Film on the Dolphin Hunt Stirs Outrage in Japan

Film on the Dolphin Hunt Stirs Outrage in Japan

Quarter 1 

Article 3

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/world/asia/23dolphin.html

NY Times

Miller Chapter

The area covered is global.

For years, dolphin hunts off the seaside town of Taiji, which turn coastal waters red with blood each winter, have drawn the ire of Western activists. But few among the Japanese public seemed to care, or even know, about the slaughter. However, Japanese moviegoers watched an American documentary last week that reveals Taji's annual dolphin hunts. Japanese citizens were shocked and outraged. Japan killed about 13,000 dolphins in coastal waters in 2007, according to the fisheries agency, of which about 1,750 were captured in Taiji. Taiji’s fishermen are notorious drive hunters, banging on metal poles to herd panicked dolphins into a cove, then spearing them to death in what protesters describe as a gory bloodbath.

I am glad that American documentarists got involved to reveal to the Japanese public the horrors of what is going on. I'm surprised that they didn't know sooner. Now that the secret is out, the Japanese government should get involved to regulate fishing and control what is going on. 

Vocabulary- 

mercury - mercury can be toxic and lethal in high levels. Laboratory tests have shown high levels of mercury in the flesh of dolphins and pilot whales that were caught and sold in Taiji, prompting some local markets to remove them from their shelves.