Mortality Rate in Dolphin Eating Taiji Town

Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research has cited mortality figures in Taiji, for 2007, at 67 deaths from a population of some 3,500 residents — putting the town's overall mortality rate more than 50 percent above other villages nationwide of roughly the same population. However Kozagawa, west of Taiji, where dolphin meat is also consumed, showed an even higher rate — with 82 deaths from a population of 3,426 people in 2007.

Mercury Expert Warns of Fish Jerky

Dr. Jane Hightower, a pioneer in connecting human disease to mercury consumption has published a paper on alarming levels of mercury in fish jerky. Hightower is a wonderful doctor and person and primary in bringing the dangers of mercury in fish to public attention.

For more on mercury go to www.Diagnosismercury.org  Her book,  Diagnosis Mercury is available at Amazon at http://amzn.to/xgWBs6

For interview with Dr. Hightower and more information on mercury go to
http://bluevoice.org/news_mercury.php

Mercury Concentrations in Fish Jerky Snack Food:
Marlin, Ahi, and Salmon
Jane M Hightower1* and David L Brown2

Abstract
Background: Dried meat and fish have served as an important durable nutrition source for humans for centuries. Because omega 3 fatty acids in fish are recognized as having antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties found to be beneficial for good health, many consumers are looking to fish as their main source of protein.
Unfortunately, contaminants such as methylmercury can accumulate in some species of fish. The purpose of this research is to test commercially available fish jerky snack foods for mercury contamination.
Methods: Fifteen bags of marlin jerky, three bags of ahi jerky, and three bags of salmon jerky were purchased from large retail stores in Hawaii and California, and directly from the proprietors’ Internet websites. Five individual strips of jerky per bag were analyzed for a total of one hundred and five tests.
Results: From the seventy-five marlin jerky samples, mercury concentration ranged from 0.052-28.17 μg/g, with an average of 5.53 μg/g, median 4.1 μg/g. Fifty-six (75%) marlin samples had mercury concentrations that exceeded the FDA’s current mercury action level of 1.0 μg/g, while six samples had greater than 10 μg/g. Fifteen samples of ahi had mercury concentrations ranging from 0.09-0.55 μg/g, while mercury concentrations in fifteen salmon samples ranged from 0.030-0.17 μg/g.
Conclusions: This study found that mercury concentrations in some fish jerky can often exceed the FDA’s allowable mercury limit and could be a significant source of mercury exposure.
Keywords: Ahi, fish, jerky, marlin, mercury, methylmercury, salmon

Reporting the Dolphin Slaughter Live from Taiji

In 2001 I went to Taiji ready to do audiocasts coupled with video from the scene of the dolphin slaughters. I'm posting this so those fighting for the lives of the dolphins today will have some perspective on what has been tried before and how it worked out. The following segment if from The Voice of the Dolphins.

By Hardy Jones

The story begins on the first day of our finding about 40 pilot whales netted off in Hatagajiri Bay.

I phoned my first report to a voice-mail box at Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). It would be coupled with the pre-staged video and stills and go out on The Animal Channel within a few hours. The first Internet report brought an audience of unique visitors numbering fifteen thousand within twelve hours. In my report, I asked everyone listening to protest to Japanese embassies and the fishing cooperative in Taiji.

Meanwhile, the fishermen were nowhere to be seen. Sakae walked into town and learned from the woman running the dolphin meat shop that they were discussing what to do about us.

Day two was sunny. We monitored the bay against any attempt to kill the pilot whales. If they were going to die, we were going to film it. Watching a large male protectively circling the females and calves was agonizing for me. I had a slim hope that we could force the fishermen to release them but, in reality, knew they would eventually return with their long knives.

Later in the day, the boat used in the slaughter returned to Hatajiri Bay. It moved among the pilot whales, and suddenly, a man on the bow thrust a spear into the body of one of them. It writhed briefly and then went still. Moments later, the process was repeated. Both whales were then secured by rope to the side of the boat and dragged back to Taiji town for butchering. I filmed the entire process from a hidden position atop the cliff on the north side of the bay. What the fishermen were trying to avoid by this time consuming procedure was any grizzly slaughter footage emerging from Taiji.

I continued to file audio reports. The audience built with each passing hour until we had reached three hundred thousand unique visitors. A tsunami of protest faxes and calls pounded Japanese embassies around the world.

And then the typhoon hit with a vengeance. That night I lay on my futon bed on the straw mat floor thinking of the terror of the whales. Sleep was fitful when it came.

On the morning of the third day, I awoke at 4:30 and, carrying my video camera, left the hotel alone. The killing bay was quiet— only the pilot whales’ percussive breathing what I feared would be their last breaths. I walked along the southern arm of the bay to a point where I could see the incoming storm pushing huge waves against the rocky shore. Rain was falling almost horizontally in wind-driven sheets, but the temperature was mild.

As I turned back toward the road, a little white van appeared. It turned and the headlights hit me straight on. They knew I was there. They clambered out of the cab and started removing their implements of slaughter. Without thinking much about it, I walked toward them, camera running on my hip. They didn’t seem to know what to do, but as I passed among them, I said “Sayonara.” I’m not sure why. One of them growled something that Sakae later translated as “Sayonara, my ass. You know what we’re doing, and you’ll be back.”

Back at the hotel, Larry and Sakae joined me, and we went out the rear door and took a coastal path to reach the ocean side of the killing bay. We climbed a steep stone stairway to a vantage point a couple of hundred feet above the bay. By the time we got there, the killing had begun. The fishermen were stabbing individual pilot whales, then roping their tails and dragging them to the beach to cut their throats and let them bleed out. I crawled out on a rock promontory and began shooting video. Rain was intense, and I wondered how long my Sony camera would hold out.

For a moment, I imagined what the pilot whales must be experiencing: held for days in confusion and terror, concerned for their babies and fellow pod members, then suddenly forced into a confined space and stabbed, roped and hauled to the beach to face their executioners. For most of the time, they would be conscious and feeling excruciating pain. The second rank to be killed would be hearing the cries of those first taken. Soon, the taste of the blood of their pod mates would reach those awaiting the same fate.

But I could think and grieve later. The job of the moment was to record the images. Looking through the lens puts distance between the cameraman and the horror. You have to focus and get the light right and make sure you have sufficient battery charge and tape to carry the whole shoot. But the massacre was registering in me, stored in a momentarily remote place from which it would erupt in later days and nights. I had watched these pilot whales for three days, and this felt very personal.

Suddenly we heard a guttural cry and several fishermen appeared behind us. “What the hell are you doing! You people are a pain in the ass,” they screamed in Japanese.

Larry and I tried to continue taping, but our main concern became safeguarding the video we’d already taken. The mission of these men was to get it from us. We demanded to go to the police, but the fishermen laughed and said, “Fine; they’re our friends.” So we decided against that.

The fishermen carried long poles they use to prod the whales and wore hard hats that they swung at us. I decided the best way to get out of this confrontation was to move to a more public area, so I suggested to Sakae and Larry that we agree to accompany the fishermen down the hill toward the main road and the hotel, pretending to be following their instructions. As we descended, Larry and I discussed what to do.

When I got near the bottom of the stone stairs, I looked back at Larry. He made a signal that he would roll tape, and I made a break for the hotel. A young, heavy-set guy hit me with his hard hat, crouched into a sumo-like stance, and tried to block my way. Crossing the several hundred yards to the hotel in wet jeans was like running through glue. The fisherman kept trying to push me backwards. I made slow progress by putting out my arms like a bird drying its wings and then rolling off him to gain a few steps. I felt like an NBA forward working through a tough defense. My adversary smiled and yelled, “Ah, basketball!” We both laughed. What kind of confrontation was this? A few yards farther on, he hit me particularly hard with his hard hat, then apologized. “Gomenasai”—“So sorry.” Only in Japan!

Larry caught up to me at the entrance to the hotel. We went through the front door like a running back and his blocker. Sakae followed. The fisherman ran into the lobby after us, screaming violently but we managed to get into our rooms and lock the doors.

It seemed apparent that no further videotaping could be done in Taiji. Outside our hotel windows, the typhoon howled, and we were not about to walk back into the hands of the fishermen. What was paramount was to get the video material on the Internet as soon as possible. This would not save the pilot whales now dead or dying in Hatajiri Bay, but perhaps we could thwart the next capture. We didn’t know on whose side the police in Taiji would come down. At all costs, we did not want our videotape confiscated.

With today’s technology—an iPod, for instance—I could have shot video and e-mailed it to HSUS in Washington or uploaded to YouTube. But in 2001, we had to get to a Hyatt hotel in Osaka to transmit via an Ethernet connection.

Spotted Dolphins Meet Underwater Piano

In 1978 we sailed out to meet a pod of spotted dolphins we'd be told about by a treasure diver. After two days of sailing we found the school, made contact and swam with them on a glorious late afternoon. Our next approach to establish contact was to put an underwater "piano" in the water. The results were phenomenal and opened a relationship that has lasted more than thirty years.

The following sequence comes from The Voice of the Dolphins. 

As Steve prepared his gear, Ray went back to bail out the whaler and found a dead barracuda in the bottom of the boat. No one could explain how a barracuda might have gotten there. We hadn’t been fishing. Could it have jumped in by accident? Then I noticed the dead fish had a set of teeth marks on its dorsal side behind the head that matched the shape of a dolphin jaw. The only possible answer seemed to be that one of the dolphins had somehow killed it and placed it in our dingy. Was this the barracuda that had been annoying some of us the previous afternoon? Could the dolphins be concerned about our safety or even our state of mind? Was it a joke or a display of their powers? That mystery would last several years before later events led to a plausible answer.

The camera team put on scuba gear and slipped into the water. John lowered what we called “the piano” over the side to Steve, who was worried the rise and fall of the swells would slam his precious instrument against the hull and damage it before he could put it to use. The instrument was essentially a keyboard attached to a synthesizer with an underwater speaker clipped to the side. This was housed in Plexiglas, just like underwater cameras of the day. Steve held it in his hands. Nothing connected him to it except a line from his scuba tank. The contraption was about the size of an accordion. It weighed nothing when in the water but was slightly awkward and subject to the currents.

He pushed off from the side of the boat, exhaled, and descended, regulating his breathing to provide air to power the instrument. Although there were no dolphins in sight, Jack and Jim assumed positions to film whatever happened.

Steve was kneeling on the bottom at a depth of about eighteen feet when he began playing. A couple of minutes passed, and nothing happened. I was looking around and wondering whether I should associate myself with this bizarre undertaking. Five minutes passed. Steve was still playing, but I was already shaking my head and mumbling to myself that I’d never really thought this music business would work. I walked to the bow . . .

A squadron of dolphins appeared, moving at phenomenal speed, flying more than swimming. They covered three hundred yards in a matter of seconds, and when they reached Albury’s  bow, they dove, wheeling and turning around the source of the music.

For Steve their arrival came as a complete surprise. The film footage Jack shot shows him snapping his head up and left as the dolphins flew past him like fighter jets on a strafing run. He changed his music instantly from fugue to a kind of polka, and pushed off the sand to swim about six feet above the bottom. The dolphins took up positions just ahead of him and matched their speed to his as though they were enjoying the show. Before long, dolphins and humans had calmed, and if you didn’t think too hard, all that was happening was that a man with an underwater piano was playing a concert for a school of dolphins thirty miles from the nearest land.

Aboard Albury, all we could see were rippling dark shapes against the white sand bottom. But it was clear that the dolphins were staying very close to Steve. And the cameras were rolling.

A group of four young dolphins swam slowly just in front of the Plexiglas box, leaving only long enough to rise to the surface for a breath of air, then gliding back to be near the music. Six older dolphins swam in the mid-water, curious but unwilling to approach as closely as the juveniles. They kept up a steady but relaxed stream of clicks and whistles, occasionally flicking their tail flukes and whistling with some energy. Steve felt they were attempting to interact with his music through their vocalizations but he couldn’t be sure. The sounds dolphins make are at the upper range of human hearing and we register only a tiny fraction of their vocal output. In addition, it’s difficult to determine which dolphin is vocalizing at any given moment. Sound travels five times faster in water than it does in air, so the ability we normally have to directionalize is lost.

After half an hour of hard breathing, Steve returned to Albury for a fresh tank of air along with the cameramen who needed to reload. Scuba tanks were changed and camera housings dried and opened so magazines could be swapped out.

The dolphins lingered around our boat roughhousing among themselves. Steve came on deck. He didn’t want to wrestle with the underwater piano any further. Now he wanted to sing into a microphone connected to underwater speakers hanging from the boat’s starboard side. It would be another experiment. He crooned a few phrases. We looked up and the dolphins had vanished. Steve looked very hurt. But at least we were learning what dolphins like and don’t like.

With the dolphins gone, Captain Mike began to organize us for the return to Marsh Harbor. As we hauled anchor and took up an easterly course, I stared at the unbroken, featureless surface of the sea. At an earlier time, I might have described the scene as desolate, but now I knew that beyond this looking glass was a world peopled by friendly and curious dolphins.

I remember little of the return trip to Marsh Harbor. Michael and I were convinced that we had a fantastic film in the can. Nothing like this had ever been filmed before. But more than that, my thoughts were of the dolphins themselves. Visions of individual faces and memories of moments of contact played behind my eyes as I stared, without focusing, at the sea, the outside world barely a distraction.

Two Years After the Cove - Taiji Still Hunting Dolphins

 By Hardy Jones, photo by Dieter Hagman, Atlantic Blue

Nearly two years have passed since The Cove won an Academy Award. There was great hope that the force of the film would end the killing at Taiji. It has not. Fishermen continue to “harden” the cove. A new slaughterhouse has been built, indicating the fishermen have no intention of stopping their brutal business. They believe, according to a highly knowledgeable Japanese expert, that they have “defeated The Cove.” There are some noteworthy changes at Taiji this fall. The number of dolphins killed is significantly down and the main victims have been Risso’s Dolphins. We are investigating why this is so. It may be that warming ocean temperatures are redistributing dolphin prey. Where the prey goes dolphins must follow. BlueVoice is investigating.

The following is a report from Dieter Hagmann, German director of AtlanticBlue and admin for BlueVoice’s European website. BlueVoice contributed funds to Dieter’s mission.

Dieter Hagmann Taiji Report 11/11

I think the new constructions are a reaction to the observation from the last season, especially the observation with the hidden camera in January this year. http://bluevoice.org/webfilms_killingattaiji.php

The new tarp area in front of the old one is for me a note that the fishermen plan to extend the protection of the cove. According to my observations, the new tarps are not in use until now. Perhaps the new tarps will only be used for big slaughters in the future.

A further new construction is the area on the left side of the cove. It consists of metal posts and wire mesh. On the top there are wooden slats. The fisherman had big problems with jumping dolphins in this area in the past. I believe that the reason for this construction is to avoid the dolphin jumping on the rocks in this area. I documented this several times, last in January this year. Especially the Striped Dolphins have the behavior to jump on the rocks in panic. I think the fishermen will do anything to avoid cruel records and documentations. Both constructions - the new tarp rows and the new construction wall on the left will help the fisherman in future to obstruct the documentations. Additionally I will send you a picture with the entrance door of the cove area. This door is also new constructed and over two meters high.

It seems to me that the fisherman will continue the killing in the future.

My work in Taiji was difficult. I was observed every day by police. The police checked me several times on the tsunami hill or in the area next to the hill. Two times they controlled (searched) my body for illegal devices. They found nothing... It is not forbidden to go on the tsunami hill, but it is not allowed to go behind the fences on tsunami hill. The police have seen me countless times on the hill, but never in an illegal action.

Hardy’s question:
“It seems all they are only killing are Risso’s dolphins. Do you know why that might be. Also the number of dolphins killed is very low."

According to my observations so far only Risso's dolphins were caught and killed. On 13 November, however, two rough-toothed dolphins trapped but not killed. They were released (no license to kill).

Hardy note: After Dieter's writing a pod of Striped Dolphins was massacred.

Why only Risso's dolphins? I do not know. I'm sure that other species are not spared. Maybe time will only be won until the conversion work completed in the cove. Until then, perhaps only Risso's dolphins are killed. Risso's dolphins are not "Flipper"-dolphins ... you know what I mean ...

Hardy Note: It is possible that changing water temperatures are causing other species – bottlenose and pilot whales – to seek food in areas away from Taiji. We can only pray. If you read my Blog on Iki you’ll have seen that dolphins, once so plentiful at Iki Island, Japan are no longer found there. http://hardyjonesdolphins.com/blog.html October 3, 2011

Yesterday I sent you a video with my best scenes from Taiji. I hope you have no problem to download the file (1 GB). You can use the video for your work.

Hardy: Great thanks to Dieter for his courage and tenacity

Hardy Note: will be posting this video shortly

 

Dolphin Altruism: Dolphins Save Me From Hammerhead Shark

The following video and blog are recounted in my book The Voice of the Dolphins. They document four spotted dolphins protecting me from a hammerhead shark. This material is posted in support of PETA's lawsuit to expand the rights of killer whales. 

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of how the dolphins felt about us came in 1985 late in the afternoon after a day of filming. Howard Hall, Julia, and other members of the underwater crew had climbed aboard the Zodiak that covered us as we worked at any distance from the main boat. I lingered at the surface, enjoying the delirious late afternoon light, my camera hanging in my right hand. The blue skies above held huge, gleaming white cumulous clouds, and toward the western horizon, blazing orange rays of sunlight shone out of the sea. The water temperature was in the high eighties. I lay on my back and experienced bliss.

Half a dozen young spotted dolphins, including a band of juveniles we’d named the Gang of Four, swam slowly over the sandy bottom thirty feet below. Occasionally, one dolphin would bite another on the tail and begin a brief, friendly tussle consisting of darting, twisting, and jaw snapping. But mostly they were grazing for bottom fish.

In the distance, at the limit of visibility, another sleek, gray creature appeared, swimming in an unusual, sine-wave manner and hugging the bottom. Its tail was not stroking up and down; it was slashing from side to side. The tail fin was vertical, and the head broad and flat. This wasn’t a dolphin. It was a very large Atlantic hammerhead shark, one of the few shark species that will attack humans. The shark moved toward me, angling first to one side then the other as though following a scent, probably mine. It was swinging its eyeballs, stuck out on the extremities of the head, so as to see its target first with one eye, then the other, perhaps to gauge distance. I didn’t feel comfortable presenting the hammerhead with the sight of my dangling legs, so I jackknifed and dove toward the bottom, raising my camera. Not only was this a unique chance to document the behavior of dolphins around sharks but raising the camera also served to put some metal between the fast-approaching predator and me.

The shark was grayish brown and about eleven feet long. I could judge its size easily because it was twice the length of the subadult dolphins swimming nearby. It undulated across the bottom, its movements now excited and menacing. I’d been diving with hammerheads in the Pacific on numerous occasions and had never felt threatened, but Atlantic hammerheads have a nasty reputation, and this one displayed the agonistic postures that precede an attack.

I hung in the water five feet over the bottom, and sooner than usual, my lungs began to ache for air. In a moment, I’d have to return to the surface. The shark turned directly toward me and accelerated with a flick of its tail. It happened so quickly that I could only react by pulling my camera tight against my body, poised to thrust it against the shark’s sensitive rostrum if it struck at me. I turned the camera on.

Suddenly the undersea world came alive with high-pitched whistles and intense sonar bursts. Two juvenile dolphins, Chopper and Stubby, appeared over my left shoulder. I flinched as I felt the wash they created streaking through the water straight for the hammerhead. In an instant, two buddies joined them, bolting in from the right.

The Gang of Four worked as a unit, diving and turning in unison like a squadron of fighter planes flying precision maneuvers.

The hammerhead saw the onrushing dolphins and, looking harassed and perplexed, jerked to the side, away from me. With powerful beats of their tail flukes, the dolphins launched themselves toward the shark’s head, clicking and whistling intensely, turning away only at the last instant. Again and again the juvenile dolphins dived at the hammerhead, mobbing it the way sparrows do a hawk, using sonar bursts to attack the shark’s lateral lines, a highly sensitive component of the shark sensory system, disorienting the huge fish.

The shark now wanted nothing more than to escape from this sudden torment. It turned one way then another but the Gang of Four were allowing it to move only in one direction—away from me. The hammerhead disappeared into the blue-green distance, and the dolphins, now tremendously excited, swam for the surface to do a series of victory leaps. One after another, they launched themselves through the surface, reentering instants later. After perhaps half a dozen leaps, Chopper cruised up to me, whistling intensely. I swam with him at the surface, trying my best to move in a way that showed the same kind of exuberance he’d displayed, but my human body dragged in the water and he had to restrain himself to stay with me. He was too excited to maintain the slow pace and darted off with his friends.

I was frankly glad to have footage of the dolphins saving me from the hammerhead. Without it, there might have been quite a bit of skepticism about this event. Some people just don’t want to admit animals are capable of altruism.  

The Voice of the Dolphins is available at Amazon: http://amzn.to/klnDw0 Kindle: http://amzn.to/pVszfc
Enhanced version with embedded video is at iTunes/iBooks http://bit.ly/nmb5v4 

Why Dolphins at Cancer Risk from Pollutants

Genetic Links between Toxins and Cancer 

by Hardy Jones

The International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) has published a report that describes a genetic link between environmental toxins and bone disease in multiple myeloma, a form of blood/bone cancer. Once considered a disease of the elderly, and a rare one at that, myeloma is increasingly being diagnose in patients under 45. The big question is "why, when many cancers are being reduced in incidence, is myeloma increasing and penetrating lower age groups?"

One possible explanation is the increase in environmental toxins. But what is the connection between the toxins and the disease?

Researchers with the IMF gene bank (Bank on a Cure) have identified changes in SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that are part of DNA sequences. These changes reduce a person's ability to process chemical toxins such as Dioxin and may lead to cancer.

The finding, published in the latest issue of the journal Leukemia, authored by Dr. Brian Durie, chair of the IMF, - http://www.myeloma.org - provide a possible link between myeloma and environmental toxins.

As these toxins rise in the marine food chain we are seeing more cases of cancer in dolphins, types of cancer never before identified in these marine mammals. Dolphins should be seen as sentinels warming us to the dangerous levels of pollution accumulating in our oceans.  For full press release on this subject go to http://bluevoice.org/news_issuescontaminants.php.

If we analyse the status of disease and pollution in dolphins worldwide we can conclude only that a global pandemic exists that now threatens dolphins and more and more is a menace to human health.

NB: The author was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2003 and when tested found to have alarmingly high levels of pollutants such as PCBs, hexachlorobenzines, and Dioxins in his body.