Scubaism

Two town council members from the whaling town of Taiji have come out publicly against the feeding of dolphin meat contaminated with mercury to children in Japan’s school lunch programs. It is the first time that Japanese elected officials have broken the unwritten rule against criticizing whaling and the consumption of whale meat that prevails across the country.Independents Junichiro Yamashita and Hisato Ryono will be holding a news conference on Monday to announce laboratory test results of samples taken from dolphin meat purchased at local supermarkets. The meat was found to contain over 10 times the government’s limit for both mercury and methyl mercury.

The news conference comes as the annual dolphin drive hunt begins in Taiji. Conservationists around the world oppose the hunt, the largest kill of dolphins anywhere in the world, which takes place over six months beginning in September.

Yamashita said, “We’re not against traditional whaling, but we heard claims that pilot whales are poisoned with mercury, and we discovered that some of this meat from the drive fisheries was fed to kids in school lunches.”

The assemblymen described the dolphin meat as “toxic waste” and are attempting to persuade other elected officials in Taiji and surrounding towns to take it off school lunch menus.

Although the supermarkets immediately removed dolphin meat from their shelves after they were informed of the test results, the town of Taiji is moving ahead with plans to build a new dolphin processing facility while expanding the dolphin meat lunch programs to surrounding school districts, says Ric O’Barry of the advocacy group Save Japan Dolphins.

One Japanese newspaper has published an article about Yamashita and Ryono’s lab tests. On August 1, the “Japan Times” ran an article quoting Yamashita as saying the two council members at first did not believe the reports of contaminated meat, which came from western conservation organizations. “We tested some samples purchased at the Gyoko supermarket in Taiji and Super Center Okuwa in the nearby city of Shingu,” Yamashita said. The councilmen were “shocked” by the results.

“One dolphin sample had a mercury content 10 times above the health ministry’s advisory level of 0.4 parts per million, with a methylmercury readout 10.33 times over the ministry’s own advisory level of 0.3 ppm,” the article states. “Another dolphin sample tested 15.97 times and 12 times above advisory levels of total mercury and methylmercury, respectively.”