Residents of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, have slaughtered a pod of dolphins but spared the youngest animals, activists said Tuesday.
Most of the dolphins caught Monday were butchered Tuesday, except for two that will be sold to aquariums and six young animals that were released into the ocean, said Scott West, a member of the Sea Shepherd conservation group who is in Taiji as part of a campaign to protect the marine mammals.
Leilani Munter, an environmental activist visiting Taiji from Charlotte, N.C., also witnessed the hunt and saw the dolphins being cut up in the slaughterhouse.
"There is nothing to prepare you for seeing it in person. I saw these beautiful dolphins being driven into the cove, and they came out dead bodies," she said.
Taiji has held an annual dolphin hunt for years, beginning in September and continuing through March. It has traditionally sold the best-looking ones to aquariums and killed the rest.
But the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" — which showed how herded dolphins were stabbed in a cove that turned red with blood — has intensified international opposition to the slaughter.