(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-31 09:45

"No thank you," said an official at the fisheries union when approached for comment on the hunt. "You've come at a bad time."

The recent findings on mercury levels, however, have given pause to many would-be consumers.

Tetsuya Endo, a researcher at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, in northern Japan, has co-authored numerous studies showing dolphin meat can contain mercury at concentrations many times higher than the 0.4 parts per million allowed by the Japanese government for many types of fish.

The highest concentration he has found so far was 100 parts per million from a bottlenose dolphin -- a species whose meat is butchered in Taiji.

"This ought to be investigated," Endo said, calling for a government probe into the dangers of eating dolphin. "There are people who eat it a lot, and those people could be suffering health effects."

The threat of mercury contamination, however, failed to cause a stir in this isolated village until Yamashita, irked by the town's plans to build a $3 million dolphin slaughterhouse and spread the use of local dolphin meat in school lunches, decided with allies to conduct their own probe.

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The results on tests of three locally bought pieces of dolphin meat at a government-run lab confirm their fears, he said.

The pieces of meat taken from pilot whales were all many times the 0.4 parts per million threshold. One piece logged 11 parts per million of mercury, and 2.6 parts per million of PCBs, an industrial pollutant that Japanese regulations limit to 0.5.

Yamashita and his allies announced the results in a handout distributed with local newspapers, and he expanded his crusade by appearing at a news conference in Tokyo for foreign reporters — a move that angered village elders and hunters.

"They said that if dolphin hunting disappears, then Taiji will disappear, but I say it's important to look at developing other industries," he said. "They're upset that I showed this to the outside world."

The anti-hunt movement, however, faces substantial hurdles.

The Taiji leadership -- only three of 10 councilmen oppose the hunt -- is clinging to plans for the new slaughterhouse, counting on sales of dolphin meat outside the region, where the mercury concerns have not spread because of lack of national media attention. Captured dolphins are also sold to dolphin aquariums in Japan and abroad, at substantial profit.

Taiji has powerful contacts at the national level. Lawmaker Toshihiro Nikai, a top executive of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is a native of the prefecture where Taiji is located, and he recently visited the village. Campaign posters of him can be seen around town.

Tokyo -- which is also battling international protesters over its whaling program on the high seas -- is not getting involved in the dolphin dispute, despite a Health Ministry survey in 2003 confirming high levels of mercury in the mammals. The Fisheries Agency in 2005 upgraded a 2-year-old advisory to urge pregnant women not to eat dolphin more than once every two months.

In any case, the 0.4 parts per million limit on mercury does not apply to dolphin meat, and there are no plans to strengthen the guidelines, officials said.

"We are aware that mercury content is particularly high in dolphins," said Yuichiro Ejima, a food safety official at the Health Ministry. "But ... most Japanese seldom eat the meat, except in some areas where dolphins are caught traditionally."

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