Killing and Eating Dolphins Expanding Worldwide

By Hardy Jones
Photo of dolphin meat by Carlos Yaipen Llanos, ORCA Peru

Breaking news World Dolphin Hunt

We have recently learned that hundreds of dolphins are found dead, butchered and the meat consumed in Peruvian fishing villages. Until recently Japan has been the world villain in the area of killing dolphins for food. Now it is becoming clear that slaughtering dolphins and other marine mammals such as dugong and sea lions is more common than thought and very likely spreading as world fisheries collapse.

Rather than fighting to end the killing country-by- country or even village-by-village, BlueVoice and our associates are conducting toxic testing on dolphins worldwide. This, along with compilation of scientific papers on levels of contamination in marine mammals, will be published in a white paper, on the web via networking sites, in videos with special emphasis on reaching consumers.

We are also working to find epidemiological information that ties consumption of contaminated marine mammal meat to specific diseases. Finding high levels of heart disease and Parkinson’s in the Faroes is one example. We are working with ORCA in Peru to study and publicize the fact that people who eat dolphins in fishing villages in Peru have extremely high incidence of diabetes – a disease that can be brought on by ingesting high levels of heavy metals and organic pollutants such as PCBs.

It is vital that we alert consumers to the dangers of eating marine mammals, especially to prevent the consumption of these products by school children. It is imperative that we stop children from developing a taste for marine mammal meat in their formative years. This will prevent a lifetime of consumption of these wonderful animals.

More On Obama's Cop Out on whales

The following comes from Sue Arnold, Australians for Animals, a decades long campaigner against whaling. She well expresses my own feeling about Obama's decision not to sanction Iceland and my bewilderment at how save-the-whales groups could think his actions useful.

By Sue Arnold
Barack Obama has taken the easy way out. A report to Congress which
in effect sets a precedent for diminishing not only the IWC but all
multilateral environmental agreements which rely on trade sanctions
for enforcement.

The failure to issue trade sanctions against Iceland has profound
ramifications and ensures that the IWC is now a very toothless tiger.
The WTO rules supreme.

This is very serious. As for the groups who believe the instruction
relative to the Arctic and Iceland are useful, please explain exactly how?

Sue Arnold
Australians for Animals Int.

Whale Experts Says Obama Deal on Iceland a Cop-out

The quotation below is from Dr. Sidney Holt, a man who knows more about saving whales than any other living person. He is now in his mid-80s and knows IWC history personally going back fifty years.

Many enviro groups have hailed Obama's statement as a great step in whale preservation. I believe they are terribly mistaken and that is backed up by Dr. Holt's assessment which I publish below.

"It is the usual cop-out. Iceland has already responded, naturally, with threats to block the US bowhead catch/strike limit (at next IWC) in Panama. The rot started three years ago with the US Chairman trying to throw away 40 years of effort, much of it led by the US - Obama is simply continuing that in his own way. But he seems to be continuing the Bush administration's position on practically everything, often subtly worse. We should all be worried, but you in the US specially so. Sidney

Hurricane Hits Taiji as Dolphin Hunt Opens

The Dolphin killers were pinned into port as Typhoon Talas slammed into Taiji as well as other parts of Japan bringing torrential rain and winds to 75 mph. Dolphin hunting is suspended. Leilani Munter, car racer and dolphin activist reports rain dripping into her hotel. About a dozen previously captured dolphins are trapped in sea pens in a nearby inlet and are imminent danger of drowning as the nets entangle them.

USA and France Protect Humpbacks

NOAA and France’s Protected Areas Agency have signed a “sister sanctuary” agreement to support the protection of endangered humpback whales that migrate annually more than 3,000 miles between NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the Massachusetts coast and Agoa Marine Mammal Sanctuary in the Caribbean’s French Antilles.

Italy Protests Japan's Slaughter of Dolphins

Italy has submitted a formal protest today against Japan and expressed "feelings of dismay and great concern and sadness of Italian public
opinion" for the hunting of dolphins, a practice followed annually for
centuries in the bay of Taiji, a village south of Tokyo, in Wakayama
prefecture.

In this regard, on the recommendation of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Franco
Frattini, the Charge d'Affaires Embassy of Italy in Tokyo Alfredo Durante Mangoni, immediately went to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (Gaimusho) where he met the Director General for Europe
to whom he handed a letter of protest upon the imminent start of hunting
season.

Toxic Tests Prove Dolphin Meat Not Food

Dolphin meat from Okinawa

Additional test results have just arrived, expanding on those we posted last week.

Funded by BlueVoice.org, Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan has taken samples from the meat of dolphins killed at Taiji, Japan and Okinawa as well as Beaked Whales in North Pacific waters. Extremely high toxic levels were found for PCBs in pilot whale meat sold at Taiji. High levels of mercury and methyl mercury were found in meat from dolphins killed at Okinawa.

BlueVoice.org will present these results at the International Whaling Commission starting July 10 both to stop the killing of dolphins on Okinawa and the importation of dolphin meat from Taiji to Okinawa. The people of Japan should not be exposed to levels of toxins many times the levels allowed by their ministry of health.

The Taiji reports in Japanese and English are downloadable PDFs at:

http://www.bluevoice.org/pdf/taiji_testresults_english.pdf

http://www.bluevoice.org/pdf/taiji_testresults_japanese.pdf

Results from Okinawa show:

Dolphin 1: mercury 6.5 ppm (16.5 x allowable)
methyl mercury 3.1 ppm (10.33 x allowable)
PCBs 2.4 ppm (4.8 x allowable)

Dolphin#2 mercury 3.88ppm (3.5 x allowable)
Methyl mercury 1.6ppm (4.8 x allowable)
PCBs 0.27 ppm (below allowable, probably because this was a calf.

Provisional regulatory levels of mercury and PCBs set by the Japanese government:
Mercury (T-Hg):0.4ppm, Methyl mercury (M-Hg):0.3ppm, PCBs:0.5ppm

Baird’s Beaked Whale was not contaminated by radiation but contained mercury:1.42ppm, methyl mercury:0.76ppm. PCB 0.10ppm

The meat was eaten on June 21 by nearly 40 school children, fifth grade of two primary schools before the meat had been tested. “This is important, because its mercury is 3.5 times higher and its PCBs is 1.5 times higher than the maximum allowance levels.” Sakae Hemmi, Elsa Nature Conservancy