Taiji is short of dolphin meat

 
Published: Thursday 15 October 2009

-- (Credit: ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL: JAPAN FOCUS)Residents of coastal Japanese town Taiji would have you believe they love dolphins. Murals depict cuddly cetaceans on buildings and dolphinariums draw tourists every year.

But what the throngs don't see is a heavily guarded cove where every September, thousands of dolphins are killed and their meat turned into school lunches or passed off as pricey whale to unsuspecting restaurateurs. A documentary by American director Louie Psihoyos exposes Taiji's secret.

Psihoyos enlisted former flipper trainer Ric O'Barry, who became an animal activist after Kathy, one of the real-life flippers, suffered captivity-induced depression and died in his arms. O'Barry can be shrill and initially Psihoyos worried he "went halfway around the world to end up in a car with this paranoid guy." But the former flipper trainer was driven.

In the film, he regularly gets arrested for springing captive dolphins, and he and the Taiji police play a cat-and-mouse game for years, till he uncovers the cove. This year, Taiji residents have not gone on hunt; but they deny the film has anything to do with the abstention.

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