILL IN FUTO: All of us associated with BlueVoice.org wish to thank you for your assistance in ending the brutal dolphin kills at Futo, Japan. Despite having a quota of some 600 to kill or capture, the fishermen at Futo did not take a single dolphin. The reason for this is clear - we have monitored the village and made it known that any killing would be immediately transmitted worldwide by the Internet. And, we have collaborated in launching the first dolphin watching tours from Futo. But work remains to be done: It is possible Futo will attempt to kill dolphins next year. They still have a yearly quota of 600. *AND:* At Taiji the killing continues unabated. Hundreds of dolphins have been killed so far this fall.....AND THE KILLING CONTINUES. You can help the campaign by sending a polite message to the Japanese authorities, calling on them to end the drive hunt throughout Japan. Actor Ted Danson has launched an appeal with BlueVoice.org against the slaughter, resulting in thousands of faxes and emails being sent to the Japanese authorities. The fishermen at Futo have cut their intended kill this season from 600 dolphins to 50. We are getting there, but we need your help. Please click on the following link for action you can take and an update Special Update from BlueVoice.org (January 13, 2003)


Background information:
Killing dolphins for meat is not only an outrageous act, but the high level of toxins in dolphin meat makes it dangerous for human consumption. And, from a monetary standpoint, the profits on the sale of dolphin meat are often marginal. But the increase in demand for live dolphins, captured and shipped to aquariums and swim-with programs, has created a huge incentive for fishermen to step-up the dolphin drives which result in so may brutal deaths. From March 29 through April 6, 2001 Blue Voice executive director Hardy Jones traveled through several villages on the east coast of Japan infamous for killing dolphins. He was accompanied by Sakae Fujiwara, a Japanese environmentalist who acted as translator, and by Annabel Heseltine, a British journalist writing for the Sunday Mail. Hardy has been working for more than twenty years to stop the killing of dolphins in Japan."

News Archive: (SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY Update: October 23, 2000) JAPAN'S D OLPHIN SLAUGHTER IS ON AGAIN - Officials instruct: "Keep out of public view"
The slaughter of dolphins by Japanese fishermen for sale to commercial markets for human and domestic animal consumption resumed this month. Warned by the Japan Fisheries Agency to "keep dolphin killings out of public view," those conducting the "drive fisheries" at coastal towns once waited until after dark to herd dolphins into shore, trap them in nets and slaughter them, and claimed the dolphins had beached themselves. In October 1999, Japan's Whale and Dolphin Action Network (IKAN), caught a daylight dolphin drive on videotape at the port of Futo. When the tape was shown at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Adelaide, Australia, last June, the Japanese delegation walked out. " Japan's dolphin hunt kicked into high gear in 1986, the year the ban on commercial whaling went into effect," said Paul Watson, president of Sea Shepherd International. "Japan is steadily hunting its coastal cetacean populations to extinction. By 1995, a single species -- Dall's porpoise -- was being taken at a rate of 17,000 per year. Hundreds of boats are licensed to kill, and they have severely depleted, in sequence, populations of striped dolphins, pilot whales, beaked whales, and Dall's porpoise." The crossbow and hand harpoon fishery kills 10,0000-15,000 dolphins and porpoises annually. The drive fisheries, killing 1,000-2,000 dolphins, are driven by the dolphin captivity industry, which pays fishermen up to $30,000 each for a few live dolphins for aquariums and amusement parks, with the rest of the captured pods consigned to slaughter. The hunts take place every year between October and April. A recent Environmental Investigation Agency report revealed that Japan has killed more than 400,000 dolphins and small cetaceans over the last 20 years. " There's no control and no enforcement," said Andrew Christie, information director for Sea Shepherd International. "Japan routinely ignores resolutions by the International Whaling Commission to at least reduce the slaughter to the point where its numbers do not threaten the existence of the targeted species. The federal government passes along responsibility for quota enforcement to the local prefectures where the drive hunts take place, and the prefectures pass responsibility to the fishing cooperatives, which consist of the fishermen who do the killing. They promptly report to the government that they are not killing too many dolphins."


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