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| Photograph of mother and baby dolphin courtesy of Dolphin Quest |
The Cove: Understanding Japan’s Dolphin Drive Fishery and the Myths Surrounding It
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 existed 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 also highlighted it. Many people have rightly raised concerns about these hunting methods, questioning them on moral, ethical and animal-welfare grounds.
Live captures and the film’s emphasis
One aspect of the film that has proved particularly controversial is the claim that, in recent years, a proportion of animals from this fishery have not been killed but were instead selected for live display in public aquariums and marine parks. In 2007—the year The Cove was released—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. 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 filmmakers 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 emphasis is unsurprising given that one of the film’s principal figures is animal-rights activist Ric O’Barry, who is strongly opposed to dolphins being kept in zoological parks.
Where captured animals are sent
The film also implies that animals from the hunt are transported worldwide, including to the USA, and that visitors to marine parks are unwittingly supporting the killing of dolphins and whales in Japan. This assertion is misleading. In reality, most cetaceans held in both the USA and mainland Europe are sustained through captive-breeding programmes, removing the need to acquire animals by 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 imported into Turkey.
Moreover, many zoological organisations involved in the care of marine mammals have publicly condemned drive fisheries and consider them inhumane. This includes the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA), which issued a press statement in May 2015 opposing drive hunts.
Imports into the USA and policy changes
No animals from drive hunts are displayed or maintained in any public or private facility in the USA. The last notable 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. Kina was transferred to the Hawaiian Institute of Marine Biology in 2000 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 in 1993 to import false killer whales from a drive fishery to a U.S. marine park was blocked by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regarded such operations as inhumane. That decision effectively curtailed further imports of animals from drive fisheries into the USA.
Some animal-rights groups have referenced SeaWorld California’s 2012 import of a captive pilot whale from a Japanese aquarium. However, that individual was originally a lone stranding rescue from January 2004 and was deemed unsuitable for release; it was not acquired through deliberate capture or a drive fishery.
Key points
- Primary motivation: The principal drivers behind Japan’s drive fishery are pest control and food production, since dolphins and whales are perceived to compete with fisheries. The hunt has taken place for hundreds of years; live captures for aquariums are a relatively recent development. Even if aquariums stopped acquiring these animals, the hunt would most likely continue.
- Imports to Europe and the USA: 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 now come from captive-breeding programmes.
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