Drive Hunts and Marine Parks and Aquariums

Photograph of mother and baby dolphin courtesy of Dolphin Quest

The Cove is a 2009 award-winning documentary that exposes the annual drive fishery hunt of dolphins and whales in the whaling village of Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.

Drive fisheries are not historically new. Several countries aside from Japan have used (or still use) this method to hunt animals, including the Solomon Islands, the Faroe Islands, and Peru. The drive fishery at Taiji is believed to have been in existence for more than 350 years. However, The Cove was not the first to document this controversial hunt—publications such as National Geographic and television series by the late Jacques-Yves Cousteau in the mid-1970s have also highlighted it. Many people have rightly raised concerns about these hunting methods, questioning them on moral, ethical, and animal welfare grounds.

One aspect of the film that has proved particularly controversial is the claim that, in recent years, a percentage of animals from this fishery have not been killed but instead selected for live display in public aquariums and marine parks. In 2007—the year The Cove was made—official figures show that 13,170 dolphins and whales were hunted and killed in Japan. Of that number, 1,239 were taken by the drive fishery method, with 90 (7.3%) removed alive for aquariums.

 

Between 2000 and 2013, a total of 19,092 small cetaceans were taken in the drive fishery at Taiji, Japan. Of these, 17,686 were slaughtered, while 1,406 were captured alive and sold to zoos and aquariums (graph and data courtesy of Cetbase).
 

Unfortunately, the makers of the film suggested that supplying animals to aquariums and marine parks was the primary purpose of the hunt and that if this practice ceased, so would the hunt itself. This is unsurprising, as one of the main figures in The Cove is animal rights activist Ric O'Barry, who is strongly opposed to dolphins being kept in zoological parks.

Additionally, the film implies that animals from the hunt are being transported worldwide, including to the USA, and that visitors to marine parks are unwittingly supporting the killing of dolphins and whales in Japan. This claim is misleading. In reality, most cetaceans held in both the USA and mainland Europe are sustained through captive breeding programs, eliminating the need to acquire animals via live capture from the wild. Animals sourced from hunts such as Taiji are generally supplied to aquariums in Asia and the Middle East. In 2010, it was alleged that 15 dolphins from a Japanese drive fishery were also imported into Turkey.

Moreover, many zoological organizations involved in the care of marine mammals have publicly condemned drive fisheries and consider them inhumane. This included the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA) who in a press statement in May 2015 stated:

No animals from drive hunts are displayed or maintained in any public or private facility in the USA. The last such case involved a false killer whale named Kina, originally imported by the U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal Program from Ocean Park, Hong Kong, in 1987. She was transferred to the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology in 2000, where she was used for research rather than public display. In September 2015, Kina and her two bottlenose dolphin companions were relocated to Sea Life Park in Hawaii, where studies on their echolocation and biosonar abilities continued in partnership with the University of Hawaii. Kina passed away at Sea Life Park in October 2019.

An attempt to import false killer whales from a drive fishery to a U.S. marine park in 1993 was blocked by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which deemed such operations inhumane. This effectively banned further imports of animals from drive fisheries into the USA.

Some animal rights groups have also cited SeaWorld California’s 2012 import of a captive pilot whale from a Japanese aquarium. However, this animal was a lone stranding rescue from January 2004, deemed unsuitable for release. It was not acquired through deliberate capture or a drive fishery.

Key Points:

1. The primary motivation behind Japan’s drive fishery is "pest control" and food production, as dolphins and whales are perceived to compete with fisheries. The hunt has taken place for hundreds of years, while live captures for aquariums are a relatively recent development. Even if aquariums stopped acquiring these animals, the hunt would likely continue.


2. No animals from drive fisheries have been imported into mainland Europe since 1980 or into the USA since 1989. The majority of cetaceans displayed in these regions come from captive breeding programs. 

 

 

Article reviewed and amended March 2025