Update

El Fornio Brand Dolphin Meat ~ More Than Beauty

Last month I posted a quote regarding the dolphin drive in Taiji, Japan. Here's an update.

Mercury Taint Divides a Japanese Whaling Town
Martin Fackler, NY Times, 2/28/08

TAIJI, Japan — For years, Western activists have traveled to this remote port to protest the annual dolphin drive. And for years, local fishermen have ignored them, herding the animals into a small cove and slashing them until the tide flows red.

But now, a new menace may succeed where the activists have failed: mercury.

According to the local whaling museum, the people of Taiji have hunted coastal whales for 400 years. Whaling is a mainstay of the economy, and every year Taiji sends off young men as harpooners and sailors aboard Japan’s whaling fleet. “We are a whaling community, and we don’t want to lose that,” said Katsutoshi Mihara, chairman of the town council. “Here, all boys grew up dreaming of hunting whales.”

Professor Endo participated in the studies that first brought mercury risks in dolphin to light. Since 2000, he has tested hundreds of samples of dolphin and whale meat throughout the country. In dolphin and pilot whale, he said he has typically found mercury levels ranging from 10 to 100 parts a million, far above the Japanese government’s advisory level of 0.4 part a million.