by Susan Casey
It’s a measure of Taiji’s twisted reality that when they pass by this coast, dolphins might actually be helped by the fact that they are swimming Superfund sites, their bodies loaded with chemicals. Some of the worst pollutants bio-accumulate in dolphins’ fatty flesh, including mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Mercury poisoning is no minor affliction: even low levels of it cause memory loss, nerve tremors, heart attacks, liver failure, loss of hair, teeth, and nails, blurred vision, impaired hearing, muscle weakness, high blood pressure, insomnia, and a hellish syndrome called desquamation, which is basically your skin peeling off. If you ingest even tiny doses of mercury, the toxin stays in your system and its effects compound over time.
When dolphin meat purchased in Taiji supermarkets—and served nationwide in schoolchildren’s lunches—was proven to be awash in mercury in 2002, the Japanese media ignored this news. In 2008, after tests of Taiji residents showed sharply elevated mercury levels in their bodies, enough to cause brain damage and birth defects, again the press was silent. Alarmed, two town councilmen, Hisato Ryono and Junichiro Yamashita, paid out of their own pockets to print fliers informing people about the perils of eating dolphin. “This is a small town, where people are afraid to speak out,” Yamashita said. “But we can’t sit silent about a health problem like this.” The party line about the dolphin hunt leaned heavily on cultural heritage, Ryono weighed in. “But they do it simply for profit. It’s a business, not a tradition.” (Having clashed with the political powers that be, Yamashita left Taiji, and I was told he now drives a cab near Tokyo. Under similar pressure, Ryono disavowed his statements.)
This issue isn’t confined to Taiji. Though all dolphin meat and much whale meat is tainted—one sample was found to contain 5,000 times the limit for mercury contamination; another gave rats kidney failure after a single mouthful—the Japanese government has issued no warnings, other than advising children and pregnant women to eat it in moderation. “There is a real danger in whale and dolphin meat, but word is not getting out,” researcher Tetsuya Endo from the University of Hokkaido, whose lab did many of the tests, told The New York Times. To another reporter inquiring about the edibility of dolphins, Endo snapped: “It’s not food!”
Despite all this, the Taiji Fishermen’s Union, the town’s mayor, and the Japanese government continue to insist that the meat is fine. Tomorrow our main job was to contradict them, standing at the cove in our SAVE JAPAN DOLPHINS T-shirts holding signs that said in Japanese: DOLPHIN MEAT IS CONTAMINATED WITH MERCURY. When Palmer finished explaining this—“Taiji is not just an animal rights issue; it’s an issue of human rights”—an athletic-looking Asian man, Barry Louie, snorted in disgust. “It’s pathetic,” he said. “The government is poisoning their own people.”
Louie lived in Osaka, but his family was from Hong Kong and he had grown up in California. He spoke fluent Japanese and was serving as a translator. Earlier, he had given us a primer on the country’s etiquette: “There are lots of social rules. The most important one is to be nonconfrontational. In America, everything is in your face, right? You get in people’s faces. And that’s natural. It can even be funny. But in Japan, that’s an absolute no-no.”
“So let’s head out and get some actual sleep,” Palmer said, wrapping things up. “You should be down in the lobby at ten a.m., checked out with your baggage.” The police had advised that we not leave the hotel before that, he told us, but then added: “I think it’s okay if you’re not alone. Stay in groups, stay in lighted areas. For those of you who want to go out, I’m happy to go with you—as long as I can outrun you.”
“YOU GO TO HELLLLL!!!!!”
The kid—or maybe he was an adult, I couldn’t tell—stood in front of me with his fists clenched, screaming so hard that every tendon in his neck was visible. Spittle flew from his mouth. He wore a hat pulled low and wraparound sunglasses, a baggy black T-shirt, and pants at half-mast. He was pint-size and wiry and about as angry as any person I’d ever seen. With him were a few dozen of his friends. They were angry too; one guy was even holding up a sign that said, in bold block letters: ANGRY! They didn’t seem to have gotten Louie’s memo about avoiding confrontation. Behind them a squadron of police massed in riot formation, fingering their batons with crisp white gloves.
We had stepped off the bus into this crowd, the noise and fury hitting us like a wall. The day was hazy, damp with humidity and broiling with heat. For a moment, I felt dizzy.
“GET OUT OF HERE YOU TERRORIST!” another man yelled, leaning forward and punching the air with his fist; his malice was undercut by the cute Pomeranian he was holding on a leash. The tiny dog wagged its tail, excited by all the people.
“Go!” Louie shouted, moving us along. “Let’s go!”
To get down to the cove we had to cross through a gauntlet of nationalists who had lined both sides of the road. They were shaking Japanese flags and berating us with varying degrees of English skill. “FAK RU! FAK RU!” one chubby, bespectacled guy shouted in an endless loop. The police surrounded us as we walked; the officers were professional and seemed genuinely interested in protecting us. Two vans drove by slowly with loudspeakers on their roofs, blaring more insults. On the street, our hecklers included a group of women dressed in traditional kimonos and porcelain-pale makeup. They looked lovely, from a block away. Up close, their faces were warped into sneers. “Why don’t you die instead of the dolphins?” one woman hissed as we passed. Another woman took it up in a chant: “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”
We made our way to the rocky beach, trailing policemen. The nationalists and assorted angry people stayed clustered on the roadway above. A pair of coastguard Zodiacs floated offshore, ready for potential skirmishes on the water. The men in them wore helmets and armored vests—a bit of overkill, I thought, given that our arsenal consisted of T-shirts and cardboard signs. Behind us the police fanned out in a long line. The sun flared through the clouds, bleaching the sky to white. It had to be at least 100 degrees out. A gaggle of cameramen and reporters were already down at the cove, and they surged toward us. “Smile and look happy!” Berman instructed.
Palmer, at the front of our group, stopped. “Okay. We’re gonna be broadcasting from these rocks.” One of the cameramen thrust a boom mike at him. “We’ll have a series of events now,” Palmer said, “starting first with a circle for the dolphins. A moment of silence—a prayer, if you will. For the dolphins who have died here in Taiji, and the dolphins who will die this year.” He paused, leaving an extra-long beat. “We also wish to have a prayer for the people of Japan. Many died, as you know, during the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Today we honor the souls of the dolphins and the souls of the people.”
Palmer’s voice was warm but unemotional. It was the voice of reason, of hope that one day, instead of blind rage at the cove, there might be productive communication. Part of O’Barry’s plan to end the dolphin hunt involved helping the fishermen develop ecotourism options. Taiji’s coastline is stunning—the Wakayama prefecture includes nine World Heritage sites—and the cove itself is part of a national park that could plainly be put to better use than as a crude slaughterhouse.
Economically, dolphin watching would seem to make far better sense than dolphin hunting: there are fewer and fewer takers for the poison meat, and it sells for only six dollars a pound. But there is another financial incentive, and it has nothing to do with traditional whaling or ancient food customs or anything even remotely related to Japan’s heritage. It has nothing to do, even, with the fishermen’s stated goal of removing as many dolphins as possible from the ocean because they think the animals eat too many fish. Taiji’s dirtiest secret—and the main reason its dolphin hunt continues—is that the town itself serves as a locus of live dolphin trafficking.
While a dead dolphin is worth maybe $500 to the Taiji Fishermen’s Union, a healthy live dolphin—to be specific, a young female—can be sold for more than $150,000. In an average season about 10 percent of the dolphins driven into the cove are sold
live, bringing in millions of dollars. In 2012, for instance, marine parks bought 156 bottlenoses, 49 spotted dolphins, 2 pilot whales, 14 Risso’s dolphins, 2 striped dolphins, and 24 white-sided dolphins from Taiji. These dolphins were shipped to all corners of Japan, and also to Korea, China, Vietnam, Russia, and Ukraine, among other places.
Within a mile of where we were standing there were at least four dolphin-brokering businesses, each with its own trainers. After their capture the animals are deposited in holding pens and dingy concrete pools at one of these places, and taught some basic tricks, which increases their market value. As a result, Taiji is a one-stop shopping destination for anyone who would like to buy a dolphin, and who is untroubled by the process of plucking that dolphin out of a pool of blood that contains the dead bodies of its entire family.
We joined hands for our moment of silence, while above us people continued to yell with the full force of their diaphragms. The quieter we were, the more incensed they became. “FAK RU! FAK RU!” “GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!” “YOU TERRORIST! YOU ARE TERRORIST!” One of the kimono women leaned over the roadside railing and let loose a fierce torrent of Japanese, sharp-edged with consonants. “What’s she saying?” I asked Louie, standing nearby. “Oh, she’s calling you a prostitute and she’s asking: ‘Shall I piss on you?’ ” he said, with a shrug.
“At least she’s being polite about it,” Tim said, overhearing.
Suddenly there was a scuffle at the edge of the beach. One of the nationalists had barged over to confront us, and the police had encircled him, slowing his progress. He was so upset he was literally shrieking, his head jutting frantically out of the huddle. It is hard to get riled, I noted, when somebody rips into you in a language you don’t understand. It’s like being attacked by marshmallows—the words hit but they don’t really hurt. “He’s saying to the police, ‘You have no reason to protect the Americans,’ ” Louie translated. “ ‘They know nothing of Japanese culture.’ ”
One of the triumphs of this year’s group was that it contained a dozen Japanese members—a first-time, big-deal inclusion. Information about what was happening in the cove traveled slowly, the national media was once again muted, and local interests worked hard to quash any dissent. But despite ingrained beliefs against speaking up or standing out, within the country there was a blossoming homegrown movement to protect dolphins. One of the Japanese activists, a young man named Kai, stepped forward until he was toe-to-toe with the bellowing nationalist. Kai was thin and gentle, a quiet guy with a sweet smile. The nationalist outweighed him by at least eighty pounds. But when the two men faced off, Kai was unintimidated, staying centered while being hollered at, then giving it back twice as hard. After a while the police pried them apart and the nationalist stalked off, wiping his brow with a towel.
Ric O’Barry arrived the next morning. We caught up with him in front of our second hotel, the Urashima, a series of white buildings wedged into craggy seaside cliffs. The hotel’s architecture reminded me of a cruise ship, but it was more than a mile long. The ocean lapped on its doorstep. Toy ferries decorated to look like dolphins and whales—equipped with tail fins and googly cartoon eyes—transported guests from the lobby to the main streets of Kii-Katsuura.
Though he had flown for thirteen hours, endured his usual three-or four-hour grilling by officials in the Tokyo airport, and then driven seven hours to get here, O’Barry took the time to give a press conference before he’d even checked into his room. He spent an hour speaking to some Japanese reporters, standing on the street in a blue hoodie, gray hiking pants, and flip-flops, hiding tired eyes behind Ray-Ban sunglasses. His white hair strayed out from under a khaki baseball cap. “What do you…um…what is your wish, what do you want the fishermen in Taiji…” asked an earnest-looking man, holding a notebook.
“To stop killing the dolphins,” O’Barry said, with exasperation. “It’s really simple.”
No matter how sleep-deprived, O’Barry is a lively interview subject and a formidable debater. He is plainspoken and direct and he delivers his message in calm, deliberate tones, with frequent jabs of wry humor. He is a master at pointing out absurdities and hypocrisies in the realm of marine parks: “We love our dolphins like they’re our family—I hear that a lot. Really? You lock your family in a room and force them to do tricks before they eat their dinner?”
The reporters drifted away and O’Barry sighed, jamming his hands in his pockets. He looked exhausted and not thrilled to be back at the cove for a tenth straight year. “Basically I would like to be put out of business,” he told me. “That’s my goal. But it won’t happen in my lifetime. There’s too much money in captivity.” O’Barry had firsthand experience with these stakes: he’d flown here directly from a Florida courtroom where he was one of the defendants in a battery of lawsuits involving twelve dolphins purchased in Taiji. He was being sued for defamation and tortious interference; the plaintiff was Ocean World, the marine park I’d visited in the Dominican Republic. If you toted up every last charge, Ocean World was demanding damages in the billions.
The dustup started in 2006 when O’Barry, hidden in a lookout above the cove, watched a group of bottlenose dolphins being picked out of a corralled pod. The fishermen killed the rest. When O’Barry discovered the dolphins had been contracted for—that Ocean World had ordered them through a Taiji dolphin broker and hired two American veterinarians, Ted Hammond and Michael B. Briggs, to oversee the transfer—he made that information public, along with his eye-witness account of the animals’ violent capture. The ensuing outcry was piercing and the Dominican Republic government, fearing loss of tourist dollars, denied the dolphins’ import permits. Ocean World was thus left with a dozen dolphins for whom it had paid $154,000 each, but couldn’t take home from Taiji.
In a case filing, I would later read Ocean World’s lawyers’ interpretation of the events at the cove: “The plaintiff, Ocean World…made a reasonable effort to help the Twelve (12) dolphins embark in a second chance for life and to assist them in a journey involving safe passage to a loving caring home at his family’s one hundred million dollar $100,000,000 world class facility.” The document wound on for thirty typo-riddled pages, alleging that O’Barry’s actions were part of a grand self-promotional scheme to sell more books and DVDs, while interfering with Ocean World’s noble and charitable attempts to adopt the dolphins.
O’Barry was represented by prominent lawyers who took the case pro bono because they deemed it a SLAPP lawsuit (strategic lawsuit against public participation), charges intended to squelch free speech. The goal of a SLAPP is not to win in court, but rather to exhaust the defendants in every possible way (especially financially) by filing endless motions, charges, deferrals, requests for documents, subpoenas for depositions—a blizzard of legal paperwork. By now, more than six years later, Ocean World had filed another lawsuit against O’Barry (which was dismissed); sued two scientists who had also spoken out against the Taiji captures (and the universities where they worked); the original complaints had sprawled to twenty-eight file boxes, and there was still no end in sight.
Berman and I wanted to visit the infamous Taiji Whale Museum, located next to the cove. The museum’s name is misleading: it is actually a whaling museum. Along with exhibits on whale and dolphin hunting, it also displays dolphin species that are rarely seen in captivity because they tend to expire in short order. I mentioned to O’Barry that we were headed there and he nodded resignedly. “I hate that place,” he said. “It’s the Bates Motel for dolphins.”
While O’Barry restored himself with a nap, Berman and I cabbed it back to Taiji, getting out near a traffic roundabout decorated with a pair of life-size whale tails bursting from the ground. Masako Maxwell had also joined us, a Japanese American technologist from Los Angeles who devoted herself to helping animals of every species. She had a ponytail down to her waist and a tattoo ringing her biceps and she carried herself with the quiet strength that is the sure mark of a badass. Maxwell didn’t have to m
ake a lot of noise—she just got things done. “I was born and raised in Japan and I feel it’s my mission to come here and be useful,” she’d said, during introductions. “She’s being very modest, of course,” Palmer had interjected. Maxwell, he said, ran the group’s Japanese Web site and all of its social media. “She’s key to getting our information out to the people of Japan.”
For Berman and me, Maxwell was also key to our chances of getting into the building. Far from being a neutral educational or scientific facility, removed from the controversy and carnage that was going on at the cove, the Taiji Whale Museum was one of the town’s central dolphin traffickers. Alongside tanks that housed its performing dolphins were additional floating pens that contained animals for sale. Although it is a public building, its ticket windows were covered with signs that declared: NO ANTI-WHALERS ARE ALLOWED INSIDE THE MUSEUM.
A reasonable person might wonder how the cashiers would make this determination. Was there a secret handshake, known only to fans of the dolphin hunt? In the end, the Taiji Whale Museum had decided to cut right to the chase and simply refuse admission to any Westerner. Past experience had shown, however, that once a Westerner did get his hands on a ticket he could usually get past the door—unless he exhibited signs of being less than completely enamored by an establishment where, as O’Barry liked to point out, you could buy dolphin-meat snacks and eat them while you watched the dolphin show.