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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: June 2007

Will Taiji again capture orcas?

 

"The town of Taiji plans to capture orcas in order to secure financial resources," charges Sha-Chi JP, a Japanese-based web site "dedicated to the Taiji-5 orcas captured on February 7, 1997." The site is posted by volunteers Seiji Inagaki, Nanami Kurasawa, Yoshiko Nagatsuka, Yoshimi Takahashi, and Carla Hernandez, with the help of OrcaLab, the British Columbia-based project of anti-captivity marine mammologist Paul Spong.

Taiji is globally notorious as the site of dolphin massacres. Herded into shallow water by boat, the dolphins are confined with nets, then hacked to death. The toll exceeds 1,000 dolphins per winter. Most are of small species. The 1997 orca captures were unusual.

Originally undertaken because Taiji fishers blamed dolphins for declining catches, the massacres have over the past 20 years become one of the world's leading sources of captive dolphins. Dolphins for exhibition are selected before the killing starts by personnel from the Taiji Whale Museum, according to Dolphin Project founder Ric O'Barry, who has repeatedly visited Taiji to witness the proceedings and lead protests.

The Taiji Whale Museum reportedly sells or leases the dolphins at $10,000 to $45,000 each, depending on age, gender, and species. Most of the clients until recently were in Asia, but in early 2007 O'Barry issued a global alert that the Ocean World Adventure Aquatic Park in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, was preparing to import 12 dolphins from Taiji. The deal was apparently indefinitely delayed after 43 animal and environmental organizations and the Dominican Academy of Sciences asked Dominican president Leonel Fernandez to block it.

Only two of the Taiji-5 orcas who inspired the formation of Sha-Chi JP are still alive: a female at the Port of Nagoya Aquarium and a female at Izumito Sea Paradise. Both orcas legally belong to the Taiji Whale Museum, but were sent elsewhere on five-year "breeding loans." The deals were approved by the Japanese fisheries ministry "to rescue the Whale Museum from financial difficulties," Sha-Chi JP believes.

Sha-Chi JP speculates that fishers working on behalf of the Taiji Whale Museum will try to capture mates for the two females, since the breeding loans are soon to expire.