biodiversity > newsfile > porpoise slaughter starts again
Porpoise slaughter starts again
Posted: 31 Oct 2005
Today (November 1) marks the start of the hand harpoon hunt of Dallís porpoises off the northeast coast of Japan. It is the 25th consecutive year as the largest cetacean (whale, dolphin and porpoise) kill in the world. But, says the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), such slaughter is unsustainable.
This year, Japanís Fisheries Agency has issued permits for the killing of 17,700 Dallís porpoises - a quota,unaltered since 1993. This quota, experts say, is based on questionable survey data more than ten years out of date.
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Dalls Porpoise laid out at the Otsuchi fish market, Iwate Coast, Japan
Pierre Gleizes/Environmental Investigation Agency
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According to Clare Perry, EIA Senior Campaigner, more than 400,000 Dallís porpoises have been slaughtered by Japanese hunters in the last quarter century. "The population cannot sustain this scale of mortality", she said. "The hunters themselves have already admitted changing their hunting strategy to target mother and calf pairs, as they find it harder and harder to catch their quotas.Ē
Polluted meat
The hunt produces around 800 tonnes of meat annually which is primarily for human consumption. This vast quantity of meat far exceeds demand for actual porpoise meat, however retail surveys using DNA analysis have shown it to be falsely labelled and sold around Japan as Ďwhale meatí, where it can fetch up to ten times the price of locally sold porpoise meat.
The meat contains dangerously high levels of pollutants, such as methylmercury, which is present at concentrations more than three times higher than the Japanese governmentís permitted level for human consumption, says EIA.
The agency is calling on the international community Ė governments, scientists and the public Ė to act now and put pressure on the Japanese government to stop the 'senselesss slaughter' of Dallís porpoises. "The hunt is an environmental crime that threatens not only the Dallís porpoise populations in Japan, but the Japanese people that consume them."
To find out more about EIA and the Dallís porpoise hunt, visit EIA
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