Environmentalists Accuse Japan of Excessive Porpoise Kill

With the hunting of large whales banned, Japan is slaughtering porpoises by the tens of thousands in a lucrative and underregulated trade that threatens at least one species, an environmental group alleged Thursday.

However, a senior Japanese fisheries official rejected the charge that hunting threatens the existence of the Dall’s porpoise, saying Japan has no evidence that the population of the animals is in decline.

The Environmental Investigation Agency, or EIA, a private international group that has been monitoring Japan’s annual porpoise hunt, alleges that fishermen are hunting a dwindling number of the animals, chasing down and harpooning female porpoises that travel with slower-swimming calves. The calves, which nurse for two months, are unlikely to survive without the females, the group said.

A sharp increase in the fraction of mature and lactating females found in last year’s catch is a clear danger signal for the species, said Allan Thornton, chairman of EIA.

“Unless the Japanese government does something to reduce the kill, these porpoises have a very grim future,” Thornton said Thursday. “We challenge the claim by the government of Japan that this is a sustainable catch.”

The environmentalists say the government’s quota for catching porpoises is too high.

But Ichiro Nomura, director of the far seas fisheries division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said: “Based on the best data we have, we disagree with them.” He noted that the porpoise catch, which he said exceeded 16,000 animals last year, has not been declining as might be expected if the mammals were being overhunted.

Nomura called the EIA a “radical” group and termed the EIA report on the porpoise hunt, which is titled “Japan’s Senseless Slaughter” and was released Thursday, an “agitation paper.”

The latest skirmish in the longtime war between environmentalists and Japanese whalers comes as the International Whaling Commission begins its annual meeting May 24 in Grenada.

The IWC banned the hunting of large whales in 1986, but environmentalists charge that Japan, under the guise of research, continues to violate the ban by killing the large animals. Conservationists also say spot DNA checks on cetaceans on sale at the Tokyo and other fish markets have found meat from banned whales being sold illegally, and meat from porpoises and dolphins falsely labeled as whale meat.

The Dall’s porpoise is a black-and-white cetacean found throughout the northern Pacific and the Sea of Japan. It can grow to about 7 feet long and weigh up to 440 pounds, and has been hunted in Japan since prehistoric times, EIA said.

Porpoises traditionally are eaten for the most part in areas of northeastern Japan and Hokkaido near where the animals are hunted. In the rest of the country, porpoises and dolphins, which are said to have an oily taste, are not considered delicacies and not widely consumed, fishermen and restaurant owners said.

But EIA campaigner Sarah Wheeler said the group’s surveillance found that Dall’s porpoise meat is being sent to markets all over Japan and sometimes canned in fermented bean paste and sold as “whale” or “little whale.” Whale meat can command a price up to 10 times as high as porpoise meat, and a single porpoise, sold for $193 at auction in the northeastern port city of Otsuchi is worth $2,333 after being butchered and sold as whale in the Tokyo fish market, Wheeler said.

EIA called on the Japanese government to ban the sale of falsely labeled porpoise meat in order to curb this lucrative trade. But Nomura of the fisheries ministry said many Japanese don’t distinguish between whale and porpoise meat and would not consider the mislabeling as lying.

Japan caught only 5,000 to 10,000 Dall’s porpoises a year until the 1980s. In 1987, a year after the ban on hunting large whales, the catch shot up to 40,367. In 1990, fearful of overhunting, the IWC asked Japan to limit the catch to the pre-1986 level of 10,000 animals per year.

Though Japan does not accept IWC jurisdiction over species other than whales, it did cut the Dall’s porpoise catch down to 11,403 animals per year in 1992, according to EIA data. But the catch has been growing since, and the quota for this year is 17,700 animals.