Several Japanese zoos and aquariums voted last week to stop buying and selling dolphins taken during the notorious Taiji roundup, made infamous in the Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove. Yet animal advocates are dubious that it will stop the slaughter.
The Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums has banned the buying and selling of dolphins from the controversial Taiji hunt, made infamous by the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, after years of pressure from animals rights groups.
The organization, which accredits 37 Japanese marine parks, voted for the measure last week under threat of expulsion from the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The international group opposes drive hunts, in which wild dolphins are driven into a confined space and slaughtered.
Each year, during a September through February hunting season, fishermen from the town of Taiji (map) on Japan's southeastern coast round up dolphins and herd them into a cove, where hundreds are killed for meat and dozens are selected for sale to marine parks.
The ban is "a big step because it's a statement from within the industry," says Courtney Vail, campaign and programs manager at the United Kingdom-based group Whale and Dolphin Conservation. But Vail doubts that the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums step will put an end to the annual hunt.
"I do believe that the drive hunts will not end until the overall ethic towards whales and dolphins that permeates Japan's political and social culture evolves," she says.
The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.
Still, the ban likely will affect the Taiji hunt, as well as Japan's dolphinariums, which have long relied on Taiji as a quick and easy source of the marine mammals.
According to a 2013 Elsa Nature Conservancy survey, about 600 dolphins live in 54 marine parks in Japan, 37 of which are members of the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums and are now precluded from buying (or selling) dolphins from Taiji.
The Japanese association's secretary-general, Naonori Okada, has said that the group's members keep upward of 250 dolphins, and that Japanese aquariums have purchased an average of 20 Taiji dolphins a year. Yet export data indicates Japanese marine parks have probably been more reliant on Taiji dolphins than that.
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