Cove Cultists?

Yet, it could be a way forward because despite films like 'The Cove' nothing much has changed regarding drive hunts on a local level and animals are still getting killed in large numbers. 

A View To A Kill

A 2012 survey reported in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper makes very interesting reading on a number of levels.  It was reporting on a survey carried out by the animal-rights lobby group The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in regards to the Japanese’s attitude to whaling and the consumption of whale products.  The poll was commissioned and undertaken by the Nippon Research Centre - a total of 1,200 people were surveyed aged 15 to 79 across all geographical areas in the country.

The survey found that 26.8% of people agreed with Japan's hunting of about 900 whales each year whilst 18.5% opposed the hunts - the rest were undecided.  Of those polled 88.8% had not bought whale meat in the past 12 months.  The IFAW tried hard to make a positive spin on this last statistic by declaring in a press briefing: "The people of Japan are taking whale meat off the menu”.  But as always this issue is far more complex and the poll seems actually to suggest a total failure on the part of the animal-rights and environmental lobby to persuade the Japanese to stop hunting whales – which also should include the smaller cetaceans such as dolphins.

The question to be asked is why this has happened after years of lobbying and one answer could be that the lobbyists, particularly the animal-rights groups, have produced confusing and mixed messages not helped by a rabid opposition to perhaps a huge and potential allay in the guise of the international zoological display community.

Perhaps one of the most insidious examples of misdirection by the lobbyists was the “award winning” 2009 film The Cove.  Whilst certainly not the first to reveal the dolphin and whale drive hunts in Japan, the film renewed and galvanise public opinion on the matter.  

However, it did unfortunately spend a large amount of time side-tracking away from the bloody killing of the dolphins and small whales driven into the cove to highlight the small number of animals that escape death by being selected for sale to mainly Asian aquariums and parks.  Reviewing any press release or web page produced by the many and various groups lobbying against the drive hunt one could be forgiven to think that live-capture was the primary objective of the hunt not food or “pest control” (as some local fisherman have called it).  This despite many zoos and aquariums having made clear position statements against the hunts in the past. 

More details of this debate can be found HERE.

It is not, of course, any small chance that one of the primary movers and shakers in the The Cove was former 1960’s dolphin trainer and now animal-rights activist Ric O’Barry whose anti-captive agenda over-arched the film to such an extent that the real tragedy of the hunting of these thousands of animals was a foot-note to his (and the producers) erroneous claims that the objective driving the slaughter was the “aquarium industry”.  This despite the fact that the hunt has been undertaken for hundreds of years with the issue of acquiring animals for captive displays relatively a new phenomena only a couple of decades old.  Is it no wonder that the central message - the bloody killing of thousands of animals - has become lost to the general public in Japan and elsewhere in pursuit of an anti-captive agenda by the animal-rights industry. 

In 1992, the BBC Nature programme presented a programme featuring the whale hunts and an investigation by the environmental group the The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).  They wanted to discover what actually was happen to whale meat in Japan. 

Their conclusions were very different from the conclusion of the recent survey by IFAW.  They found that whale meat consumption was not high but this was due to the sheer expense of the product with the general Japanese public only consuming it in any quantities when it was place of special offer.  Perhaps more alarming was the fate of the small whales and dolphins killed in the various drive fisheries which their undercover investigation revealed were being sold as “whale meat”.  During the course of the programme alternative revenue generation and public education to the merits of cetaceans as living natural resources was explored and the subject of whale watching was discussed.  Interestingly, this included not only coastal watching by boat but also the observation of animals with zoological collections - a point now so vilified by operators and supporters of the animal-rights industry. 

It seems things really have not changed since the 1990’s for the animals killed each year in drive hunts except for the few who may find their way into an aquarium or zoo.   It could be suggested that it would be a bit more logical if those who sincerely want to see an end to drive hunts should actually focus on the realities of the issues rather than get side-tracked into the personal agendas of a small but influential  groups of animal-rights activist with personal axes the grind regarding cetceans in captive care which if actually banned tomorrow would not stop the drive hunt slaughter and could (by depriving some people direct contact with animals in zoos and aquariums) take away one of the avenues of direct communication needed to make a difference to thousands of animal butchered annually in Japan.

Drive Hunts and Animals Acquired for Dolphinaria.

The Cove is the 2009 award-winning documentary exposing the annual drive fisheries hunt of dolphins and whales in the whaling village of Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.  Drive fisheries are not historically new and several countries aside from Japan also hunt (or have hunted) animals by this method such as the Solomon Islands, the Faeroe Islands and Peru. The drive fishery at Taiji is believed to have been in existence for more than 350 years. The Cove was actually not the first to document this controversial hunt which has been highlighted over the years by magazines such as the National Geographic and in the television series by the late Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the mid-1970s. Many have rightly been very concerned regarding these hunting methods and questioned both its operation on moral, ethical and animal welfare grounds. However, one aspect of the film that has also proved to be controversial is that in recent years a percentage of animals from this fishery has not been killed but selected for live display in public aquaria and marine parks. In 2007 (the year The Cove was made) official figures show that 13,170 dolphins and whales were hunted and killed in Japan. Of that number 1,239 were hunted in by the drive fishery method and 90 (7.3%) removed alive for aquaria.  Between the years 2000-2013, a total of 19,092 small cetaceans were taken in the drive fishery at Taiji, Japan. 17,686 of those were slaughtered while 1,406 were taken as live-capture for sale to zoos and aquaria. Graph and data courtesy of Cetbase. Unfortunately, the makers of the film have taken the position that suggested that this supply of animals to aquaria and parks was the prime purpose of the hunt and that if it ceased so would the hunt itself. This is not surprising as one of the main protagonists in The Cove is animal-rights activist Ric O'Barry who is stridently opposed to dolphins being held in the care of humans in zoological parks.  Moreover, the film suggests that animals from the hunt are being transported globally to countries such as the USA and that persons visiting these parks are in fact support the killing of dolphins and whales in Japan which is basically untrue. In fact, it should be noted that most of the popular cetaceans held in both the USA (and mainland Europe) are sustained via captive breeding and therefore these populations have no need to acquired animals via live capture operations from the wild. Animals from hunts such as Taiji are generally supplied to aquaria in Asia and the Middle-East and it has recently been alleged that 15 dolphins from a Japanese drive fishery have also been imported into Turkey in 2010. The Cetabase web site has produced a contemporary map of global facilities that currently house animals derived for drive hunts HERE. Further, several zoological collections and organisations involved in the captive care of marine animals have made clear statements against drive fishery hunts and consider them inhumane. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) The International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) Sea World Only one drive-fishery animal has until recently been held in the USA. It is a false-killer whale called Kina originally imported by the US Navy's Marine Mammal Program from Ocean Park, Hong Kong in 1987; it was transferred to the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology in 2000. This animal was used for research and was not on general public display.  In September 2015 Kina and her two bottlenose dolphin companions were transferred to SeaLife Park in Hawaii. Studies on these animals echolocation and biosonar abilities will continue at the park in partnership with the University of Hawaii. Kina died at Sea Life Park in October 2019. An attempt to import false killer whales to a US marine park acquired from a drive fishery in 1993 was blocked by the National Marine Fisheries Service as they considered such operations inhumane which has effectively banned further imports of animals into the USA from drive fisheries.  Animal rights supporters elsewhere have also cited that Sea World in California was granted an import permit for a captive pilot whale from a Japanese aquarium which joined its current group of pilot whales at San Diego on in 2012. It should be pointed out that this animal is an alone stranded animal that was rescued in January 2004 and is deemed unsuitable for release. It should be noted that this animal was not acquired by deliberate capture nor from a drive fishery.  The two facts anyone who watches The Cove should remember are: (a) that the drive-fishery in Japan prime motive is 'pest control' and food as the animals are perceived to be in competition with fisherman and that the hunt has been undertaken for hundreds of years and animals for zoos and aquaria are a recent development and the numbers taken are small and if this stopped sadly the hunt would still continue; (b) that no animals have been imported into the mainland Europe since 1980 and in the US since 1989 from any drive-fishery; the majority of animals displayed in these locations have come from captive breeding programs. ***  Below a two-part video commentary on the inaccurate statements made by Richard O'Barry and others regarding the Japanese drive fishery and captive cetaceans in aquaria outside Asia and the Middle-East.