Dolphin hunters Length 28mins 43” without credits. 04 october 04 They’re one of the most intelligent mammals on earth… Recent studies have shown the extent of their self awareness….and their love of play. But, dolphins are valuable too….to those who put them on show and to those who hunt them… TITLE PAGE Dolphin razzmatazz There are more of them in captivity than ever before…. In Canada they’ve performed in shopping malls. In spain you can go on dolphin safaris… But there’s one place where the dolphin boom is unrivalled… ….where you can swim with them, ride them, dance with them…..…. (ptc)…..this is japan… ….away from the ultra fashionable, frantic streets of Tokyo……there’s another side to Japan. We’d been told to visit a small town five hundred kilometres south of the capital… ….a seaside resort where the obsession with dolphins is unmatched. Car turns into taiji… music Western tourists rarely venture here… We were viewed with great suspicion. The handful of westerners they’ve seen before normally spell trouble… In this tiny town……there are four dolphinariums… ….but the people are dolphin lovers, with a twist. They don’t just watch dolphins….they eat them… This is the only bar in Taiji….the whale bar. Most of the clientele here are fisherman…all eat dolphin. It was a good opportunity to win some trust… Vox pop in bar You eat the whole thing do you ??? All, yes… What do you think….good…very good ? People here don’t distinguish between dolphins and whales….they’re all just big fish…to be turned into sashimi. Sometimes you have to make unpalatable decisions to get in with the locals…. Pk in bar. I feel very guilty doing this you know….but just a small piece…I was watching them perform today.. They all know how the dolphins are caught, but few outsiders do. We’re on our way to a place that some call “the Killing Lagoon”. PK in car Stop stop….is this the place…is this where they drive them all in…I need to have a look at this… Each year….hundreds of dolphins are killed here…in a process called “drive hunting”… The local people hate it being filmed….. This is rare footage of how they do it. The hunters bang metal poles in the water.. …and surround the dolphins… The banging sound confuses the dolphins’ sonar. ….allowing the dolphin hunters to drive them into shallow water. Then the killing begins… (killing) It’s these scenes, filmed here and along this coast, that dominate this man’s life… He’s an activist…..called Ric O barry… Earlier this year he spent several months in Taiji….trying to stop the hunt… Upsof of protest Take pictures baby…. Ric and the animal rights group called “One Voice” attempted to film the process…..for the world to see.. But the dolphin hunters wouldn’t have it…..they put up plastic sheeting around the scene of the killing..... obarry you can see them being butchered, right there… The hunters guard their work all night… Ric stays too… He’s not just an activist…he used to train a celebrity dolphin…..tv star flipper.. Ric clip They’re not just big fish….they’re living, breathing mammals…that have a brain larger than a human brain. So when theyre being slaughtered like this they are aware of their offspring just like humans and the great apes….they wouldn’t do that to the great apes, yet they do that to dolphisns and they don’t know what it is they are doing I think. Ric in secret filming There are hundreds out there running for their lives…there appear to be hundreds of them. They are totally panic stricken…then they drive them up to that shore so we cant get near them and when we are not here they drive them into the lagoon. Many die from injuries sustained during the panic… Ric in secret filming There’s a mother and baby here…..baby’s dead….mother’s nearly dead…..they just don’t know what’s happening to them… Ric’s wife is so upset she can hardly watch… She too dedicates her life to saving dolphins… Taxi driver (translation 1) Do you eat dolphins by the way…Yes, I do they’re absolutely delicious…yes. Me driving along…… We’d got an appointment… After weeks of negotiation…..the dolphin fishermen had agreed to be interviewed… Normally they won’t talk to outsiders. At their headquarters…..no sign of them….instead a government official from Tokyo. There’s a problem…. if ric obarry is in the film… they wont be. moronuki This is key point for us… PK: I cant believe it….weve come all this way… PK: Ric obarry is just one point of view and all they have to do is contradict it. Official: Yes, but you have to understand the Japanese point of view….europeans way of thinking is to say “A says something” and “B says something” The Japanese do not think like that. That was it…..but an hour later….the fisherman summoned us back….they’d changed their minds…… Moronuki negotiations But…more conditions…. ….they want us to guarantee there’ll be no scenes of bloodshed…. They’re worried that would turn people against them….before they’ve heard the arguments… PK:But dolphins do have blood… Official: yes of course… PK We cant sanitise it to that point….that theres no blood. Finally…..the dolphin hunters emerged… Only a handful of fishermen in Taiji are allowed to catch dolphins.…. It’s a privilege usually passed from father to son. ….and there’s only two towns in Japan that still do it. Deputy fisherman (2) Since old times it’s been a tradition, and we personally have been hunting dolphin and the whales since our childhood. It’s the culture in Taiji. Leader fisherman (3) It’s part of our culture. That’s why we eat dolphins. If you don’t kill dolphins then there numbers increase too much, and the dolphins will eat all our small fish like mackerel and sardines, leaving nothing for us to catch. What do you think of the protestors who come here each year to try to make you stop ? The leader is so annoyed he cant even speak. Deputy fisherman (4) I cant say it in any other word but “horrendous”. The protestors think that we the Japanese people are fools. I cant say it in any other way. They think Japanese people are coloured people, and that’s why they think we are fools. That’s what I think. The essence of their anger is this: their government endorses dolphin hunting….yet here’s a group of outsiders trying to stop them…. Imagine, they say, a group of Japanese trying to picket an English fox hunt. Sushi bar At the whale bar, I wanted to understand the gulf between western and Japanese views on dolphins.….. Sushi bar sequence… I showed them a film about the latest research on dolphin intelligence… It shows how they can learn complex sign language. …and demonstrates their exceptional problem-solving abilities…. PK I just want to know if its changed their minds… Translator: They say these dolphins are clever but the ones you just showed us are just trained so they should be clever… Driving Most of the 3 thousand or so dolphins caught in Taiji each year are eaten locally… But the drive hunts aren’t just for food. There’s another side to them, a side the dolphinariums know all about. Look closely at the footage of the drive hunts and you’ll notice not everyone there is a fisherman…. Many of those in wet suits are actually from dolphinariums…looking for new performers… Of those not chosen in this dolphin beauty parade, some die from trauma or injuries….others are slaughtered for food…. Most of that is too gruesome to show . Ric obarry sync It’s the captivity industry that is keeping this thing going, speaking of driving, that is whats driving it today. The dolphianriums are paying more for the high value dolphins the ones that are shipped to dolphinariums….that money is what keeps this thing going I believe. They get twent or thirty thousand dollars for the live ones…. If that’s true….it would suggest dolphinariums themselves are fuelling the drive hunts… This is one of the biggest in Taiji….Dolphin Base… The dolphins are kept in these pens just off shore… Could it be they come from the drive hunts…. The owner is called…..mr myoshi… Exchange with trainer PK: The dolphins in dolphin base where do we get them from…. Her: Eer Taiji…in here. PK: And how… Her: You know… PK: I know but do you… Her: Yes. PK: and what do you think of that is it nice…is it good.. Her: I cant say I don’t know We were not giving up on the elusive mr myoshi…. ….we’d discovered that marine parks took 78 dolphins from the drive hunts last year… This one’s called the whale museum…. I wondered if the crowd knew how they get from the sea….to the pool… How do you think they catch them ? Ooohh, no idea. I explained to them how the drive hunts work…. “no we didn’t know that, it’s outrageous” Everyone else had been reluctant to talk speak….but the boss at the whale museum was surprisingly candid.… Whale museum boss 4 Hunting dolphins is different from killing other animals or human beings…..its completely different because we have been doing this since we were born. We don’t feel cruel to the dolphins or feel sick. It may be difficult for outsiders to understand…but we feel the dolphins are very close to us… I wanted to meet the fishermen again.` They’re adamant hunts are food…….and the dolphinarium trade is just a bonus… Dolphins killed for meat sell for around seven hundred pounds, just over a thousand dollars a time…..Ric says the price for live ones is so much greater……that’s the incentive for hunts. Paul’s question How much do you pay for them….some say thirty thousand dollars…?? Fisherman accountant (5) (Laughs….) Where did you get these figures…??… I wish we could have that kind of hunt. If anyone gets thirty thousand dollars, then we’d feel envious. It turned out its not them who get the big money…..its intermediaries…people who buy dolphins from the fisherman and sell them on…… They wouldn’t tell me who these people are…afraid of the protestors might do to them… But we did our own research… Ptc So weve found out there are intermediaries …..and one of them is dolphin base in Taiji…so they not only show dolphins but they buy and sell them. They are dolphin dealers.. The fishermen said there are only five dealers in the country….dolphin base is one of them.. It was more pressing than ever to find mr myoshi… ptc Right, weve found out where mr myoshi lives, he’s been trying to avoid us ever since we arrived in japan…but we are going to go and have a word with him… But…..suprisingly when we showed up…..he didn’t mind talking at all… PK: Youre making a lot of money out of this……and its in your interest to keep the dolphin hunts going isn’t it ? Mr myoshi (6) I haven’t made much money….that’s not my motive. Anyway the dolphariums buy from the hunters not because they are interested in protection…they buy them for business reasons. The hunts do look crude to people who don’t understand food culture, and I think it’s natural for them to think in this way. But as I said before, even if aquariums stop buying, it wont decide the fate of the hunters. Their survival depends on food culture. Typhoon But it is in his interest to keep the whole thing going…… He needs dolphins to satisfy the growing Japanese appetite for shows….. ….and this is one of the few places he can legally get them… Typhoon A typhoon was nearly upon us… The dolphin fishermen were lashing up their boats in readiness… Music sequence…. There was something bothering me about ric obarry’s footage….. Amongst the Japanese dolphin buyers……he’d spotted two men who appeared to be westerners…. Upsof couple of westerners here etc…. He thinks they’ve come from a marine park in the Philippines… The man who owns it is called Tim Desmond…. (tel call) First phone call… Hi…is that mr desmond….etc Tim Desmond refused to be interviewed…. But I still hoped we’d catch up with him later. Me in train I was wondering what impact dolphin hunting is having on the species… The japanese government allows around twenty thousand dolphins to be caught each year…. We moved up the coast to another drive hunt town – Futo to look at the evidence. This is it…..it’s also the place our most gruesome footage was shot…… …but there hasn’t been a drive hunt here for four years… I wanted to know why… ptc This is the place they slaughter the dolphins they were all lined up here on the floor and you’ve seen the footage of them cutting them up… This man was a dolphin hunter in Futo for thirty years…..before he stopped..… Mr Ishii (7) When I was hunting dolphins, I caught many of them. Other hunters find it difficult, but not me, I was the best. One of the reasons I stopped is that I feel sorry for the dolphins, because I could see them cry. Another reason is that the hunters were catching banned dolphins and whales in this bay. They committed violations. He says they were killing too many dolphins…breaking the government quota. I told everyone it’s a violation . But nobody listened. That’s the reason I stopped… So, he stopped out of principle… His colleagues haven’t really stopped at all….they just cant find any dolphins to kill…… But the evidence suggests that’s down to their own overfishing… This man should know….. He used to travel to futo and taiji enforcing the dolphin hunting quotas on behalf of the government… In the past they hunted thousand of animals every year and catch them like that annually and now it is difficult to catch such a big number….. PK: So you are saying that the number of dolphins around futo has reduced…why is that ? Because of the overfishing.. PK: so you re saying it’s the fishermans own fault… Yes. ….it seemed the Futo fisherman had simply fished themselves out of a job….a grim lesson for the hunters in Taiji… ……Still there appetite isn’t lost….. when the dolphins return….so will they….. We left the dolphin hunting region... ….moving north towards Tokyo and one of the country’s biggest marine parks… Before we went, I’d told the professor that it publicises itself as “conservationist”… Professor kasuya HIM: I dont believe any aquarium or zoo is protecting the animals, they are consuming the animals… PK: Consuming them as a product fot he audience you mean..? HIM: yes, they are taking them from the ocean and keeping them in an aquarium until they die… In train… …ironically….it’s the paying audience, the dolphin lovers, who are increasing demand…creating more dolphinariums. …..it seems to me, most marine parks depend on their audiences not finding out about the drive hunts. Many of these are from the drive hunts of Taiji… ……caught amidst scenes of slaughter .....and brought here on the back of a truck… This is supposed to be the ultimate dolphin experience… I know the one I’m with was taken from the sea during those harrowing scenes………. Her: I love them….etc Midori is a student in Tokyo. She has dolphin posters on her walls. She’s a regular visitor here….but this is the first time she’s swum with them… She had no idea about the provenance of the dolphins .....so I took her back to the van….to see the footage of the drive hunts… Crying sequence… Her: I don’t know what I can say, there are no words. Me: solme people come to japan to try to stop that happening. Her: we should stop it, Japan should stop it. But id didn’t know, but im so said cos I didn’t know it and I just like the dolphins and I didn’t know it… But it wasnt just the Japanese shopping at the drive hunts… Back in Tokyo…..i was thinking about Tim Desmond….the westerner apparently buying from Taiji…for his marine park in the Philippines… He didn’t have any of their cultural arguments to hide behind…. We contacted him again….. again he refused to meet us… …it made me determined to get to the philippines. Intro fast cut Philippines… Me in car We were in Subic Bay……a former American military town….. Evening tv here shows cock fighting… At computer We wanted to find the two westerners filmed by ric obarry… If they were at Tim Desmond’s park…..it’d prove he was involved with Taiji. We found his marine park in a bay in the middle of a rain forest… Denied an interview….we went in posing as tourists with a camcorder… Why was Tim Desmond so reluctant to talk…. ….well, who do you think this is…? Time codes for superimposition (keying) In: 23 mins and 43 “ 21 frames. Out 23 mins 50” 00 frames. (the footge we want in …source material…is from tape 40 In: 00.00. 07”01frame. Out 13” 6 frames. …..these are the westerners Ric O’Barry filmed in Taiji last season…. …it seems Tim Desmond does source from the drive hunts….. …But, as we looked around, this seemed a very different place from those we’d seen in Japan. Yes, the dolphins were in captivity….but in vast pens…..living in the sea, with fish….and with far more mental stimulation. Still…how could he excuse taking these dolphins from the bloody waters of Taiji…. Desmond intro Mr desmond…hi, im paul kenyon… Just as we were thinking of leaving the Philippines, Mr Desmond contacted us….and agreed to speak…saying that he is the true conservationist… It turns out that, like ric obarry, has Hollywood on his cv…..he was a trainer in the free willey films… Tim Desmond and ric obarry are old adversaries… Ric o barry sync Tim Desmond is not a conservationist he is an extreme abuser. He’s abusing these animals. These are self aware creatures that routinely make choices and decisions about the details of their lives. To have them captured in taiji and drag them kicking and screaming to his amusement park in the Philippines is simply wrong. Tim desmond sync TD: Every animal we have had a life expectancy of less than one day when we acquired them…and that includes the sea lions… PK: Because the ones from taiji would have been killed anyway is that what you are saying… TD Correct… …these animals were either going to be taken alive or die… So…..he claims he’s the one actually saving the dolphins…….as they were already under a death sentence the activists could do nothing about… Tim desmond sync PK: But in the long term aren’t you actually helping with the demand…you are rewarding the fisherman…the people who butcher these animals in the water and drag them out for meat ? TD: The assertion that the aquarium industry is driving this is not supported by fact it is only supported by the assertion of Rick O’Barry and others. But if you look at the data you will see that less than four or five per cent came from the drive hunts and this is a meat driven industry. But how could he stomach having any link with the fisherman….when their agenda’s are so dramatically different… 23 37 21 PK: Do you support the drive hunts…?? TD: our position on the drive hunts we keep to ourselves because expressing that position does nothing to help conservation in general or the preservation of the species…. PK: But most people watching those pictures will have a view one way or the other. You either feels repulsed by them or you do want them to continue.. TD yes most people would have a view. PK and your view is ? TD I wont be drawn on that. He’s caught….if he criticises the fishermen….he says they wont sell to him any more….in other words he wont be able to “save” his dolphins…. exchange But what’s this conservation agenda he’s talking about…. He took us into the nearby rainforest… Mr Desmond says the money from the marine park is ploughed back into saving this…. The people who used to destroy it; he gives jobs. He plans to bring schoolchildren here from around the country to teach them of its importance… Tim desmond We are doing a broad sketch environmental programme here and doing it through the power that marine mammals provide so those animals in taiji that come here are doing a lot of good for the environment.. PK: because they are pulling in the audiences…? TD Yes, and those audiences are exposed to a entertaining but factually and environ consistent programme.. In Taiji…the new dolphin hunting season’s just starting… The fishermen have no intention of giving into the protestors….. Ric Obarry will still be there though….. Ric obarry If Tim Desmond was a conservationis he would be there with a sign saying stop the killing…not let me give you some money so I can take and exploit these dolphins..… Tim Desmond PK: when people like roc obarry go along each year and protest about the drive hunts do you think they are doing any good ? TD No, I think theyre killing more animals than they are saving> PK: how come ? TD Because I think they harden the posture. Its up to japan to decide on its culture and its law its up to its people to decide what they want to do. Its offensive in the extreme to have a social and cultural imperialist come in and tell them what to do…. Most people we spoke to in japan don’t even know about the dolphin hunters….. So, if the key to all this is Japanese public opinion….it doesn’t need changing….it just needs informing. 1