Dolphin slaughter at Taiji, Japan. Photo copyright by Robert Gilhooly. Downloads not permitted without consent.

SNA (Tokyo) — Police have opened investigations into dolphin and whale meat being sold in Wakayama Prefecture after accepting a criminal complaint regarding illegal levels of dangerous toxins. The charge, filed by an international animal rights group, centers around the results of tests indicating that the meat contains mercury levels up to 25 times the government-set regulatory limits.

The samples were taken from meat sold at the fisherman’s co-op in the coastal town of Taiji from the end of 2020 and throughout 2021, according to Action for Dolphins CEO Hannah Tait.

The meat is available throughout Japan via the supermarket’s website, she added.

 “The sale of this toxic meat clearly violates Japan’s own regulations,” Tait stated. “The potential health implications for unsuspecting consumers are too great to be ignored.”

Police investigations are likely to center around further tests of the meat being sold at the Taiji supermarket, says Shimpei Ueno of Tokyo-based Law Office of Takashi Takano, which is leading the case.

Ueno anticipates results of those tests will corroborate earlier findings from the Osaka-based Mizuken Co., which analyzed store-bought samples of three commonly consumed species–Risso’s dolphin, melon-headed whale, and short-finned pilot whale–and found overall mercury concentrations to be between 2.5 and 25 times greater than the regulatory limit.

“Our assertion is that this clearly exceeds the government’s limits and violates the Food Sanitation Law,” he says, adding that any indictment may ultimately hinge on the police’s evaluation of the severity of the crime.

Government regulations for mercury in fish and shellfish, which were initiated in the early 1970s in response to history’s worst mercury poisoning cases in Kyushu and Niigata in the 1950s and 1960s, are 0.4 parts per million for inorganic mercury (which is found naturally in the environment and also in some industrial processes), and 0.3 parts per million for methylmercury, a powerful neurotoxin that accumulates in the food chain and is formed when bacteria react with inorganic mercury in water and soil.

Data collated by the Osaka lab is for overall mercury levels, including methylmercury.

Ueno says he believes this is the first time such an indictment has been accepted and criminal investigations pursued by police, making it a landmark case in a decades-long struggle by animal rights and other activist groups to end Taiji’s dolphin drives, made internationally infamous by the 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary, The Cove.

Those hunts started largely for the purpose of a live body sale business that began in conjunction with the establishment of the Taiji Whale Museum and aquarium in 1969.

Today, the town trades with aquariums and dolphinariums both domestically and abroad, though the coronavirus pandemic has brought this business to a virtual standstill, according to the environmental protection NGO Life Investigation Agency (LIA).

Nonetheless, as of late last year some 266 dolphins and whales remain in captivity in Taiji sea pens, LIA reports. Hundreds more are captured and slaughtered for their meat each year, it adds.

The annual hunts, which start in September and typically last until the end of February, are conducted in cooperation with the Taiji Town Development Corporation, which is chaired by Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen, according to the LIA.

Taiji official Masaki Wada declined to comment on the latest legal action, saying he was unaware of the details of the case.

Yoshifumi Kai of the Taiji Fisheries Cooperative–which operates the Taiji supermarket and is the defendant in the case–claims that he, too, has no knowledge of the action, but suggested it would gain little traction, pointing to a 2010 study that looked into the effects of mercury on human health.

That research, carried out by the National Institute for Minamata Disease (NIMD) in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, revealed methylmercury concentrations in the hair of some of the 1,137 Taiji residents tested was as high as 11 parts per million. This was considerably higher than the average of 2.1 parts per million found at 14 other locations in Japan.

Further NIMD tests revealed even higher levels, with 43 of the 182 residents surveyed recording levels above 50 parts per million, and one showing a level of 139 parts per million.

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s guidance value for mercury in hair is 1.2 parts per million, while a study by toxicology professors in Canada says hair mercury level above 0.3 parts per million “indicates a potentially excessive body burden.”

Nonetheless, the NIMD report concluded that none of Taiji’s residents had any mercury-related health problems, Kai said. “I heard the conclusion was that (mercury) found in the natural environment was harmless,” he added.

However, the study has since been largely discredited due to its failure to employ standard protocol used internationally to detect neural damage–the same protocol that was recognized by the Supreme Court as the benchmark for determining compensation to survivors of the mercury poisoning cases in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, and in Niigata city, Niigata Prefecture.

Research on contaminants in cetaceans has been conducted worldwide, including on dolphins stranded in Italy, which found mercury levels in the mammal’s livers up to 657 times the amount that would prove fatal to humans.

Recent studies in the Caribbean have been similarly disturbing, reporting “dangerously high” levels of mercury in cetacean products being sold for human consumption in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, one of four places globally where aboriginal subsistence whaling is permitted.

According to Jeremy Kiszka, a professor at Florida International University’s Institute of Environment and a member of the research team, levels were so high that consuming just a few grams per week would exceed tolerable levels and could be the cause of major health issues.

“You are pretty much consuming toxic waste,” Kiszka says, adding that considering what happened in Minamata and Niigata, “Japan should be more aware than any other nation about mercury contamination.”

Indeed the risk is particularly high in countries such as Japan, where seafood consumption is high. According to the Health Ministry, over 80% of the mercury intake of Japanese people comes from shellfish and fish, which, by the ministry’s definition, includes cetaceans.

What’s more, recent research has focused on concerns about the impact that even low concentrations of mercury in marine products can have on the fetus during pregnancy.

“Methylmercury poses the greatest hazard to the developing fetus,” the Pew Charitable Trust writes in its report Mercury and the Developing Brain. “It passes easily through the placenta and impairs development of the brain and nervous system. Prenatal methylmercury exposure from maternal consumption of fish can cause later neurodevelopmental effects in children.”

Among those effects are vision and hearing difficulties, delayed motor skill development and language acquisition, and, later, lowered IQ points and attention deficits, the paper states.

In light of such research, the Health Ministry issued a report pointing out that excessive intake of mercury by pregnant women may adversely affect the development of the fetus, and cautioned them to avoid over-consuming fish and shellfish with high mercury concentrations.

For bottlenose dolphins, pregnant women are advised to eat no more than 80 grams once every two months, or 10 grams per week, which is the equivalent of about two-thirds of one slice of sashimi.

This makes the cetacean eight times more contaminated than other marine products such as snapper, swordfish, and bluefin tuna, which the ministry advises pregnant women to consume no more than 80 grams per week.

Other products listed on the ministry’s website include swordfish–listed by the US Environmental Protection Agency as one marine product to be avoided by women of childbearing age, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and children–yellowtail, and southern bluefin tuna, which pregnant women are advised to consume at a level of no more than 160 grams per week.

“These precautions are to protect the health of the fetus,” the ministry states on its website. For children and the general public, however, “there is no reason to be concerned about adverse health effects” from mercury in seafood, it continues, though reports of high mercury levels have led to a decreased demand for whale and dolphin meat, which has been pulled from some elementary school lunch menus, including in Taiji itself.

Conversely, some studies have shown fish consumption during pregnancy can in fact lower the risk of delayed fetal brain development.

A 2010 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and a World Health Organization expert committee outlining the pros and cons of fish consumption found the benefits of dietary Omega-3 fatty acids in fish outweighed the risks of mercury exposure in childbearing women.

Action for Dolphins CEO Tait insists the high levels of mercury found in the Taiji meat are indeed hazardous to human health, especially for pregnant women, and government safe levels meaningless if they are not maintained.

“It is our hope that this legal action will result in better health and safety for Japanese consumers,” she says. “Toxic whale and dolphin meat should be removed from restaurant menus and supermarket shelves.”

Her recommendations echo those of the Environmental Investigation Agency, which in the early 2000s conducted independent analysis on 58 products purchased from Japanese supermarkets, detecting mercury levels up to 17 times higher than the legal limit.

“Methylmercury exposure in humans can result in irreversible neurological damage … (and) severe cases may result in coma or death,” the EIA wrote in a subsequent report, adding that “the Government of Japan must prohibit the commercial distribution and sale of cetacean products,” and commercial retail outlets should cease selling them.

The government’s recommendations regarding mercury safe limits seem to indicate this could be a possible outcome of the current legal case. Under “Purpose of Setting Provisional Standards” it states: “[I]f fish and shellfish exceeding this provisional limit are removed from the market, there will be no health hazard from mercury even if most of the people continue to eat fish and shellfish as before.”

Tait says it is “no secret” that the ultimate goal of the legal action is “to protect dolphins and stop the hunts at Taiji.”

Such an outcome would undoubtedly be a blow to the town.

While a plan is underway to turn Taiji into a marine park, where visitors can enjoy whale watching and try a variety of marine products, including whale and dolphin meat, an estimated 80% of the Taiji Town Development Corporation’s revenue comes from the sale of live dolphins to aquariums in Japan and overseas.

“Dolphin fishing is an essential industry for the local economy and supports the livelihood of the residents,” the Wakayama Prefecture website states.

Yukari Sugisaka, founder of the NGO Help Animals, says income generated from live sales to aquariums forms a significant part of that industry, with some varieties, such as the bottlenose dolphin, fetching up to ¥6 million (US$52,000) per dolphin.

According to prefectural data, as many as 998 dolphins were captured in Taiji in 2019, though in previous years, catch numbers have far exceeded that figure, with 1,277 dolphins taken in 2012.

However, of the drive hunt quota of 1,849 (around 17 percent of the national total) set by the government for the 2021-2022 season, 565 dolphins were actually taken, 498 of which were slaughtered for meat, according to LIA.

In fact, the number of dolphins that hunters actually catch has been decreasing annually, raising concerns that the dolphin population itself is declining, the LIA says.

These figures, however, are not necessarily as accurate as they seem, and do not include an additional quota of 361 dolphins that are allotted for offshore harpoon fishing–actual catch numbers of which are unmonitored.

“In addition to the issue of what is actually in the meat being sold, this is one of the things we are trying to draw attention to,” says Action for Dolphin’s Tait. “The hunts are relatively unregulated in terms of how many end up being slaughtered.”

Sugisaka says that while a prosecution could ensue if the Taiji produce is found to be harmful and illegal, and therefore in the public interest, it’s unlikely to lead to an immediate halt to the hunts. “It’s more likely that (the fishermen) will simply seek ways to continue the sale of dolphins, such as testing for mercury levels and then selling them.”

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