Despite protests from international environmental organisations, Japanese fishermen, with government approval, are currently conducting an annual dolphin hunt that kills thousands of the aquatic mammals.
Hideki Moronuki, spokesperson for the agriculture, forestry and fisheries ministry, said 16 000 to 17 000 dolphins are killed on average in the hunt every year, but environmentalists said the number exceeds 20 000.
Alone in the whaling port of Taiji, about 700km south of Tokyo, about 150 dolphins have been encircled, driven into lagoons and killed with lances or knives in the past several days.
The mammals that survive unwounded are sold to aquariums around the world.
The billion-dollar dolphin industry "supports the hunt, which supplements the fishermen's poor salaries", said environmentalist Richard O'Barry, an American who was a dolphin trainer for the 1960s television series Flipper before becoming an advocate for protecting the mammals in 1970.
Fishermen in places where the hunt is carried out defend it as part of the traditions and cuisine of the region.
"We kill dolphins because we need them to live," said Yoji Kita, chairperson of Taiji's education committee.
The annual hunt, Kita said, cannot be carried out as with animals on land that can be quickly killed behind closed doors. The fishermen make an effort, however, to shorten the dolphins' suffering, Kita added, a claim that critics contest.
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