Shocking New Documentary of Dolphin Slaughter In Japan

Film Shows Inhumane Slaughter of Coastal Whales

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The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition joins the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) in releasing a shocking new video of the cruel slaughter of dolphins by Japanese whalers. Japan is pushing the International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting in Santiago, Chile, June 23-27, to overturn the 20-year old commercial whaling moratorium by allowing it to conduct commercial whaling off its shores.

"Dolphins and porpoises are whales, and size doesn't matter," says Louie Psihoyos, Executive Director of OPS, who has spent the last three years making a full-length documentary film on the dolphin slaughter and the high mercury content of the meat. "The IWC has overlooked the smallest leviathans since the moratorium was put in place, even though their mandate is to manage all whales. This short film will shed light on the truth the Japanese whalers don't want the world to see."

OPS is releasing a short film of recently acquired covert footage of Japanese whalers slaughtering dolphins, to media groups and delegates to the IWC. The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition helped in making of the film, which features the efforts of Ric O'Barry, Director of the coalition and an expert on dolphins.

"The dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, is the most horrendous act of cruelty, callousness, and waste that I have ever witnessed," states Ric O'Barry, Director of Save Japan Dolphins Coalition and an expert on dolphins. "How can the IWC even consider opening up commercial coastal whaling in Japan, which would result in more slaughtered whales, more slaughtered dolphins, and more suffering of these intelligent mammals?"

While the IWC maintains a moratorium on commercial whaling around the world initiated in 1986, the Japan Fisheries Agency continues to allow the slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins annually in Japan's coastal waters and conducts "scientific whaling" in the North Pacific and Antarctica, targeting well over 1,000 whales annually. Meat from the "scientific" whaling is sold in markets.

"The IWC knows that Japan's slaughter of whales for so-called scientific purposes is a ploy to circumvent the commercial whaling ban, yet instead of taking Japan to task, it may reward Japan for its renegade acts by lifting the ban," said DJ Schubert of the Animal Welfare Institute, a Coalition member. "And it defies belief that the United States, which was instrumental in achieving the ban, is now the country leading the IWC toward capitulation," he added.

"Recently, in defiance of both the IWC and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Japan imported whale meat from Iceland and Norway," notes David Phillips, Director of Earth Island Institute, a member of the Coalition. "How can the IWC trust Japan, which kills dolphins in the most cruel manner imaginable, ignores the international whaling moratorium and slaughters whales for commercial purposes disguised as science, and now illegally trades whale meat?"

"We are hoping the film will help sway the vote of any IWC delegate that is thinking of voting with Japan to open up commercial whaling" Psihoyos adds. "Killing nearly a million small cetaceans is commercial whaling, and allowing the highly toxic meat to be given away to school children is criminal. Japanese whalers and their agency accomplices cannot be trusted."

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The Coalition to stop the dolphin slaughter consists of Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan, the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute, In Defense of Animals, and Animal Welfare Institute. For further information: http://www.SaveJapanDolphins.org