Hand-Harpoon Fisheries for Dolphins and Porpoises

Hand-harpoon fishing is defined as fishing for fish and marine mammals by throwing a harpoon with a detachable head from a boat It is called a fishery if operated commercially The Japanese term tsukin-bo currently means both the fishing method and the hand harpoon The instrument is called kite or hanare by the Ainu (Natori 1945, in Japanese) and choki or tsukin-bo by Japanese fishermen The last portion of the latter name, bo, is possibly a word originating from Awa in the southern part of Chiba Prefecture (34°55′N-35°44′N, 139°45′E-140°53′E) on the Pacific coast of central Honshu (Japanese main island), meaning “a person who carries out the activity” (Tamura 1996, in Japanese) Thus, tsukinbo itself would initially have meant “harpooner” Although archaeologists classify detachable harpoon heads into several types (Watanabe 1984; Yamaura 1996, both in Japanese), they fall into two major types based on the way the head and the shaft are connected, that is, either the tail of the harpoon head is inserted into a socket at the tip of the harpoon shaft or the tip of the harpoon shaft is inserted into a socket at the base of the harpoon head Current Japanese hand harpoons are of the latter type (Figure 21) The harpoon head is tied to a line, which is then tied to the shaft and to the ship or to a buoy If an animal is hit by the harpoon, the head turns 90° in the body and prevents detachment The shaft and buoy are recovered together with the prey

The hand harpoon appeared in Japan at the beginning of the Jomon Era (12,000-1,000 years BC) and was widely used in two separate regions One region was from Hokkaido (northern island, which is one of the four major islands of Japan) to Mikawa Bay (c 34°45′N, 137°E) on the Pacific coast of central Japan, and the other was from the Korean Peninsula to northern Kyushu (western island, which is one of the four major islands of Japan) and nearby islands on the coasts of the eastern East China Sea and southern Sea of Japan The shape of the harpoon head was different between the two locations, suggesting separate origin (Anraku 1985; Yamaura 1996, both in Japanese) Hand-harpoon fishing is also known from the Okhotsk Culture that flourished in the eighth to twelfth centuries along the coasts of the Okhotsk Sea including Hokkaido and forms the subsequent Ainu Culture in Hokkaido The harpoon has been used in recent Japanese fisheries for various marine animals such as small baleen whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, swordfish, and sunfish

In Volcano Bay (42°20′N, 140°30′E) on the Pacific coast of southern Hokkaido, the Ainu hunted minke whales by throwing several aconite-poisoned hand harpoons at a single whale

(Natori 1945, in Japanese) Whaling with hand harpoons of this type is known from aboriginal communities in the northern North Pacific from the northwestern coast of North America, Alaska, Siberia, the Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido (Kasuya 1981, in Japanese) Heizer (1943) stated that people in the Alaskan Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, Kuril Islands, and Hokkaido used aconite-poisoned lances, but not harpoons with detachable heads However, it appears from a description by Natori (1945, in Japanese) that the Ainu in Hokkaido used hand harpoons with detachable heads together with aconite poison

Japanese archaeological sites of the Jomon Era that contained numerous cetacean remains are as follows (from north to south, with name of nearby town and prefecture): (1) Higashi-kushiro (Kushiro, Hokkaido), (2) Irie (Abuta, Hokkaido), (3) Miyashita (Satohama, Miyagi at 37°54′N-38°59′N), (4) Natagiri (Tateyama, Kanagawa at 35°08′N-35°32′N, 139°10′E-139°45′E), (5) Yoshii (Yokosuka, Kanagawa), (6) Shomyoji and Aogadai (Yokohama, Kanagawa), (7) Idokawa (Ito, Shizuoka at 34°36′N-35°05′N, 137°30′E-139°10′E), (8) Asahi (Himi, Toyama at 36°45′N-36°55′N, 137°00′E-137°43′E), and (9) Mawaki (Noto, Ishikawa at 36°18′N-37°33′N, 136°15′E-137°22′E) The last two are on the Sea of Japan coast of central Honshu and in a range of c. 36°50′N-37°20′N, 136°50′N-137°15′E, and the others are on the Pacific coasts of central and northern Japan (north of 35°N) These sites often contained detachable harpoon heads as well as remains of Dall’s porpoises, which cannot be caught with the drive-in method Thus, it would be reasonable to assume that at least some of the porpoises were taken with hand harpoons

It is worth noting that the (9) Mawaki Site (37°20′N, 137°10′E) on Noto Peninsula (36°50′N-37°30′N, 136°40′E-137°20′E), well known for evidence of dolphin hunting, has not produced detachable harpoon heads but numerous slender lance heads made of stone, some of which were found inserted in dolphin bone and deduced to have been used in dolphin fishing (Hiraguchi 1986, in Japanese) The lance was certainly used in the dolphin fishery, but it must have been used in killing of dolphins secured in the bay by some other method It could be technically possible to kill dolphins with such lances, but it might be difficult to secure the carcasses, which usually sink Mawaki and nearby villages, where a dolphin drive fishery was operated until the twentieth century (Chapter 3), possibly have oceanographic or geographical conditions suitable for such a fishery The people of the Mawaki Site in the Jomon Era probably drove dolphins into the bay and slaughtered them using the stone lances

The identification of the species of dolphins hunted in the Jomon Era is still incomplete Bone fragments of cetaceans were reported by Kasuya et  al (1985, in Japanese): numerous harbor porpoises from (1) Higashi-kushiro Site, numerous Pacific white-sided dolphins and a false killer whale from (2) Irie Site, some finless porpoises and a harbor porpoise from (3) Miyashita Site, numerous common dolphins and some bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales from (4) Natagiri Site, and Pacific white-sided dolphins, common dolphins, and bottlenose dolphins from (5) Shomyoji Site Skulls of six common dolphins together with two wild boars and a Japanese deer were found in the (6) Idokawa Site (Kurino and Nagahama 1985, in Japanese) From many of these archaeological sites, detachable harpoon heads were recovered as well as remains of harbor porpoises and Dall’s porpoises (Kabukai-A Site), for which the driving method is not suitable So it is reasonable to assume that the inhabitants of many of these locations

that hunting of dolphins and porpoises with hand harpoons was more common in northeastern Japan (Kasuya et al 1985, in Japanese)

The Okhotsk Culture flourished in the eighth to twelfth centuries in a broad area of the Okhotsk Sea coast where ice floes approached in winter (Oba and Oi 1973, in Japanese) It left numerous archaeological sites in northern Hokkaido: the Sea of Japan coast of northwestern Hokkaido, the Okhotsk Sea coasts of Hokkaido, and the Nemuro Peninsula (43°20′N, 145°40′E) on the Pacific coast of eastern Hokkaido Cetacean remains and harpoon heads found in these sites suggest that the inhabitants relied greatly on hunting marine mammals The Onkoromanai Site near Wakkanai (45°25′N, 141°40′E), on the northwestern tip of Hokkaido at the southwest opening of the Okhotsk Sea, covered a long historical period from the late Jomon Culture, Okhotsk Culture, and Ainu Culture (Kaneko 1973, in Japanese) and produced relicts of acorn barnacles, sea urchins, sea shells, fish (16 species), birds (21 species), and mammals (24 species) The mammal specimens include one individual each of the killer whale, bottlenose dolphin, Pacific white-sided dolphin, and Dall’s porpoise Although these alone may not be enough evidence of a marine mammal fishery, the conclusion is supported by artifacts found together with the remains

Among the Okhotsk Culture sites, two sites, Kabukai-A on Rebun Island (45°20′N, 141°00′E) and the Matawakka shell mound on Rishiri Island (45°10′N, 141°14′E) in the northeastern Sea of Japan near the southwest opening of the Okhotsk Sea, have been well examined for marine mammal remains The Kabukai-A Site has produced detachable harpoon heads and remains of the 10 species of cetaceans (with minimum numbers of individuals in parentheses): Pacific white-sided dolphin (11), harbor porpoise (4), Dall’s porpoise (5), pilot whale (25), false killer whale (5), sperm whale (2), ziphiids (1), humpback whale (6), minke whale (1), and North Pacific right whale (2) (Kasuya 1975, 1981, in Japanese) Many of these species were found in multiple strata; pilot whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins were found in almost every stratum No gray whale remains were found While some of the cetacean remains may represent stranded animals, there can be no doubt that people of the site lived by hunting marine mammals with hand harpoons

It would be difficult to drive large strong-swimming cetaceans into a harbor with rowed boats Driving Dall’s and harbor porpoises, which live in small schools and swim in a way difficult to predict, would be lost even if driven with numerous boats (except at locations geographically and behaviorally suited for driving) However, if one is patient, it is possible to harpoon these porpoises in nearshore waters The Inuit hunt seals and dolphins with hand harpoons, and my Canadian friend has used a shotgun to collect harbor porpoises for study Other more gregarious coastal species are easier targets of driving, for example, bottlenose and common dolphins

Yahata (1943, in Japanese) reported 24 needle cases, believed to be made of bird bones, from the Bentenjima Site

ern Hokkaido Two of these had on them drawings depicting scenes of cetacean hunting The top panel of Figure 22 shows a whale and a small boat with a standing harpooner and six oarsmen The whale and boat are connected with two lines This scene reminds me of the minke whale hunt by Ainu in Volcano Bay described by Natori (1945, in Japanese) The identity of the cetacean drawn on this needle case is uncertain, but it could be a minke or gray whale Another needle case from the same site also depicts a whaling scene (second panel of Figure 22)

The two whaling scenes do not show use of a buoy, but such a scene is on one of the 21 needle cases of the Okhotsk Culture reported by Tsuboi (1908, 1909, both in Japanese) from Aniwa Bay, southern Sakhalin (third panel of Figure 22) Seven or eight persons are in the boat, which is connected to a submerged baleen whale with a line Another line connects the ship and a buoy The shape of the lower lip suggests that the whale on the left is a gray whale and the whale on the right could be the same (Tsuboi assumed the right-side one was a humpback whale) It was usual for such needle cases to have two similar drawings arranged symmetrically Gray whales regularly migrated to the coasts of Hokkaido in the nineteenth century They were particularly common in the Teshio (c.  44°40′N) and Oshima (41°30′N-42°40′N) regions on the Sea of Japan coasts of western Hokkaido and the Kitami Region (c. 144°E)

Japanese) Sato (1900-1902, in Japanese) reported an oldstyle whaling operation from Haboro (44°20′N, 141°40′E) on the Sea of Japan coast of northwestern Hokkaido that took 26 gray whales in 1889 and 27 in 1890 The fishing season was from April to June

Tsuboi (1908, in Japanese) reported another needle case from southern Sakhalin with an engraving depicting a Dall’s porpoise (bottom panel of Figure 22) The right half was damaged He reported that other six needle cases depict something that looks like a buoy, but certain interpretation was not possible The needle cases discussed earlier suggest that people of the Okhotsk Culture hunted cetaceans with hand harpoons

Records of hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises before the Meiji Revolution in the 1860s are scanty Such records increased after the revolution, possibly reflecting the government’s attempt to promote fishing industries Mizuno (1883, in Japanese) stated that Japanese fisheries for dolphins and porpoises used nets in coastal waters and lances in offshore waters and that in the waters near the Izu Peninsula (34°36′N-35°05′N, 138°45′E-139°10′E, which is a part of Shizuoka Prefecture) people used lances for fishing for cetaceans This statement does not match well with my understanding that the dolphin fishery on the Izu coasts was an important large-scale fishing activity of the region since the seventeenth century and that the method was driving (Chapter 3)

Hattori (1887, in Japanese) listed the following four major regions of hunting dolphins and porpoises:

1 Hokkaido, northern island of Japan at 41°20′N-45°30′N, 139°20′E-145°50′E

2 Rikuchu (ie, Iwate Prefecture, 38°59′N-40°27′N), Rikuzen (ie, Miyagi Prefecture, 37°54′N-38°59′N), and Iwaki (ie, Fukushima Prefecture, 36°52′N-37°54′N) on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu

3 The Awa Region (ie, southern part of Chiba Prefecture), the Izu Peninsula, and Kii (ie, Wakayama Prefecture, 33°25′N-34°15′N, 135°00′E-136°00′E) on the Pacific coast of central Honshu

4 Noto Peninsula (Sea of Japan coast of central Honshu) and Hizen (32°30′N-34°45′N, 128°30′E-130°00′E), which includes the Saga and Nagasaki Prefectures in northwestern Kyushu

He then stated that large catches were obtained with nets such as the haya-uchi-ami, sanbyaku-ami, and tome-ami but harpoons were also used Although he did not describe the nature of these nets or of the harpoons, such names appeared in the operation of the drive fishery on the Izu coast (Chapter  3) It  seems to me that commercial fisheries for dolphins or

fisheries

As implements for a hand-harpoon fishery were inexpensive and could be used with limited experience for a broad variety of targets, fishing for marine mammals with hand harpoons could have occurred widely However, it would not have been an important method for commercial hunting of dolphins and porpoises in the nineteenth century, because of the limited efficiency carried out on small rowed boats or sailboats Thus, the large-scale hand-harpoon fisheries for small cetaceans probably had to await the introduction of motordriven fishing vessels

Japanese traditional whaling could have had its origin in a hand-harpoon fishery, and we see similar equipment in both operations Early Japanese whaling in Mikawa Bay (at 34°45′N, 137°00′E), which was mentioned in the history of Japanese old-type whaling (Chapter 1), used hand harpoons with detachable harpoon heads Choshu-zasshi (Miscellaneous Records of Choshu) by Naito (1770, in Japanese) stated that they first threw a haya-mori (or quick harpoon) to connect the whale and boat The haya-mori was lightweight and equipped with a detachable head This action was followed by the use of the heavier denchu-mori, which had a thick asymmetrical harpoon head fixed to a heavy wooden shaft with a rod of soft iron that could be bent easily The heavy denchu-mori would have had greater power but a shorter throwing range Gei-ki (Records of Whales) written in the late eighteenth century and reprinted by Hashiura (1969, in Japanese) showed drawings of whaling tools used by whalers in Taiji (33°36′N, 135°57′E), Wakayama Prefecture One of the drawings depicts a hand harpoon named chokiri. It had a detachable head, and the name is similar to choki used by recent Japanese fishermen for their hand harpoon. However, I could not confirm the use of harpoons with detachable heads in whaling operations of the subsequent period Nakazono (2009, in Japanese) made a similar observation Net whaling in Ikitsuki (33°20′N, 129°25′E), northeastern Kyushu, and in Taiji in the early nineteenth century (Oyamada 1832, Hashiura 1969, both in Japanese) did not use harpoons with detachable heads Drawings of harpoons called haya-mori showed a fixed head, that is, the harpoon was more like the denchumori Net whaling started around 1775-1777 (Chapter 1) The whales were entangled in nets before being harpooned This probably made it unnecessary to connect the boat to the whale at a distance with a lightweight harpoon with detachable head

Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) described the history of the  Japanese hand-harpoon fishery in the nineteenth to early twentieth century In the middle of the nineteenth century, the fishery was operated in the Awa Region in the southern part of Chiba Prefecture, for swordfish Later, with the introduction of motor-driven vessels, Wakayama and Oita Prefectures (32°45′N-33°37′N, 131°11′E-132°06′E, northeastern Kyushu facing the Inland Sea) joined the fishery Sometime later, H Iwasa of Mie Prefecture (33°45′N-35°00′N, 136°00′E-136°55′E, Pacific coast of central Honshu) invited a technical advisor from Chiba (presumably the Awa region: TK) and started a hand-harpoon fishery for dolphins and

men led by K Koyama of Miyagi Prefecture started hunting dolphins and porpoises using both hand harpoons and shotguns, which was copied by many followers However, most of these fishermen took many species, including small cetaceans, fur seals, seals, tunas, and swordfish (Matsuura 1942, in Japanese)

Otsuchi-cho Gyogyo-shi (History of Fisheries of Otsuchi Town) by Otsuchi-cho Gyogyo-shi Hensan Iinkai (Editorial Committee for History of Fisheries of Otsuchi Town) (1983, in Japanese) noted that fishermen in Otsuchi (39°21′N, 141°54′E), Iwate Prefecture, made a great contribution to the establishment of hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises They learned the method from hand-harpoon fishermen from Chiba Prefecture (presumably the Awa region: TK) who started to visit the Otsuchi Area around 1921 for hunting of dolphins, porpoises, and swordfish However, the book states on another page that fishermen in Kirikiri, a village next to Otsuchi, invited a technical advisor from Chiba Prefecture and started dolphin and porpoise hunting around 1917 and that a similar attempt was made by fishermen in Hakozaki, another village next to Otsuchi These records suggest that fishermen of Iwate Prefecture on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu established the hand-harpoon fishery for dolphins and porpoises around 1920

In the 1920s, they used a detachable harpoon head on a wooden shaft 24-30 cm in diameter and 36-45 m long The History of Fisheries of Otsuchi Town states that E Shozushima introduced the use of a shotgun to the hand-harpoon fishery around 1932-1933 and greatly increased the efficiency of the fishery and that it was also around this time that a harpooner’s platform was installed on the bow of the harpoon vessel, which had an increased speed of over 10 knots Hirasima and Ono (1944, in Japanese) also stated that the use of a shotgun began around 1924 (sic) by E Shozushima of Iwate Prefecture These improvements were followed by expansion of the fishing range from Chiba in the south to the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin in the north In 1933, 90 fishing families out of 128 in the Akahama Area of Otsuchi Town operated the handharpoon fishery It seems to be true that the use of a shotgun followed by harpooning improved the efficiency of hunting, but it is also true that such operations have had large hit-butlost rates (see Section 23)

Compared with rowed boats, motor-driven vessels increased the efficiency of hunting in two ways One benefit of the latter was the increase in the operation range associated with faster speed The other was in the response of dolphins and porpoises coming to the bow wave where they could be harpooned The History of Fisheries of Otsuchi Town recorded that the governor of Iwate Prefecture promoted the use of engines in the fishery by inviting fishermen to an education class about the machines in 1912 and that 14  fishing vessels in Otsuchi Town were equipped with engines in the next year The number of motor-driven fishing vessels in Iwate Prefecture increased rapidly in the early 1910s This date was, at least in Iwate Prefecture, earlier than that in the conclusion by Kasuya (1978) that establishment

been in the 1920s when the number of motor-driven vessels increased rapidly in Japanese costal fisheries When World War II ended in 1945, there were 26 hand-harpoon vessels in the Akahama Area, where most of the hand-harpoon fishermen of Otushi Town lived (Committee for History of Fisheries of Otsuchi Town 1983, in Japanese)

Dainihon Suisan Kai (Fishery Association of Great Japan) promoted Japanese fisheries and has published a journal since 1882 for the development of fisheries and introduction of new technology, including new technology for marine mammal fisheries and utilization of the catch All the cetacean-related articles in the journal are available in “Hogeisen,” a private publication by K Takeuchi There were numerous articles published in the journal both on whaling and fisheries for dolphins and porpoises before 1906, but there were only whaling articles after that date This indicates that the Japanese fishery community lost interest in dolphin and porpoise fisheries around that time Modern whaling was first attempted in Japan by Enyo Hogei (Offshore Whaling) Co in 1898, and Nihon Enyo-gyogyo (Japan Offshore Fishery) Co established in the next year succeeded in the modern whaling enterprise This was followed by the establishment of too many whaling companies, and the industry and government made an effort to merge 12 of them into 1, Toyo Hogei (Oriental Whaling) Co in 1909, which was the first step in the government action to reduce whaling vessels that continued after World War II (Chapter 7) The establishment of the modern whaling industry was possibly the major reason why Japanese fishing communities lost interest in small-cetacean fisheries, which suffered by comparison to whaling in producing meat or oil Most of the small-cetacean fisheries probably lost public attention and developed into local fisheries for the subsequent period of nearly 20 years

Dolphin and porpoise fisheries again received public attention when Japan started a move toward World War II (also called the Pacific War) Japan established a puppet government in Manchuria in northeastern China in 1932, withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933, and started war with China in July 1937 Japan called the conflict an “incident” rather than war, because the government was afraid of a ban on trade of military materials from the United States However, Japan finally started war with the United States in December 1941, which almost completely stopped importation of military materials greatly needed for the war

To prepare for this situation, the Japanese government established the “Tosei Kyoku” (Control Bureau [of Materials]) in 1937 and decided in July 1938 to allow use of leather only for military purposes The prohibition on leather for public use included shark and whale leathers (Kamiyama 1943, in Japanese) Responding to this situation, the whaling companies in 1938 established a company aimed at production of whale leather Then in January 1939, the government organized one guild by uniting the then existing 6 companies producing marine leathers (ie, shark, dolphin, and whale leathers), and an additional 13 companies were added to this

war North Pacific pelagic whaling in the summer of 1941 and the last Antarctic whaling in the 1940/1941 season Thus, the sources for whale skin became limited to coastal whaling, which was becoming increasingly difficult with US submarines and air raids Under these circumstances, the demand for dolphin and porpoise skin probably increased

The Japanese Antarctic whaling fleets produced oil for export to Europe, and importation of whale meat was prohibited until the 1936/1937 season to protect domestic industries (Kasuya 2000, in Japanese) Thus, it seems that the Japanese market for whaling products was almost fully met with coastal whaling until around 1937 However, importation of Antarctic whale meat was permitted with a maximum limit in the 1937/1938 season, and it was unregulated after the 1938/1939 season The military was the main consumer of whale meat Yoshida (1939, in Japanese) stated that the governor of Mie Prefecture canceled the then existing prohibition of dolphin hunting in offshore waters Thus, it seems to be reasonable to consider that dolphin and porpoise fishing received increased attention not only as a source of leather but also as a source of food and was promoted by the government

Yoshida (1939, in Japanese) wrote an article with a title that translates as Recent Rise of Offshore Dolphin and Porpoise Fishery with Hand Harpoons and reported a case where Taiheiyo Gyogyo (Pacific Fishery) Co Ltd based at Kesennuma (38°54′N, 141°34′E) in Miyagi Prefecture on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu started a small-cetacean fishery in October 1938 using the mother ship Tenjin-maru (200 gross tons), two survey ships (each about 70 gross tons), and two chartered local hand-harpoon vessels previously used for swordfish (each about 15-19 gross tons) The fleet used hand harpoons purchased from Awa in the southern part of Chiba Prefecture The fleet took 436 dolphins and porpoises by November 15, 1938 Operation of this fleet was also described in Matsuura (1942, in Japanese), which will be mentioned later The objective of this company was to obtain materials for dolphin leather, selling the salted skins to a leather factory The meat was salted or dried for human consumption but was not welcomed by the market

Yoshida (1939, in Japanese) recorded the landing of dolphins and porpoises at some selected ports in 1935-1937, which was before the operation of the earlier mentioned Taiheiyo Gyogyo Co Ltd The landings at Kesen-numa were 69,623 kg in 1935, 98,775 kg in 1936, and 60,735 kg in 1937 The average of the 3 years was 76,376 kg If we use his average figure of 56 kg/animal, the annual average landings were of 1360 individuals These were taken by tuna longline fishermen on the way to the fishing grounds and sold for human consumption as well as bait for a longline shark fishery In addition to these, the author recorded a total of 29,685 kg (ie, estimated 530 individuals) landed at Miyako (39°38′N, 141°57′E), Kamaishi (39°16′N, 141°53′E), and Ofunato (39°05′N, 141°43′E) on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu during January to March 1937, which could have been taken by local fishermen operating in nearshore waters in winter Combining the two yields an annual take of about 1900 individuals This figure covers

not know the number of ports where small cetaceans were landed in those days in the Sanriku Region (Pacific coast of northern Honshu from 37°54′N to 41°35′N), including the three prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate, and Aomori (40°27′N-41°30′N, 139°42′E-141°40′E) Kasuya (1982) recorded that the landing ports in the region varied with time, and the number was between 6 and 7 ports in 1963-1968, 7 ports in 1969-1971, and 8 ports in 1972-1975 During this 13-year period, the total winter landings varied annually between 4600 and 8000 individuals I would suspect that the total landings of dolphins and porpoises in the Sanriku Region prior to the expansion around the wartime period could have been 15-2 times that figure (around 3000 or at most 4000 individuals)

In response to the rapid expansion of small-cetacean fisheries in Japan, Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) wrote a long article titled Iruka-no Hanashi (Story about Dolphins and Porpoises) in a Japanese journal He was a cetacean biologist and in a position to be up on new information on Japanese fisheries as a staff person of the Whaling Section of the Fisheries Agency In the article, he described the small-cetacean fauna off Japan, the current status of small-cetacean fisheries in Japan, and the future of such fisheries He explained that hunting of small cetaceans using a small catcher boat and small-caliber harpoon cannon (small-type whaling of today) was regulated only in Chiba Prefecture (Chapter 4), that drive fisheries for dolphins and porpoises were licensed by the Fishery Act for opportunistic operations of particular local communities in waters facing them (Chapter 3), and that other types of hunting of dolphins and porpoises were unregulated (eg, hand-harpoon fishery) Then, he reported that in response to the recent increase of the price of meat and needs for leather, catches of small cetaceans saw a great increase, that is, a total catch of 1,000 large delphinids such as pilot whales and 45,000 smaller dolphins and porpoises sold for a total of 2,500,000 yen in 1941 in all of Japan, and that the fishery in Shizuoka Prefecture (which is almost equal in size to the fishery on the Izu Peninsula) recorded an extremely rare catch of several tens of thousands in the spring hunt in 1942 (Chapter 3) The total small-cetacean catch of this period was comparable to the level we later experienced in the late 1980s, although the species composition was much different

Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) further stated that the Taiheiyo Gyogyo Co Ltd using the Tenjin-maru fleet made the first attempt at a dolphin and porpoise fishery covering nearly 12  months from November 2, 1938, to December 7, 1939, but discontinued it due to economic failure It was before the wartime boom recorded in 1941 The Tenjin-maru fleet used a total of nine vessels, including four hand-harpoon boats (10-19 gross tons) that also used shotguns, two smalltype whalers of the present-day definition (70-71 gross tons), and three transporters (40-200 gross tons) All these vessels did not work at the same time, but usually one transporter and 1-5 catcher boats worked together The operation ranged from Cape Muroto (33°15′N, 134°10′E) on the Pacific coast to Iturup Island (45°N, southern Kuril Islands), with the main operation areas off Taiji (Wakayama Prefecture), Kesen-numa

Okhotsk coast of Hokkaido, with a short segment off the Sea of Japan coast of Hokkaido

According to Iruka Gyogyo Jisseki (Results of the Small Cetacean Fishing) by Taiheiyo Gyogyo Co Ltd (unpublished, dated 1940, in Japanese), the hunting equipment used by the fleet included hand harpoons, 1 rifle, 11 shotguns, 3 Greener guns, 1 shoulder gun for a harpoon with line, 1 Norwegiantype whaling cannon (55  mm), 1 triple-barreled whaling cannon, and 1 five-barreled whaling cannon The company chartered the vessels with whaling cannon (small-type whaling vessels of the present day) A hand harpoon was used after a shotgun, as was usual at the time The catch composition is in Table 21 The record does not distinguish between the two color types of Dall’s porpoise, most of which were taken in March to September in waters within 20-30 nautical miles from the Sanriku coast and at sea surface temperature below 19°C They were stated to be infrequent in offshore waters The large number of takes of ma-iruka, believed to be the short-beaked common dolphin, Delphinus delphis, was stated to have been made mostly from September to December at surface water temperature of 12°C-19°C found 50-100 nautical miles off the Sanriku coast It was stated that the ma-iruka was found in warmer and more offshore waters than the Dall’s porpoise The offshore operation may explain the higher proportion of common dolphins in the catch I did not encounter such distant operations when I worked on the hand-harpoon fishery for Dall’s porpoises in the 1970s

The skin (with blubber) was salted and sold to a leather factory The meat was sold fresh, salted, or dried Oil was tried out from the head and mandible but was not sold at the time of the report The company had total sales of 44,618 yen (Matsuura 1942 reported a total sale of 55,855 yen, which possibly includes later sales) against total expenditures of

TABLE 2.1 Takes in Small-Cetacean Fishery by Taiheiyo Gyogyo Kaisha (Pacific Fisheries) from November 2, 1938 to December 7, 1939

ure, the information obtained helped the Iwate hunters operate the fishery off the Hokkaido coasts in the summer of later years

Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) recorded the magnitude of the hand-harpoon fishery around 1941 There were 267 handharpoon vessels that used only hand harpoons (no shotguns) The boats were 5-6 gross tons, used for family business, and did not specialize in dolphin and porpoise hunting; they sought other species depending on season or opportunity of encounter They were grouped into two regions:

1 250 vessels along the coast of the southern Sea of Japan: 246 in Hyogo Prefecture (134°20′E-135°50′E) and 4 in Tottori Prefecture (133°20′E-134°20′E)

2 17 vessels on the Pacific coast of central Honshu: 7 in Mie Prefecture, 6 in Wakayama Prefecture, 3 in Shizuoka Prefecture, and 1 in Kanagawa Prefecture

These figures for Hyogo Prefecture agree with Matsui and Uchihashi (1943, in Japanese) and Noguchi (1943, in Japanese), who reported a new hand-harpoon fishery for dolphins and porpoises that operated from March to June off the coast of their prefecture

In addition to what was given earlier, there were 87 vessels that were equipped with hand harpoons and shotguns and considered by Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) to be more specialized for hunting small cetaceans (Table 22) There were 48 such vessels in Iwate Prefecture, and operational details were recorded for 24 of them by the same author I will try

of the time Out of the 24 Iwate vessels, 21 belonged to the Kirikiri Area of Otsuchi Town and operated from December 1941 to May 1942 in waters from Choshi (35°42′N, 140°51′E) to Miyako on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu (ie, in the area and season when Dall’s porpoises were expected to predominate) and got an average of 338 animals/vessel for the season (the maximum was 700) with an average of 56  animals/ vessel/month These figures allow one to calculate the total catch of the 21 vessels at 7098 animals In addition to these 21 vessels, another 3 boats operated longer (about 9 months from December 1941 to August 1942) in waters extending from Choshi to the Okhotsk Sea, including all the waters along the Pacific coast of northern Japan, and recorded an average take of 1160 animals/vessel (the maximum was 1500) and monthly average of 128 animals/vessel Thus, the total take of the three vessels could have been 3480 animals The 24 Iwate vessels with statistics took 7,098 + 3,480 = 10,578 animals that were sold at 479,700 yen The three vessels that expanded operation to the Pacific and Okhotsk Sea coasts of Hokkaido got an over three times greater monthly average compared with operations off the Pacific coast of northern Honshu One reason was that the northern operation was in summer when weather and sea conditions were better than during the winter off the Pacific coast of Honshu, and another reason would have been that there were present dalli-type Dall’s porpoises that wintered in the Sea of Japan and were possibly less depleted

One way of estimating total catch by the 87 vessels in Table 22 is to extrapolate catch of the 21 Iwate vessels operating in the winter (338 animals/vessel/season) to 63 vessels of similar equipment but not accompanied by operation data This calculation of 10,578 + 338 × 63 yields 31,872 animals for the 1941/1942 season Another possible calculation is to assume that the proportion of vessels of longer operation was the same for the whole fleet (ie, 3:21) This assumption leads to an estimate of the total catch by the 87 vessels of (1,160 × 3 + 338 × 21) × 87/24 = 38,345 animals for the 1941/1942 season The latter figure will be an overestimate of the catch, because the Iwate vessels were known to have pursued the fishery most vigorously I suspect that the former figure, about 32,000 animals, would be closer to the number of small cetaceans taken by the 87 vessels using hand harpoons and shotguns in waters from Chiba to Hokkaido in the 1941/1942 season This figure does not include those taken by over 260 hand-harpoon vessels that did not specialize in marine mammals

Most of the earlier estimated 32,000 individuals would have been Dall’s porpoises, with some warmwater species such as common dolphins, if they were taken in the fall season in offshore waters, which is less likely In addition to this, the drive fishery along the coast of the Izu Peninsula recorded a catch close to 10,000 (Table 314) The sum of these figures results in a figure that is close to the 45,000 stated by Matsuura (1942, in Japanese) as the total catch of small cetaceans in Japan in 1941 The Izu fishery recorded a peak catch of about 20,100 in 1942 and declined thereafter, presumably due to the difficulty of operating in the war environment (Chapter 3)

TABLE 2.2 Magnitude of Small-Cetacean Fisheries Using Hand Harpoon and Shotgun in 1941

earlier mentioned Taiheiyo Gyogyo Co Ltd that it carried out a small-cetacean fishery in 1937 (the correct date was 1938/1939: TK) using the Kinyo-maru and three other Iwate vessels and found a good fishing ground off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido, off the Shiretoko Peninsula (northeastern part of Hokkaido between the southeastern Okhotsk Sea and Nemuro Strait), and in the Okhotsk Sea and that this triggered annual operation of the fishery by Iwate vessels using Abashiri on the Okhotsk Sea coast of Hokkaido as a base port In 1943, they operated off Abashiri from late June to late September using vessels of 20 tons equipped with 80 hp engines and landed and processed the catch at Abashiri The meat was sold at 57  yen/animal or 097 yen/kg, and the blubber at 32  yen/ animal or 131 yen/kg The total was about 90  yen/ animal During the 1943 season mentioned earlier, they fished on 62 days, resulting in 351 vessel days, and caught a total of xxxx (sic) animals (the number was expressed in this way presumably to hide economic information during the war) The maximum catch of 264 animals/vessel/day was recorded on August 22 This daily catch was only about 10% of the figure reported for the post-World War II operation off Iwate Prefecture reported by Wilke et al (1953)

Using monthly figures of operation days and vessel days recorded by Hirashima and Ono (1944, in Japanese), the monthly averages of fishing vessels are calculated at 40 in June, 44 in July, 76 in August, and 59 in September This assumes that all the vessels have operated on days of suitable weather and underestimates the real number of vessels engaged in the fishery However, the calculation seems to suggest that the number of Japanese hand-harpoon vessels for small cetaceans that operated in the Okhotsk Sea in 1943 was less than 10 even in the peak month This is greater than the three vessels recorded for the 1941/1942 season (Matsuura 1942, in Japanese) but smaller than the recent magnitude of the fishery The upper range of the annual catch in the Okhotsk Sea operation is estimated by multiplying the maximum figure of 264 animals/vessel/day by 351 vessel days of the season, which results in 9266 animals I suspect that the real catch of the season was probably about half that figure, that is, around 5000 animals During the operation, fishermen first shot the surfacing animal and then retrieved it with a hand harpoon If we accept the statement of Wilke et al (1953) that one-third of the carcasses were lost before retrieval, the real number of dolphins and porpoises killed by the fishery could have been 15 times the given figure

A new hand-harpoon fishery for small cetaceans was recorded in Hyogo Prefecture in the southern Sea of Japan (Matsui and Uchihashi 1943, in Japanese) It started in 1940 following an effort by the Fishery Experimental Laboratory of Hyogo Prefecture to improve the utilization of small cetaceans The blubber was used for leather after extracting oil by pressing or with a solvent, meat for human consumption, and bone for fertilizer The extracted oil was reportedly to be made into a lubricant and a substitute for gasoline (Noguchi 1943, in Japanese) The third volume of Hogei-benran (Whaling Handbook) by Nihon Hogei-gyo Suisan Kumiai

edible oil, fuel oil, lubricant oil, and glycerin for dynamite as the whale products of the time Although I am unable to confirm a gasoline substitute created from cetacean oil, it could have been mixed with diesel oil as practiced by Japanese Antarctic whaling fleets in the 1980s Although Noguchi (1943, in Japanese) wrote that the fishery took Dall’s porpoises and common dolphins, the accompanying photograph shows a Pacific white-sided dolphin, which was supported by the statistics of Noguchi (1946, in Japanese)

The dockside price of small cetaceans increased in Hyogo Prefecture from 8-9 yen/animal in 1940 to 35 yen in 1941 and 70-80 yen in 1942, which invited a rapid increase of the catch (Matsui and Uchihashi 1943, in Japanese) Noguchi (1946, in Japanese) reported monthly statistics of small cetaceans landed at Kinosaki Port (35°39′N, 134°50′E), Hyogo Prefecture The annual total was 211 animals in 1941, 785 in 1942, 1622 in 1943, and 636 in 1944 The decline in 1944 might reflect increased difficulty in operations due to increased enemy activities The total of 2998 animals was composed of 2731 Dall’s porpoises (91%) and 267 Pacific white-sided dolphins (9%) During the early part of the season (middle February to early May), the catch of Dall’s porpoises exceeded that of Pacific white-sided dolphins (1841:20), the two species were taken in almost equal numbers in mid-May (18:15), and only Pacific white-sided dolphins were taken in late May to late June (0:14)

Statistics on small cetaceans are scarce for the period near the end of the war Censorship might have prevented publication of statistics, but there are cases where authors voluntarily omitted such information from their articles Matsuura (1943, in Japanese) stated that due to the increased demand for meat and leather materials, catches of small cetaceans by hand harpoon and so-called small-type whaling increased greatly in 1941, to 1,000 large delphinids and 45,000 small delphinids, and that large portions of the small-delphinid catch were obtained from drive fisheries on the Izu coast in Shizuoka Prefecture Noguchi (1946, in Japanese) reported a similar figure for 1941 and further stated that the fishery in Shizuoka Prefecture (which is almost identical with the Izu fishery) recorded landing of about 28,000 animals, of which about 20,000 were from Arari (34°50′N, 138°46′E), 4,000 from Tago (34°48′N, 138°46′E), and 4,000 from Heda (34°58′N, 138°47′E) Both Matsuura (1943, in Japanese) and Noguchi (1946, in Japanese) expressed their concern about depletion of dolphin stocks by the Izu fishery

Leather was made from the external dense layers of cetacean skin left after removing the inner loose layer of high fat content Fat also has to be removed from the external layers, a laborious process Further details of the process are in Doi (1902, in Japanese) and Ishida (1917, in Japanese) Kurakami (1925, in Japanese) stated an optimistic view of the early time that dolphin and porpoise skin could be used for shoes, but there was another view that among cetacean leathers those made from the head skin of sperm whales was the best (Omura et al 1942; Matsuura 1943, both in Japanese) Maeda and Teraoka (1958, in Japanese) stated that leather made from

since 1938 for shoe soles, personal, and industrial belts and that other cetacean leathers were less common due to the high cost of production Wilke et al (1953) recorded the use of dolphin and porpoise skin for low-quality leather in the postWorld War II period in Japan Leather made from the skin of small cetaceans was of inferior quality

This should not be confused with beluga leather, which was highly valued for durability and water resistance and once used for shoes and bags (Goode 1884) Production of cetacean leather probably ended in Japan sometime after recovery from the postwar economy In the 1980s, I could find products of cetacean leather sold only in a gift shop in Ayukawa (38°18′N, 141°31′E), a whaling town in Miyagi Prefecture They were of novelty value only, such as purses made of the penis skin of sperm whales or ventral grooves obtained from fetuses of Balaenoptera sp

After the end of World War II in August 1945, Japan suffered from severe shortage of food and high inflation, and the government encouraged various fishery activities, including whaling and small-cetacean fisheries In those days, drive fisheries were licensed by the Fishery Act of the time to particular communities having the tradition of monopolizing particular nearshore waters for the purpose (Section 22 and Chapter 3), but hand-harpoon fisheries for marine animals including small cetaceans were left unregulated and operated everywhere off the Japanese coasts (Matsuura 1943, in Japanese; Wilke et al 1953)

The postwar operation of hand-harpoon fisheries for small cetaceans was recorded by Wilke et  al (1953) and Noguchi (1946, in Japanese), but the latter has some ambiguity in dates dealt with The former was authored by the United States and Japanese scientists who jointly worked on a fur seal research vessel and will be cited in this section The hand-harpoon fishing of the time operated in the Pacific waters off northern Honshu and Hokkaido and in the southern Okhotsk Sea coast of Hokkaido Hand-harpoon fishermen started the season in March off Choshi, Chiba Prefecture, reached Hosoura (38°40′N, 141°30′E), Miyagi Prefecture, by the middle of March, and operated off Iwate Prefecture (38°59′N-40°27′N) until June From June to summer, the fishing ground moved to the coast of Hokkaido (Pacific and Okhotsk Sea coasts) In autumn, the fishermen resumed operation off the Pacific coast of Ibaraki (35°45′N-36°50′N) and Fukushima (36°50′N-37°52′N) Prefectures They operated within 30 nautical miles of the coast but mostly within 10-15 nautical miles This pattern differs slightly from the current pattern of operation for the Dall’s porpoise fishery, which operates in early summer off the west coast of Hokkaido (northeastern Sea of Japan), presumably to avoid foggy seas off eastern Hokkaido Wilke et al (1953) did not mention the winter operation off Iwate Prefecture for Dall’s porpoises, but Uchida (1954, in Japanese) reported that a good season

Prefecture and moved south with the progress of the seasons to off Choshi

Uchida (1954, in Japanese) stated that the fishing grounds for Pacific white-sided dolphins, right whale dolphins, and common dolphins differed from those for Dall’s porpoises Because it was known from offshore surveys of the North Pacific that the first two species were distributed in latitudes between the striped dolphin and the Dall’s porpoise (Miyashita 1993), the fishing ground for these two species was to the south of the ground for Dall’s porpoises The common dolphins were reported to be found further offshore (Section 22)

Wilke et al (1953) cited statements of fishermen that the demand for small-cetacean meat was far greater than the supply and that the number of operating vessels increased annually and in 1949 reached the level of prewar operations Because the per-vessel catch exceeded the prewar level, the total Japanese take of small cetaceans in those days could have exceeded 46,000 animals, that is, the total of all species taken by various fisheries in 1941 (Matsuura 1943, in Japanese) The Japanese government placed all fishery products under a rationing system until 1949 and set the price of dolphins and porpoises at 2000-3000 yen/animal, but Wilke et  al (1953) stated that most of the catch entered the black market, where it got 25 times the government price Thus, it is impossible to expect correct fishery statistics for the time The statistics for 1941 given by Matsuura (1943, in Japanese) were also obtained while the government controlled the circulation and would not have included the fraction that entered the underground market However, the government would have controlled the circulation better during the war because of higher social cooperation, so I expect the statistics would be less biased from that period Wilke et al (1953) stated that all fishery products including small cetaceans were removed from the rationing system in 1949 and that the prices dropped Decline in price and free circulation could have followed improvement of the balance between demand and supply

Wilke et  al (1953) reported the species composition of small cetaceans landed at Onahama (36°57′N, 140°54′E) on the Pacific coast of Fukushima Prefecture from May to June 1949 as 465 right whale dolphins, 697 Pacific white-sided dolphins, and 1 truei-type Dall’s porpoise, for a total of 1163 In 1966, I purchased a right whale dolphin in Ayukawa on the Pacific coast of Miyagi Prefecture It had been in a freezer for a long period unsold because flavor of the species was believed to be inferior to that of the Dall’s porpoise However, even such nonpreferred species were hunted shortly after the war The use of small cetaceans taken by the hand-harpoon fishery in around 1949 was as follows The skin and blubber were used mostly for extracting oil and some for low-quality leather Melon and mandibles were for extraction of high-quality machine oil Meat, heart, liver, and kidney were for human consumption, and the remaining portion of the viscera and the bones were used as fertilizer However, the viscera were discarded in the sea before returning to port in northern Japan (Wilke et al 1953) When I investigated the Dall’s porpoise fisheries in Iwate Prefecture in the 1970s, the blubber was not

sumption, which was also the way the animal was consumed in Shizuoka Prefecture and surrounding regions

Wilke et  al (1953) recorded the use of shotguns in the hand-harpoon fishery Some of the vessels caught as many as 200 animals in a day, but one-third of the animals shot with a gun sank and were lost before retrieval with a hand harpoon This means that their operation was wasteful; 15 times as many as landed were killed Hand-harpoon boats of the time had a platform on the bow for multiple harpooners, were about 20-30 gross tons, were equipped with hot-bulb engine (also called semidiesel engine, which had a heated hollow bulb on the cylinder head for ignition), and had a speed of 7-10 knots Each vessel had 10-12 crewmen, 2-3 shotguns, and 20-30 hand harpoons However, Matsuura (1943, in Japanese) and Noguchi (1946, in Japanese) recorded cases of smaller vessels of 7-10 gross tons with 2-3 crewmen

Some Dall’s porpoises will come to the bow of a harpoon boat and play in the bow wave, but others will not approach the vessel (Kasuya 1978) It is not difficult, even without a shotgun, to harpoon individuals playing in the bow wave There are more young animals among those that approach the bow, while adult individuals tend to be at a distance from the vessel Mothers accompanied by their calves avoid the vessel and are hard to approach by chasing (Kasuya and Jones 1984) Porpoise hunters of the time could have used shotguns on such individuals that stayed away from the boat and put a line on them before they sank (Wilke et al 1953)

Shotguns were also used by fur seal hunters in the Sanriku Region on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu The 1911 agreement by four countries (Japan, the United Kingdom for Canada, the United States, and USSR) prohibited pelagic hunting of fur seals because it killed both sexes and was thought to be harmful for the recovery of the population However, in 1940 Japan canceled the agreement and allowed pelagic hunting by Japanese fishermen, presumably as one of the preparation measures for the coming war After the war, the Japanese government prohibited the operation, accepting an order by the General Headquarter of the Allied Nations, and this policy was retained after the peace treaty that came into effect in April 1952 However, many fishermen of the Sanriku Region still owned shotguns with the putative purpose of hunting small cetaceans but were believed to actually have hunted fur seals

Following the new treaty for the protection of the northern fur seal, which was signed in February 1957 and came to effect in October of the same year (Chapter 5), the Japanese government purchased the guns from these fishermen and prohibited the use of guns for hunting of dolphins and porpoises (Ohsumi 1972) The prohibition of guns for small cetaceans, which came to effect in September 1959, was limited to waters north of 36°N and for the period from February 20 to June 20 (Chapter 5)

Uchida (1954, in Japanese) described details of the gear of the hand-harpoon fishery of the time used off the Sanriku Region Each vessel had 2 or 3 shotguns of 10 or 12 caliber, but 8 caliber guns and larger balls were preferred Length

The harpoon consisted of wooden shaft, metal foreshaft, detachable harpoon head, line, and buoy Each vessel had over 30 harpoon shafts made of poles 30-36 mm in diameter and 36-42 m in length and equipped with a metal foreshaft The shaft was made of evergreen oak A foreshaft with one or two prongs was used for hunting dolphins and porpoises A foreshaft with three prongs was used for swordfish For the multiple prongs, short lines tied to each harpoon head were united into a single line Each prong of the foreshaft was inserted into the base of the harpoon head Length of the line depended on target species and water depth, for example, 30 fathoms (off Abashiri) or 50 fathoms (off Sanriku) for Dall’s porpoises, or 100 fathoms for common dolphins and Pacific white-sided dolphins off Sanriku The gunners stood on the platform projecting from the bow of the vessel and shot the animal just before it dived The harpooners stood behind the gunners on the platform and threw the harpoon to secure the animal before it sank

In the 1970s and 1980s when I studied the fishery, oak was no longer in use for the shaft; cheaper imported luan replaced it A gun was not openly used, although some fishermen might have used a shotgun in secret I could identify bullet holes on the bodies of some porpoises landed Length of the wooden shaft depended on vessel size The shaft should be of sufficient length for the harpoon head to reach the sea surface when the harpooner reached down One end of the wooden shaft was inserted into a socket at the base of the foreshaft and secured with a nail, and the tip of the foreshaft was inserted into the socket of the harpoon head together with a piece of soft wood to help firm attachment A harpoon head was made of a shaft, a pair of barbs extending posteriorly from the tip of the shaft, and another barb extending from the base of the shaft The two sets of barbs were placed perpendicular to each other (Figure 21) A thin wire was attached to the harpoon head through a hole at the center of the shaft and connected to a line The line was connected to the wooden shaft and then to a buoy

Once a harpoon hit a porpoise or dolphin, the fishermen threw line and buoy overboard and chased another animal in the school If conditions permitted, they attempted to chase windward while harpooning and then move downwind for retrieving the catches In the 1980s, an electric shocker of 50  V was commonly used between the harpoon strike and throwing the buoy to immobilize the target The electric shocker often caused tetanus and damaged the quality of the meat on part of the body (Chapter 9)

From the late 1960s to the 1980s, I visited fishing ports to examine small cetaceans taken by various fisheries, to collect catch statistics, and to gain opportunities to go out on the vessels In those days, almost every small fishing boat had on board several hand harpoons as a contingency If they found sunfish, dolphins, or porpoises, they would harpoon them to

too small to consume a whole dolphin or porpoise, only internal organs would be consumed and the rest discarded, which I observed on a small-type whaling boat off Abashiri, Okhotsk Sea coast of Hokkaido, that took Dall’s porpoises for food

Occasional use of hand harpoons for hunting marine animals was also seen on research vessels, for example, the Tansei-maru, a research vessel of the Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, and the Hoyo-maru No. 12 a fishing vessel chartered by the Fisheries Agency I was on board the latter vessel chartered in 1982 for the purpose of observation and hand-harpoon sampling of Dall’s porpoises in the offshore North Pacific south of the western Aleutian Islands (Chapter 9) Our breakfast on the vessel was only steamed rice, salted vegetables, and miso soup in a kettle, which never left the cooking stove during the 1-month cruise (water and materials were added daily), and the other meals of the day were also of minimum quality and constant in content In order to get some fresh food, we brought to the table a dish of raw meat and blubber from Dall’s porpoises hunted for our research purpose Such noncommercial marine mammal consumption was common in Japanese coastal fisheries but not recorded by fish markets at the landing ports and escaped the fishery statistics Wholesale fish markets in the fishing ports were usually operated by the fishery cooperative union (FCU) of the region, and in other cases, landing records of the fish markets and also payment by agreement were forwarded to the FCU to which each fisherman belonged FCUs compiled the record into base data for the fishery statistics, put the payment into the account of each fisherman, and collected a levy

When social disorder after World War II ended, commercial operation of Japanese hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises became limited to particular regions The largest was operated for Dall’s porpoises by fishermen in Iwate, Miyagi, and Hokkaido, which was followed by hand-harpoon fisheries for other species in Choshi in Chiba Prefecture and Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture, both on the Pacific coast of central Honshu, and in Nago in Okinawa Prefecture in southwestern Japan Table 110 shows numbers of dolphins and porpoises for each prefecture and fishery type for selected years, and Tables 23 and 24 show numbers of operating bodies in hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises

The large-scale and multispecies hand-harpoon fisheries in the postwar period described by Wilke et  al (1953, see Section 23) in the 1949 season probably ended before 1957, when government statistics as analyzed by Ohsumi (1972, see Section 25) originated We do not have reliable information on the operations during the period from 1949 to 1957

Miyazaki (1983) analyzed the geography of small-cetacean fisheries in Japan for 6 years from 1976 to 1981 and indicated that the drive fisheries and hand-harpoon fisheries took about the same number of small cetaceans but that the species composition greatly differed between them The hand-harpoon fisheries obtained 98% of their catch from Dall’s porpoises, but the drive fisheries got 97% of their catch from striped dolphins and took no Dall’s porpoises Three prefectures in the

Ibaraki Prefecture on the Pacific coast south of the Sanriku Region and Hokkaido Although the three prefectures of Aomori, Iwate, and Miyagi are often combined for statistical purposes into the Sanriku Region, the participation of Aomori in the hand-harpoon fishery for small cetaceans was almost negligible during that period (see Tables 23 and 26) I observed the hand-harpoon fishery of the Iwate and Miyagi fishermen in the 1970s, when the Iwate fishermen took most of the catch and operated the fishery for Dall’s porpoises in the winter (December to April) when there were no other suitable fish species to take (Kasuya 1982) The vessels left port before sunrise with a crew of three or four, searched for porpoises in the rough and cold sea, and returned to port with the catch around sunset

The Dall’s porpoise carcasses, with viscera removed at sea, were landed at the fish market to be weighed and auctioned by dealers The dockside price in 1973 was below 60 yen/kg in the warm season (April to November), higher in December (160 yen), reached a maximum in January (200 yen), and again went down in March to 70 yen In April, their daily take increased, but it could not compensate for the price decline, so there were fewer boats operating In June, they shifted their target to swordfish that migrated there in the warm season and were sold at a higher price than Dall’s porpoises Thus, the landing of Dall’s porpoises in the Sanriku Region was highest in February and March and lowest in September (Figure 23)

Figure 24 shows annual changes in the magnitude of hand-harpoon fisheries in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures in the 10  years beginning in 1962 using statistics of the peak months (January to April) Statistics are not available for the number of vessels that operated the hand-harpoon fisheries for porpoises Instead, I used the number of occasions of landings as an indicator of number of operating vessels There is no known explanation on the very low figure in 1962 In the following years, the number of landings fluctuated annually but showed a slight overall increase When landing occasions reached small peaks in 1965, 1970, and 1973, the total catch also showed a small peak One would expect a correlation between effort and the catch However, catch per fishing effort may have been lower in years of high fishing effort because the amount of fishing effort may change independent of porpoise density on the fishing ground In order to look at this, I calculated average weight per landing (total weight landed/no of occasions of landing) (bottom of Figure 24) This parameter, a substitute for catch per effort, showed an apparent decline from 1960s to the 1970s, while effort showed an apparent increase

This measurement of fishing effort has some problems If a hand-harpoon vessel returns without catch, its fishing effort is totally ignored Also, if a vessel owner considers his catch of the day too small to stop to land it, he will keep the catch  of the day on board to combine it with the catch the following day These factors will cause underestimation of fishing effort and overestimation of catch per effort This could result in underestimating a declining trend in catch per effort If we take into account this bias in the data, the real

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change in the catch per effort in the Dall’s porpoise fishery could have been greater than suggested earlier I interpret the result in Figure 24 to indicate that the Dall’s porpoise fishery off the Sanriku Region maintained the catch nearly stable between 4500 and 7500 individuals by increasing the amount of fishing effort to compensate for a decline in catch per effort during the 1960s to the early 1970s There may have been a decrease in the abundance of Dall’s porpoises migrating into the fishing grounds

The available dockside price of Dall’s porpoises is expressed as yen/kg for carcasses from which only the viscera were removed; it was approximately 100 yen/kg in February 1973 (Figure 23) The average weight of Dall’s porpoises without viscera in the Sanriku Area was 808 kg (Kasuya 1982) Thus, an average daily catch of 4-5 porpoises (Figure 24) was sold at 30,000-40,000 yen, which would leave several thousand yen per crewman after subtracting the cost of fuel and fishing gear If fishing boats that returned without catch and are not recorded in the statistics are included, the average daily earnings per crew member must have been less than this figure As the sea was often rough in the peak winter season of the fishery and nearly half the days were unsuitable for hunting, the income of the porpoise hunter was unstable and at a lower level An owner of a hand-harpoon boat who lived in the fishing town of Otsuchi near the large city of Kamaishi on the Pacific coast told me in the early 1970s that he would rather be a temporary winter worker at any factory in Kamaishi rather than operate the porpoise fishery in winter Thus, a slight

change in the dockside price of porpoises could have affected the motivation of the hunters

Over a period of years, I visited fish markets, which were operated by FCUs or in tight cooperation with them, to collect landing records of dolphins and porpoises in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures (Kasuya 1978, 1982) The catch was believed to be mostly Dall’s porpoises, and the total annual landings were in a range between 416 tons (1967) and 763 tons (1964), which I estimated to be equivalent to 5150 animals and 9440 animals, respectively, by assuming 808 kg/carcass

TABLE 2.4 Hand-Harpoon Vessels Usually Obtained Operation Licenses from Their Prefecture of Registration, but Some of Them Obtained Additional Licenses from Other Prefectures to Broaden the Scope of Their Operation

without viscera The annual mean for 13 years (1963-1975) was 7180 animals

A local porpoise dealer told me that Dall’s porpoises were once sold to the mountainous inland areas of Akita (38°50′N-40°20′N, 139°40′E-141°00′E) and Yamagata (37°45′N-38°50′N, 139°35′E-140°40′E) Prefectures (see Section 13 for similar records in the late nineteenth century) People in these snowy areas used to store a whole porpoise under the snow for food in the winter Such markets had already disappeared when I visited the Sanriku Region in the early 1970s, and one major dealer stationed in Otsuchi bought most of the porpoises landed on the Iwate and Miyagi coasts and sent them daily by truck to Numazu (35°05′N, 138°51′E) and other fish markets in Shizuoka Prefecture Dealers in Shizuoka who bought the Dall’s porpoises separated bones from meat and blubber and sold the edible portion to retailers in the prefecture There was a large demand in Shizuoka and nearby regions for Dall’s porpoises from the Sanriku Region because the supply of striped dolphins from the drive fishery on the Izu coast in Shizuoka Prefecture had declined

visited the Numazu Fish Market to get skulls of Dall’s porpoises for specimens, but he found that all the skulls he examined had a portion of the mandible missing and were unsuitable for his purpose He unfortunately encountered porpoises that I had examined in landing ports in the Sanriku Region from which I extracted teeth for age determination

I found (Kasuya 1982) that landings of Dall’s porpoises in the Sanriku Region were lower in years when landings of striped dolphins on the Izu coast were high and suggested that there might be some common oceanographic factor behind the negative correlation However, there would be another social factor to be considered, that is, the price of porpoises In years when catches of striped dolphins were low, the prices of both striped dolphins and Dall’s porpoises could have been high in Shizuoka markets This could have been reflected in the dockside price of Dall’s porpoises in the Sanriku Region and increased the motivation of the hand-harpoon fishermen to go Dall’s porpoise hunting Thus, the catches of Dall’s porpoises could have been negatively correlated with those of striped dolphins because of market conditions

The hand-harpoon fisheries for Dall’s porpoises showed signs of expansion of catches as well as geographical range in the 1980s (Kasuya and Miyashita 1989, in Japanese) The first change was around 1980, when some Iwate fishermen expanded the winter operation to close to the southern limit of the wintering grounds of the truei-type Dall’s porpoise, that is, off the Pacific coast of Ibaraki Prefecture This made it impossible for them to return to their home port daily but forced them to make a cruise of about one week’s duration, staying at night at the sea (or perhaps in a nearby port) The catch was stored on board and brought back to ports in Iwate Prefecture The fishermen told me that longer trips started in order to save fuel and subsequently the operational range broadened Even if this explanation were accepted, there could have been another reason, for example, to respond to the increased demand of porpoise meat while avoiding competition among vessels This interpretation is supported by the fact that at almost the same time, some of the Iwate fishermen expanded the season to the summer and the fishing grounds to further north, that is, the Pacific coast of Hokkaido Those who operated the fishery in summer off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido returned to Iwate ports with their catch stored on board with ice Some of them were observed operating the hand-harpoon fishery off the Sea of Japan coast of Akita Prefecture (39°07′N-40°20′N) in summer (A Kawamura, pers comm) Then, around 1985, Iwate fishermen further expanded the summer operation to the Okhotsk Sea In the summer of 1988, a total of about 60 vessels, including about 8 Hokkaido vessels, hunted Dall’s porpoises in the Okhotsk Sea (see Section 25) From around 1980 to 1985, both season and grounds for the Dall’s porpoise fishery showed an expansion, and year-round operations resumed as seen in the last peri-war period

There are two major populations of the Dall’s porpoise being fished around Japan: dalli-types that winter in the Sea of Japan and summer in the southern Okhotsk Sea and

ter off the Pacific coast of northern Honshu and summer in the central Okhotsk Sea (Chapter 9) The earlier mentioned historical changes in the operation pattern of the Dall’s porpoise fisheries accompanied change in the targeted populations of the species From the 1920s to the middle 1930s (first stage), Japanese hand-harpoon fisheries exploited the truei-types in their wintering ground off the Pacific coast of northern Honshu From the late 1930s to perhaps the early 1950s (second stage), they operated on both types, dalli-types in their summering ground off the coasts of Hokkaido and in the wintering ground off Hyogo in the southern Sea of Japan and truei-types in their wintering ground From sometime in the 1950s to the early 1980s (third stage), the operations returned to a single population of truei-types in their wintering ground However, since the early 1980s (fourth stage), the hand-harpoon fishery resumed operation on both stocks as in the peri-World War II period

While some fishermen hunted Dall’s porpoises only in the winter season, others pursued the fishery year-round The general operation pattern of the latter in the 1980s was as follows:

From February to April: Sanriku and nearby waters (truei-types)

April: Beginning of move to north From May to June: Northeastern Sea of Japan off

Aomori and Hokkaido (dalli-types in the Sea of Japan)

From July to September: Southern Okhotsk Sea coast of Hokkaido (dalli-types from the Sea of Japan)

From October to December: Pacific coast of Hokkaido (mainly dalli-types from the Sea of Japan) and then to Iwate coast (truei-types)

They apparently avoided foggy Pacific waters off eastern Hokkaido in summer Some of the vessels had freezers on board and operated in cooperation with other vessels Other vessels flensed the catch on board and stored the products in a freezer on land in Hokkaido (eg, Shari, 43°55′N, 144°40′E) The frozen products were either transported on land to Iwate markets (eg, Otsuchi Fish Market) for auction or sold directly to coastal whaling companies such as Nitto Hogei or Nihon Hogei A director of the land station of the latter company in Ayukawa once told me that his station had been purchasing several hundred Dall’s porpoises annually in the 1980s to be processed at the station

Even if the switch by some Iwate fishermen from daily trips to longer fishing trips is explained by economizing on fuel, the expansion of the season to summer and to the Hokkaido coast in the 1980s has another explanation, that is, increased demand and summer price still remaining attractive to the fishermen I believe this is due to a new demand for porpoise meat from a food industry, which had previously sold whale meat Production of whale meat was diminishing in those days, and some whaling companies contacted porpoise hunters or purchased Dall’s porpoises in an attempt to substitute small-cetacean meat for whale meat

in places where people had customarily consumed it, for example, Shizuoka and Wakayama Prefectures, but for other regions the meat, fins, and blubber of small cetaceans were processed into various “whale product” before sending them to the retail market This was confirmed through market sampling (Cipriano and Palumbi 1999) Such a case was also reported in a newspaper in 2002 The Dall’s porpoises sold directly from fishermen to food processors were unlikely to be included in the Fisheries Agency statistics, because the fishery statistics are compiled by prefectural governments from records of FCUs or related fish markets

Japanese coastal whaling on large cetaceans gradually shrank and finally ended by the end of March 1988, leaving only scientific whaling in the Antarctic as a source of whale meat for the Japanese market (Chapter 7) Two years later, in 1990, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) investigated the market for Dall’s porpoises taken by the handharpoon fishery off Sanriku (EIA 1990) The results seem reasonable judging from my earlier experience with the fishery EIA (1990) identified four types of porpoise dealers who purchased porpoises at landing ports The first were local retailers who bought porpoises at wholesale fish markets at the landing ports and sold the meat to local consumers as “porpoise meat” Local supermarkets also belonged to this category The second group consisted of three local porpoise flensers, who flensed carcasses into meat and sold it to food processors Hosaka Shoten in Kesen-numa City purchased porpoises at Otsuchi, Rikuchu Suisan in Yamada Town (39°27′N, 141°57′E) purchased porpoises landed at a nearby fish market, and Sanriku Kokusai Suisan in Kamaishi City purchased porpoises landed in Kamaishi The third group consisted of local food processors; EIA identified 10 of them in the Sanriku Region They processed porpoise meat into nanban-zuke (a kind of marinated meat) The fourth group contained companies that previously operated coastal whaling Del Mar (previous Nitto Whaling Co Ltd) and New Nippo (previous Nihon Whaling Co Ltd) purchased porpoises directly from the harpoon vessels, processed them, and sold the edible portion to food processors This agrees with my observations on the latter company One of the food processors, Kyoshoku, was a member company of Taiyo and operated several factories It produced nanban-zuke at two factories in Chiba City (35°38′N, 140°06′E) and Nagoya City (35°11′N, 136°54′E), and soft-kujira (sausage made of porpoise meat and fish meat) and kujira-bacon from porpoise blubber at a factory in Yamagata The price of Dall’s porpoises at Kamaishi in April 1990 according to EIA (1990) was 200 yen/kg for carcasses weighed after removing the viscera, 45% of which was edible

EIA repeated another survey in 1999 (EIA 1999) Only a small percentage of porpoises landed at wholesale fish markets went to local fish retailers Some of them would purchase one animal to divide among them Most of the remaining carcasses were purchased by local large-scale porpoise flensers, who separated edible portions such as meat, blubber, and fin to sell to local supermarkets and food processors in Tokyo and Shizuoka The porpoises were usually flensed near the

unknown destination Four flensers, Kokusai Suisan, Otuchi Ichirei, Kamaki Shoten and Kobayashi Shoji, were identified as having purchased porpoises at wholesale markets in Otsuchi and Kamaishi Food processors purchase the products from the flensers and processed them into canned meat, salted meat, or marinated meat, which was sold as “whale products” Kokusai Suisan, one of the flensers, processed about 30 carcasses daily

I find some differences between the two reports by EIA The list of final products was more detailed in the 1990 report Kokusai Suisan was noted in both reports, but some of the dealers disappeared in the second report The member companies of the whaling group, New Nippo, Del Mar, and Kyoshoku, are not seen in the second report It is unclear if these differences reflect true changes or are artifacts However, it seems to be true that there were some changes in the dealers in the business For example, I observed that Kikudai Suisan at Otuchi Town, which once purchased almost all the porpoises landed on the Sanriku coast to send them to Shizuoka Prefecture in the 1970s, ceased business in the 1980s

In March 2011 in the small town of Susuma (34°07′N, 131°52′E) in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Honshu, I saw a supermarket that was selling packed salted dry meat of Dall’s porpoises It was labeled as salted red meat of kujira (whale), the material as Dall’s porpoise from Sanriku, and the name of manufacturer as Maruko Shoji in Shimonoseki City (at 33°57′N, 130°56′E) This example clearly indicates that products from dolphins and porpoises still have a wide circulation in Japan The same company also processes and sells products of scientific whaling

Behind the expansion of the hand-harpoon fishery in the 1980s was a decrease in the catch of the whaling industry (Table 15) and a subsequent increase in the price of dolphins and porpoises (Table 321) It is known that under such circumstances some whaling companies contacted handharpoon fishermen to purchase their catch The Japanese government had accepted the International Whaling Commission (IWC) competence on all the baleen whales, sperm whales, and bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon spp) and stopped commercial hunting of these species as of March 1987 (Antarctic whaling) and March 1988 (North Pacific) The scientific whaling program started in the late 1987 in the Antarctic Ocean, expanded to the North Pacific in 1994, and has continued to the present (2014) The accuracy of official whaling statistics in Table 15 is variable among operations It was a common understanding among whale scientists that the true catches in postwar whaling off the Japanese coast (large-type and smalltype whaling) were often greater than the reported figures (Watase 1995; Kasuya 1999; Kondo 2001, three in Japanese; Kasuya 1999; Kasuya and Brownell 1999, 2001; Kondo and Kasuya 2002) The true figures were usually twice or three times the official statistics for Bryde’s and sperm whales, but for some particular months, the reported figures could have exceeded the true catches This happened when the company did too much underreporting in early months of the season and found that the quota would not be reached by the end of

take sperm whales, were well known to have poached them in large numbers They could have underreported takes of minke whales when the fishery was operated with a quota For these reasons, the decline of the supply of whale meat in the 1980s could have been greater than estimated from the official catch statistics in Table 15

Under the shortage of whale meat, coastal whalers contacted small-cetacean fishermen to obtain cetacean meat from them (see the preceding text in this section) Furuki (1989, in Japanese) stated in a monthly magazine about the increase in dockside price of porpoises off Sanriku: “In the recent few years porpoise meat has caught the attention of the people as a replacement for meat from the whaling industries that have been prohibited, and the dockside price of porpoise is over 200 yen/kg, which is nearly twice the price of two years ago The price sometimes reaches 300-400 yen/kg” The price of 300-400 yen/kg equates to an average price of about 30,000 yen/animal He also stated that “as a response to this price increase, some hand-harpoon fishermen moved from opportunistic winter operations to year-round operations” and that “the governor of Iwate Prefecture placed the fishery under a license system in December 1989, and 350 vessels obtained licenses” (Furuki 1989) His statement agrees with the decision of the Fisheries Agency to place all the hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises under control of prefecture governments or Regional Fishery Coordination Committees by the end of 1989 (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993) This was later modified, placing all the hand-harpoon fishermen for small cetaceans under a licensing system of the prefecture governor by April 2002 (Chapter 6)

The Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, all in Japanese) with financial support from the Fisheries Agency studied the hand-harpoon fishery for Dall’s porpoises in 1989-1992 The study included a market survey at the Otsuchi Fish Market and examination of the catch on board the fishing vessels Landings of Dall’s porpoises at the Otsuchi Fish Market represented 52%–93% of the total landings of the species in Japan (Table 25) Thus, information from the Otsuchi Fish Market roughly represents the features of the fishery of the time in Japan

Seasonal patterns of the fishery identified by ICR scientists in 1989-1992 were as follows:

From December to April: Off the Pacific coasts of Ibaraki to Aomori on the Pacific coast in latitudes of 35°45′N-41°30′N

From May to June: Off the Pacific coast (41°30′N-43°25′N) and the Sea of Japan coast (41°30′N-45°30′N) of Hokkaido

From August to October: Southern Okhotsk Sea

This pattern represents that of vessels observed on board by the biologists or of vessels that landed catches at the Otsuchi Fish Market while the observers were there Thus, more data could result in detection of other more minor details However, the observed pattern of the late 1980s to early 1990s does not differ from the pattern in the 1980s

ICR scientists examined the prefecture composition of vessels in the landing statistics at the Otsuchi Fish Market Out of 136 vessels identified during the 1989/1990 season (April to March), 124 were licensed by Iwate Prefecture, 9 by Hokkaido, and 3 by Miyagi It is evident that the Dall’s porpoise fishery of the time was dominated by the Iwate vessels The total number of landings was 1428 in 1989/1990 (vs 870 from January to December 1992), with a maximum of 247 in June, followed by 202 in February No landings were recorded in August and September In 1992, the peak of landings was in February (231 landings), followed by 201 in March There were only 0-6 monthly landings in July to October, 1992

The low summer landing at Otsuchi was due to the creation of a closed season in summer off Hokkaido The fishing season was set beginning in 1991, and the fishery for small cetaceans was allowed from November 1 to April 30 for waters off Iwate, Miyagi, Aomori, and Chiba and from May 1 to June 15 and from August 1 to October 30 for waters off Hokkaido Closing the summer operation off Hokkaido was to protect animals in the calving season, an idea originating in the Fisheries Agency

The landings of Dall’s porpoises at the Otsuchi Fish Market were in two forms One was as a whole carcass with head and fins but without viscera The other was as flensed products, that is, meat and other parts of commercial value

Visual identification of species and color type was possible only in the first case The ICR reported that the landings of carcasses without viscera in 1989/1990 season consisted of 12,013 individuals (5,949 in 1992), with 11,895 Dall’s porpoises (99%) and 118 small cetaceans of other species (1%) In 1992, the Dall’s porpoises were 996% of the total and other species 04% or 81 individuals The peak months in 1989/1990 were June (3023) and May (2440) There were no landings in August and September The May and June landings seem to be from operations off the Hokkaido coasts Landings as whole carcasses during December to March, which likely represented traditional winter operations off the Sanriku coast, were only 2992 individuals or 249% of the annual landings

Species landed other than Dall’s porpoises in the 1989/1990 season were 99 Pacific white-sided dolphins (62 in 1992), 13 common bottlenose dolphins (1 in 1992), fewer than 10 Pacific right whale dolphins (18 in 1992), and common dolphins (Delphinus sp) (none in 1992) Kawamura et al (1983, in Japanese) surveyed the seasonal small-cetacean faunal change in the Tsugaru Strait Area between Aomori (northern Honshu) and Hakodate (southern Hokkaido) using ferry services between the ports and recorded Dall’s porpoises, Pacific white-sided dolphins, common dolphins, and striped dolphins They recorded high rates of encounter with these species in May and June but were unable to clarify seasonal variation

Hunting Grounds of Hand-Harpoon Fishermen Who Landed Dall’s Porpoises at Otsuchi Fish Market, Iwate Prefecture, and the Composition of the Catch by Color Type

Market were brought in either on harpoon vessels or by truck and weighed 1822 tons in the 1989/1990 season (457 tons in 1992) They were composed of meat, dorsal fins, tail flukes, and hearts Most of them (996%) were landed in October (1518 tons or 833%) and in June (297 tons or 163%) Although this seasonal variation was slightly different from that in 1992, that is, 97 tons (212%) in October and 326 tons (713%) in September, in general most of the flensed products were sold in autumn

If we use a value of 534 kg/Dall’s porpoise, the average meat production for the species in the Okhotsk Sea, the total weight of meat 17706 tons (excluding other edible products) auctioned at the Otsuchi Fish Market in 1989/1990 season represents 3,316 Dall’s porpoises, which together with the number of whole carcasses mentioned earlier gives 15,211 individuals as an estimate of Dall’s porpoises brought to the Otsuchi market in 1989/1990 (April to March) A similar procedure for the 1992 season (January to December) gives 856 Dall’s porpoises as estimated from meat This together with 6724 Dall’s porpoises sold as whole carcass yields an estimate of 7580 Dall’s porpoises auctioned in 1992 at the Otsuchi Fish Market Although this series of studies presented a different figure of 449 kg/Dall’s porpoise as average meat production for the Okhotsk Sea, it is unclear which figure would be more suitable for the earlier calculations (see Table 25)

The monthly average price for carcasses of Dall’s porpoises auctioned in the 1989/1990 season (April to March) at the Otsuchi Fish Markets reached a peak of 316 yen/kg in January, while the peak figure for 1992 (January to December) was 550 yen/kg, recorded in December The lowest record for the 1989/1990 season was 129 yen/kg in June and that for 1992 was 200 yen/kg in August The monthly average price for meat exhibited a similar trend, that is, in 1989/1990 there was a peak of 341 yen/kg in August and a low of 205 yen/kg in June, while in 1992 the peak price was 642 yen/kg in October and the low of 520 yen/kg in August These figures indicate a rapid increase from 1989/1990 to 1992 in the price of Dall’s porpoise products as well as a large seasonal fluctuation in price with a peak in winter and lower prices in summer

Using the data outlined earlier, scientists of the ICR (ICR 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, all in Japanese) estimated the number of Dall’s porpoises auctioned at the Otsuchi Fish Market in 1989-1992 (Table 25) The identification of fishing ground and porpoise stocks relies mostly on the interpretation of landing records of all vessels based on the information on fishing behavior of sample vessels observed by scientists The results show that the difference in landing at Otsuchi Fish Market between 1989/1990 and 1992 was due to fewer landings of dalli-type Dall’s porpoises from the Hokkaido coast in 1992 The Japanese hand-harpoon fishery for Dall’s porpoises operated without quota until the 1992 season However, there were various types of pressure or requests from the Fisheries Agency to decrease the catch, and I have identified cases where the fishery responded with manipulation of the statistics (see Section 25)

tioned at the Otsuchi Market in total take of the species in Japan, as well as the estimated proportions of the two color types of the species auctioned at the Otsuchi Market It includes a method for converting the weight of meat into number of porpoises, using two conversion factors, 534 or 449 kg/animal The former figure came from 109 dalli-type Dall’s porpoises processed on board two vessels that operated in the Okhotsk Sea in August 1989 and were observed by ICR scientists The cruises processed their catch on board and stored the meat and fins in a freezer at a port before sending them to Otsuchi The latter figure was calculated from particular cases of landing where meat was received by the market together with information on number of porpoises that produced the meat The accuracy has not been examined by scientists

Since at least 1970, only the hand-harpoon boats hunted Dall’s porpoises, and the small cetaceans taken by the boats were nearly limited to Dall’s porpoises Therefore, the Dall’s porpoise fishery and hand-harpoon fishery for small cetaceans in northeastern Japan can be dealt with synonymously for at least the time being In the future, some fishermen may wish to take other species such as Pacific white-sided dolphins, a small quota for which was allowed by the Fisheries Agency since the 2007/2008 season for existing small-cetacean fisheries This appears to have been a response of the Fisheries Agency to the desire of aquariums or animal dealers No existing small-cetacean fisheries in Japan have actively responded to the new quota of Pacific white-sided dolphins

Now, we will review the history of Japanese hand-harpoon fisheries using the existing fishery statistics It was in 1957 that the Division of Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture started collecting statistics on marine mammals taken by coastal fisheries other than whaling These statistics, which continue to the present with some modifications, originally gave the total number of animals taken by type of fishery Marine mammal species are grouped into three categories of “seals,” “whales,” and “dolphins and porpoises,” and the fishery types were grouped into “drive fishery,” “hand-harpoon fishery for dolphins and porpoises,” “seals taken by gun,” and “incidental mortality” The species classification limits the biological value of the statistics The category of incidental mortality includes only those animals taken by seine, trap net (also called “set net”), trawl, longline, and gill net Thus, these statistics do not include whaling, which is dealt with in other statistics The Fisheries Agency started collecting cetacean statistics by species in 1972 (Chapter 1)

The interpretation of incidental mortality of marine mammals requires some caution Most incidental kills that were discarded in the sea were likely to be unrecorded and missing from the statistics Incidental kill could also have been hidden For example, in the 1980s the reported incidental mortality of minke whales in the trap-net fishery was at most 10-20 individuals/year, and underreporting was suspected

to allow commercial use of minke whales incidentally taken in trap nets, and this resulted in a sudden increase of the bycatch to over 100 whales (Table 16) When the commercial utilization of the incidental catch was earlier prohibited, the bycatch of minke whales was not recorded or was recorded under dubious categories such as “other miscellaneous species” or even as “sharks”

Ohsumi (1972) summarized these mentioned statistics collected by the Division of Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture (Figure 25) Ten prefectures exceeded 100 animals in the average annual take of dolphins and porpoises in the 14 years (1957-1970): 9251 in Shizuoka, 6040 in Iwate, 2411 in Miyagi, 1322 in Chiba, 489 in Wakayama, 241 in Hokkaido, 334 in Fukushima, 244 in Nagasaki (32°10′N-34°40′N, 128°40′E-130°20′E), 241 in Ibaraki, and 103 in Aomori Out of these 10 prefectures, 7 had not operated drive fisheries, so the catch must have been mainly by hand harpoon (some incidental takes could be included); these prefectures were Iwate, Miyagi, Chiba, Hokkaido, Fukushima, Ibaraki, and Aomori The remaining three prefectures of Shizuoka, Wakayama,

could have been by driving, hand harpoon, or incidental takes Several villages of Nagasaki Prefecture had opportunistic dolphin drives Taiji Town in Wakayama Prefecture had opportunistic drives This was replaced by a more active system of driving, with a first attempt in 1969, constant operation for short-finned pilot whales beginning in 1971, and expansion to striped dolphins in 1973 Several groups of fishermen on the Izu coast of Shizuoka Prefecture drove striped dolphins using scouting vessels

Ohsumi (1972) further compared catches among fishery types The catch of marine mammals (whales, dolphins and porpoises, and seals) made by fisheries other than whaling in the 6 years from 1957 to 1962 amounted to 12,335 tons, of which 7,126 tons (577%) were by dolphin-drive fisheries together with shooting of seals, 3,361 tons (272%) by handharpoon fisheries, and 742 tons (60%) by seine net The total of the catch by these three categories of fisheries was 90% The statistics analyzed by Ohsumi (1972) do not distinguish between dolphin drives and seal shooting However, I consider that the proportion of seal hunting can be ignored, because only 8,901 seals (about 3% in number of animals) were taken during the period 1957-1970 compared with 299,575 dolphins, although the period covered by the statistics for this figure is slightly different from what was given earlier (1957-1962)

Ohsumi (1972) indicated that about 15% of the total for marine mammals was taken by methods other than hand harpoon or drive (whaling was excluded from the analysis) However, there could have been uncertainties about the actual method of fishing for porpoises, and the license system before the hand-harpoon fisheries for small cetaceans came under the new license system in 1989 I once noticed at a wholesale fish market in the Sanriku Region in the early 1970s a system of statistics where a porpoise taken using a hand harpoon by a licensee in the longline fishery was recorded as a catch of the longline fishery Such cases would not have been rare, because hand-harpoon fishing was a simple technique and not regulated The statistics analyzed by Ohsumi (1972) compiled the catch by location of registration of the fishing vessel This would have caused only minor disagreement between the actual place of catch and the location of the registering prefecture Ohsumi (1972) reported that there were 3973 vessels operating hand-harpoon fisheries (for any marine animals) and that most of them sought swordfish as the main target

Based on Ohsumi (1972), we can look at the geographical distribution of two major types of fisheries for small cetaceans, hand harpoon, and drive The period covered by statistics is from 1957 to 1962 as given previously During the 6-year period, various fisheries other than whaling landed marine mammals of 12,335 tons (see preceding text in this section), of which 7,126 tons were dolphins and porpoises taken by drive fisheries (with a minor component from seal shooting) Drive fisheries (and seal shooting) recorded the highest catch of 5714 tons (801%) in group-D waters, which covered waters from Chiba to Mie Prefectures on the southern coast of middle Honshu (33°45′N-35°45′N, 136°00′E-140°55′E), followed by 1230 tons (173%) in group-G waters of

(32°45′N-34°45′N, 128°30′E-130°50′E) Although the statistics nominally include catches of seals, these two regions are outside the current habitat of any pinnipeds The group-D waters include the Izu coast of Shizuoka Prefecture, and group-G waters include Nagasaki Prefecture Of the total take of 3361 tons by hand-harpoon fisheries, the majority of 2471 ton (919%) was taken in group-B waters on the east coast of northern Honshu (35°45′N-41°30′N, 140°35′E-142°05′E), followed by 777 tons (231%) in region-D, 95 tons (28%) of region-A or the Hokkaido coast (41°20′N-45°30′N, 139°20′E-145°59′E), and 43 tons (13%) in region-F on the coast of the southern Sea of Japan (33°55′N-41°15′N, 130°50′E-136°15′E)

Analyses by Ohsumi (1972) of the Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture revealed that hand-harpoon fisheries for small

on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu (37°55′N-40°25′N) The share of the two prefectures was almost equal in the 1950s, and then Miyagi Prefecture’s share decreased and became almost negligible after 1968 with an annual take of fewer than 1000 (Table 26 and Figure 25) On the other hand, Iwate Prefecture started with an annual take of around 5000 in the 1950s and increased the catch annually to about 8500 animals/ year by around 1965 Interpretation of the subsequent decline of the catch around 1967 will be discussed later

In a 1982 paper, I analyzed the statistics for the handharpoon fisheries for small cetaceans in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures in 1963-1975 This study was first presented to a FAO meeting held in Bergen in 1976 and covered several years subsequent to those studied by Ohsumi (1972) I visited

TABLE 2.6 Catch of Dolphins and Porpoises by Prefecture in Northeastern Japan

the landing records for dolphins and porpoises (Table 26) and spent six winters at these landing ports to examine the catch composition The catches examined revealed that 988% of the small cetaceans landed at these ports in the high season of autumn to spring were Dall’s porpoises Therefore, all the small cetaceans recorded in the previous statistics are safely assumed to have been Dall’s porpoises, although the fish market statistics did not always record species For the period when the statistics reported by Ohsumi (1972) and Kasuya (1982) are comparable, the two bodies of data show reasonable agreement for some years (1965, 1967, 1968, 1970) but a differential greater than 1000 individuals (–18% to +28%) in other years (1964, 1966, 1969) The reason for the disagreement is unknown (Table 26)

Kasuya’s (1982) statistics showed that the average number of porpoises/landing/vessel was in the range of 45-65 during the 1962-1968 seasons but decreased to 35-50 during the 1969-1973 seasons (Figure 24) It is reasonable to postulate that this reflected a decline in abundance The annual catch ranged from 5100 to 9400 porpoises for the years 1963-1975, which was nearly the same as reported by Ohsumi (1972) The low catch around 1967 can be seen in both sets of statistics In general, an annual catch of over 8000 was recorded until the 1966 season, but in later years, it remained at a lower level of 5200-7400 (1970 was the exception) The annual fluctuation in the catch showed a negative correlation with the catch of striped dolphins on the Izu coast, and the presence of some economic factors was suggested (see Section 24)

The Whaling Section of the Offshore Division, a Fisheries Agency section responsible for the management of whaling, in 1972, started to collect statistics on small cetaceans taken by local fisheries The statistics were collected through the prefectural governments and were based on landing records of member fishermen kept by their FCUs, which all Japanese fishermen belonged to These Fisheries Agency statistics agree quite well with those in Kasuya (1982) for the first year, 1972, but figures for later years disagree with Kasuya’s (ie smaller catches in the Fisheries Agency statistics) The disagreement cannot be explained by inclusion of species other than the Dall’s porpoise or inclusion of catches in Miyagi Prefecture (Tables 26 and 27) The Fisheries Agency statistics included the number of vessels operating in hand-harpoon fisheries (Tables 23 and 26) The Fisheries Agency statistics for Iwate Prefecture recorded a constant fleet size of 145 vessels and almost constant catches for the years 1972-1975, while Kasuya (1982) reported an increasing catch by Iwate and Miyagi fishermen (the catch in Miyagi were almost negligible) Then, in 1976, the hand-harpoon vessels in Iwate showed a sudden increase to 156, accompanied by an increase in catch to 9700 (Tables 23 and 27) The number of operating vessels in Iwate exhibited strange fluctuation in 1977-1985 (Table 23) From these observations, I have an impression that the disagreement of catch figures for Iwate between Kasuya (1982) and the Fisheries Agency statistics was due to some technical problem in collecting the latter statistics, for example, selecting sample vessels

cetacean fisheries using the Whaling Section statistics for 6 years (1976-1981) and his own data on the hand-harpoon fishery at Yamada Fish Market in Iwate Prefecture and on drive fisheries on the Izu coast in Shizuoka Prefecture and Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture The hand-harpoon fishery took a total of 51,700 animals during the 6 years, which was comparable to 58,200 taken by drive fisheries The hand-harpoon fishery got 98% of its catch from Dall’s porpoises, followed by 200-299 each of striped dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and Pacific white-sided dolphins and 100-199 short-finned pilot whales These figures include dolphins and porpoises taken by small-type whaling vessels and by the crossbow fishery in Okinawa The small-type whaling vessels occasionally took such dolphins and porpoises, particularly off Taiji where demand existed for such species, and some small-type whalers hunted Dall’s porpoises with hand harpoons in the 1987 and 1988 seasons (footnote to Table 27; Chapter 4) The crossbow fishery operated for short-finned pilot whales and some other species (Table 213)

According to Miyazaki (1983), vessels from the Sanriku coast on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu contributed 955% of the 51,200 Dall’s porpoises taken by Japanese fisheries in the 6  years mentioned earlier, followed by 3% each for Ibaraki and Fukushima and 15% for Hokkaido The number of vessels that operated drive fisheries is shown in Tables 23 and 24

After a chaotic postwar period, the Japanese hand-harpoon fisheries for dolphins and porpoises operated almost solely for Dall’s porpoises and mainly off the Pacific coast of northern Honshu, including Sanriku, and to lesser degree off Hokkaido and took annual catches between 5,000 and 10,000 during the 20 years of the 1960s and 1970s Kasuya and Miyashita (1989, in Japanese) analyzed trends of the Dall’s porpoise catch from this period to the 1980s (Figure 26) and concluded that the catch probably declined slowly from 1963 to the mid-1970s and then increased until 1987 They identified two troughs in the catch during the latter increasing phase, in 1979-1980 and 1984-1986 These troughs in the catch agree with periods of change in the operation pattern The decline in catches could have been due to a decline in abundance of the truei-type Dall’s porpoises wintering off the Sanriku coasts Responding to this, some Sanriku fishermen changed their pattern of winter operation from daily trips to longer trips of several days The fishing ground also changed from near the port area to further south off the coast of Ibaraki Prefecture This change started in the early 1980s and improved operational economy of the fishery and decreased competition among fishing vessels by decreasing vessel densities The second action by the Sanriku fishermen was to extend operation to the Hokkaido coast and the fishing season to summer This change occurred in the mid-1980s and led to exploitation of a new population of Dall’s porpoises, the dalli-type Dall’s porpoise population that wintered in the Sea of Japan and summered off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido and in the southern Okhotsk Sea Thus, in order to continue high catches of Dall’s porpoises, the Japanese hand-harpoon fishery increased fishing effort

TABLE 2.7 Catch Statistics for Dall’s Porpoises by Prefecture of Vessel Registration and by Calendar Yeara

and expanded the targeted populations It is likely that the truei-type population was unable to support the annual catch of 5,000-10,000 recorded in the 1960s and 1970s and that the current catch quota for the truei-type population, 8,700 individuals/season, cannot be sustained by the population

Kasuya and Miyashita (1989, in Japanese) importantly suggested that the catch statistics on the Japanese Dall’s porpoises were likely to be biased downward and apparently stimulated the Fisheries Agency to take action to improve them Their paper was published in a popular scientific journal in April 1989 and referred to in the IWC Scientific Committee meeting that year They did not submit the paper to a scientific

journal because publication in such a journal could take up to a year Neither did they attempt to submit the paper to the IWC Scientific Committee formally as a document from the Japanese delegation because of fearing refusal by the Fisheries Agency, which must approve any such document in advance

Kasuya and Miyashita (1989, in Japanese) questioned the Fisheries Agency statistics for the Dall’s porpoise fisheries based on expected annual catch per vessel and the number of harpoon vessels observed on the fishing grounds As one of the authors, I learned from an Iwate fisherman that they took 80-110 porpoises/month in the winter operation off Sanriku and 240-360 porpoise/month in the summer operation off

Catch Statistics for Dall’s Porpoises by Prefecture of Vessel Registration and by Calendar Yeara

Hokkaido He actually took a total of 1158 porpoises from February to September (excluding a total of 60 days in April, June, and August, when he did not operate the fishery for some reason) and in areas off Sanriku and Hokkaido So if he in addition operated during the remaining season from October to December, it would have been easy for him to catch 1200 porpoises in 1 year These catch figures of 80-110 porpoise/ month for the Sanriku operation might be hard to achieve but would not be impossible if the fishermen operated 20  days per month and took 4-5 porpoises per day Other fishermen informed me that high-powered vessels with a speed of over 20 knots could catch 2000 porpoises per year The number of operating vessels was obtained during my trip to Hokkaido in August 1988, when I counted at least 21 hand-harpoon vessels from Iwate in ports along the Okhotsk Sea coast and 9 vessels in Kiritappu (43°05′N, 145°10′E, Pacific coast of Hokkaido) Of the nine boats in Kiritappu, eight were Hokkaido boats Other informants on the Okhotsk Sea coast of Hokkaido said that there were 40 vessels in the summer of 1988 (obtained at Abashiri in July-August 1988) or 64 vessels (obtained at Monbetsu, 44°20′N, 143°20′E, in January 1989)

The porpoise hunters encountered in the Hokkaido ports must have operated year-round Therefore, only the 30 vessels

poises in the 1988 season In addition to these, there must have been numerous fishermen who operated off Sanriku only during the winter season It was hard to assume that the operating vessels suddenly increased in the 1988 season, so the total catch of 13,000 Dall’s porpoises reported by the Fisheries Agency for 1987 season seemed to be too small We reported these questions in a popular article (Kasuya and Miyashita 1989, in Japanese) and at the same time reported them to the Fisheries Agency, without expectation of a particular response

The Coastal Division of the Fisheries Agency separately from the Whaling Section of the Offshore Division started collecting statistics of dolphin and porpoise fisheries in Japan and reported the 1988 statistics to the Scientific Committee of the IWC in May 1989 The Coastal Division reported a take of about 40,000 Dall’s porpoises in 1988, which agreed with “over 30,000” estimated by Kasuya and Miyashita (1989, in Japanese) Responding to a question by the Scientific Committee about the reason for such a rapid increase and the reliability of the previously reported statistics, the Coastal Division reported to the following year’s Scientific Committee that the previously reported statistics had involved underreporting and presented revised figures for the 1986 and 1987 seasons (Tables 27 and 28) The statistics for 1989 and afterward classified the catch of Dall’s porpoises into the two color morphs This was an improvement, although the accuracy needed to be confirmed

The Scientific Committee of 1989 concluded that (1) the 1988 catch was clearly unsustainable by the stock and (2) it was urgent to decrease the catch to the previous level (which itself might be unsustainable) and requested Japan to clarify which of the two sets of statistics should be accepted and if the catch really exhibited such a rapid increase

TABLE 2.8 Disagreement between Catch Statistics for Dall’s Porpoises Issued by Two Government Agencies, Presumably Due to Difference in Coverage and Manipulation by the Industry

Committee, I made a visit accompanied by a staff employee of Iwate Prefecture to FCUs of the prefectures, to which most of the Dall’s porpoise hunters belonged, examined their landing records, and reported the result to the Scientific Committee in Kasuya (1992) The report concluded that the older statistics contained intentional underreporting but that there were some cases of overreporting, as summarized in the following:

1 Both the statistics of the Coastal and Offshore Divisions did not include porpoises sold directly to dealers by the fishermen, that is, not auctioned at wholesale markets in the landing ports This biased the catches downward

2 Some fishermen who fished in remote areas might sell their catch through fish markets operated by local FCUs of which the fishermen were not member Most such landings were not included in the statistics This also biased the catches downward

3 The statistics of the Coastal Division were based on original landing records kept at the FCU and not from statistics compiled by the FCU as in the case of the Offshore Division

4 Meat received from Hokkaido was converted into number of animals assuming 80  kg/individual, which was an average weight of a whole carcass without viscera taken off Sanriku The use of 534 kg/ individual would have been more appropriate This biased the catch statistics downward

5 Apart from biases caused by the previous factors, Iwate Prefecture, with cooperation of the FCUs, intentionally underreported catches in 1987 and overreported in 1988 The former would have been to avoid external criticism or to delay expected regulations, and the latter would have been to obtain a higher quota under the quota system expected to start in 1989

6 The Otsuchi FCU, which handled about half of the total Japanese catch of porpoises (Table 25), rejected my request to examine the records of large catches (either whole carcasses or meat) received from Hokkaido for some unexplained reason This leaves a large uncertainty in evaluating the existing statistics

7 Correction of the previous fourth and fifth factors added 37,200 porpoises in 1987 or a 49% increase over the statistics reported by the Coastal Division and 45,600 individuals in 1988 or a 13% increase (Table 28) The real figures would be higher if we took into account the first, second, and sixth factors

The catch statistics currently available to us do not take account of the first and second factors Any fisheries operated under government control are likely to have some misreporting in the statistics, but we experienced an unacceptable level of deception assisted by the prefecture government for the short-term benefit of the fishermen Such activity must be

as fishery resources

The history of government regulation of the Dall’s porpoise fisheries is outlined briefly here (for details see Chapter 6) In January to March 1989, the Fisheries Agency decided that all the hand-harpoon fisheries for small cetaceans had to be licensed by the prefectural government (Iwate) or approved by the Regional Fishery Coordination Committee (Hokkaido, Aomori, and Miyagi) The licensing would apply only to vessels that had actually operated in the previous season and required that they operate with a quota and within a fishing season and that they land their catches only at particular fishing ports designated by the government About 300 vessels gained a license in 1989 in Iwate Prefecture, where the majority of the Dall’s porpoise hunters were registered Later, the rule was changed to place all the operations under a prefectural license system by April 2002 (website of the Fisheries Agency) At the time of introduction of the license system in early 1989, when a quota system was not yet introduced, the Fisheries Agency requested Iwate Prefecture to decrease the Dall’s porpoise catch to 70% (24,500) of that of the previous year (about 35,000) in the 1989 season and further to 85% (20,800) of the catch expected in 1989 in the 1990 season This was further strengthened on July 13, 1989, with a request to Iwate Prefecture for a plan to decrease the catch to 10,000 by 1991 Similar requests were also sent to Miyagi and Hokkaido (Fisheries Agency document)

These actions of the Fisheries Agency agree with the following statement of M Morimoto at the IWC Scientific Committee meeting in 1990 (IWC 1991): “The catch of Dall’s porpoise increased from 25,600 in 1987 to 40,367 in 1988 Responding [to] this situation, we introduced regulations to the fishery in early 1989 and decreased the catch to 29,048 This was 28% below the catch in 1988 We consider this catch still too high, and will make effort to decrease the catch in 1991 to a level of 85% of the 1989 season”

The Fisheries Agency set a quota of 17,600 Dall’s porpoises (no distinction of the two color types that represent two stocks off Japan) for the 1991 and 1992 seasons, and then a similar quota was divided equally into two parts for the two color types for the 1993 season, that is, 9,000 dalli-types and 8,700 truei-types The total of the two types was 17,700 However, the sums of the figures given to each prefecture for the years 1996-2006 were 9,000 dalli-types and 8,420 trueitypes (total 17,420) (Kasuya unpublished) The difference, 280, could have been retained by the Agency to hide unexpected catches

The Dall’s porpoise quota decreased slightly in the 2007/2008 season to 8707 dalli-types and 8168 truei-types (Table 29) and was divided among Hokkaido (16  vessels), Aomori (8 vessels), Iwate (196 vessels), and Miyagi (7 v essels) Total of the two color types was 16,875, shared among 227  fishing vessels Minor modifications of the quotas for Japanese dolphin and porpoise fisheries apparently continued in later years

In 2007, the Japanese Fisheries Agency allowed drive and hand-harpoon fisheries off the Pacific coast of Honshu to

catch Pacific white-sided dolphins Out of the total quota of 360 individuals, 154 were given to the hand-harpoon fishery off Iwate, 36 to the drive fishery off Shizuoka, and 170 to the hand-harpoon and drive fisheries off Wakayama (Tables 63 and 64) Pacific white-sided dolphins in Japanese coastal waters and those in the offshore western North Pacific are thought to belong to separate populations (Hayano et  al 2004) However, there is no positive evidence that the white-sided dolphins in the East China Sea, Sea of Japan, and Okhotsk Sea and those along the Pacific coast of Japan belong to a single population Under such circumstances, it is necessary to confirm whether the abundance of the

species off the Pacific coasts of Japan alone is large enough to support the catch

The government procedure for deciding catch quotas is further considered in Chapter 6 Here, I will comment on how quotas are allocated to fishermen and the compliance with quotas The Fisheries Agency decides a quota for each species and divides it among the prefectures Then, the prefectural governments divide them among the fishery types and in some cases the operating entities The drive fisheries have no difficulties with this procedure, because there is only one operating entity in each prefecture (Shizuoka and Wakayama) The allocation can be a problem in the case of hand-harpoon fisheries

Catch of Dall’s Porpoises by the Hand-Harpoon Fishery Compiled by Prefecture of Vessel Registration and by Calendar Year

in the 2007/2008 season (Table 23) If a total quota for the season, that is, 17,029 animals representing three populations of two species (including Pacific white-sided dolphins), were divided among them, the average share would be only 74 animals/vessel Such a small quota can be fully subscribed within less than 1 month A full month’s operation by a single vessel could catch 80-110 individuals in winter off Sanriku and 240-360 in summer in the Okhotsk Sea where vessels of higher efficiency operated (see the preceding text in this section) No fishermen will be satisfied with such a small quota

In order to avoid this situation, a system introduced was similar to that in earlier Antarctic whaling, that is, every vessel had an equal right to hunt until all vessels received a simultaneous order to stop operations The Fishery Division of the Iwate Prefecture Government in November 1993 presented a document to the Japanese Fisheries Agency reporting that in the 1991 season it monitored the progress of fishing and successfully stopped the fishery operation when the catch reached the quota and stated that it would repeat the system in the next season The Fishery Division of Iwate Prefecture did not have its own information system and must have relied on catch data offered by the fisheries cooperative unions, so the key to stop hunting was in the hands of the fishermen This situation was similar to what was described by EIA (1999), which reported that in the Iwate case it was a voluntary group established by the hand-harpoon fishermen that decided when hunting was to stop A similar method was used in Hokkaido, where the Regional Fishery Coordination Committee gave the order to stop hunting in an early stage of the quota system after which the task moved to the prefecture government In both Hokkaido and Iwate, the participation of the prefecture government seems to have been only nominal; it determined the closure date for the season based on information presented by the fishermen and in consultation with them and sent the order through the FCUs In the 1960s each local fish market or FCU prepared tables from their landing records, and this formed the basis of the prefecture statistics We know from informants that there was misreporting of various kinds, intentional or unintentional and with or without consent of the local government

The situation in Miyagi Prefecture was apparently more difficult The number of hand-harpoon vessels decreased from a maximum of 40 to the recent 7 vessels (Table 23) and had a quota of about 300 porpoises They had a license to hunt in the nearby waters off Miyagi or Iwate but not in the more distant Hokkaido waters (Table 24) It would be unprofitable for them to send the fleet to the Hokkaido coast with such a small quota Their near-water operation was apparent also because their fishing season was from November to April (Table 64) In the 2007/2008 season, the Miyagi fishermen had a Dall’s porpoise quota of 269 dalli-types and 30 trueitypes and operated in the nearby grounds where about 95% of Dall’s porpoises were represented by dalli-types (Kasuya 1978) They reported a take of 254 dalli-types (Table 29) If the reports were accurate, they must have had an extremely difficult operation in selecting dalli-types, which were rare in the fishing grounds (The Fishery Agency recently agreed

pers comm 2011) However, this is not reflected in the quota of subsequent seasons (see Table 64)

These are questions on the officially reported statistics There have been reports of hidden catches A newspaper reported that five or six minke whales that were putatively taken in trap nets in Iwate and Aomori Prefectures were sent to Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, and that two to three of them had hand-harpoon heads in the body (reported by a newspaper Nihon Keizai Shinbun [Japan Economy News] dated July 10, 1990) In the 1990s, a small-type whaler found a hand-harpoon head in the body of a northern-form short-finned pilot whale killed by his ship On May 16, 1996, the anterior half of a gray whale with numerous hand-harpoon heads in the body was stranded on the coast of Suttsu (42°35′N, 140°15′E) on the western coast of Hokkaido (Brownell and Kasuya 1999) Its posterior part was not found The Fisheries Agency explained that the harpoon heads were made of stainless steel and differed from those used by Japanese fishermen As far as I could tell from the photographs, they were not different from those used by Japanese fishermen (Figure 21) Japanese fishermen prefer stainless steel harpoon heads for use with an electric shocker because of rust resistance Gray whales could be killed if several hand-harpoon vessels with electric shocker cooperated It is almost impossible to obtain statistics on these illegal operations

Table 210 compares catches of small cetaceans by various fisheries between 1988 and 2004 The year 1988 was marked by the end of commercial whaling in March and a peak catch of dolphins and porpoises in Japan In 2004, this situation almost ended and there was some change in the species composition of the catch The alarming high level of Dall’s porpoise catch returned to a lower level, although this did not necessarily mean sustainability and some questions on the reliability of statistics still remained Catches of striped dolphins continued, suggesting further depletion of the stock The southern-form short-finned pilot whale population, which has been hunted by the crossbow fishery in Okinawa (classified as a hand-harpoon fishery by the Fisheries Agency), drive fishery and small-type whaling, showing a decline in landings Recent increases in the catches of Risso’s dolphins and common bottlenose dolphins need to be watched with caution

A hand-harpoon fishery for dolphins and porpoises has been operated at a low level by members of the Sotokawa and Nishizaki Fishery Cooperative Unions in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture, and has landed the catch at the Choshi Fish Market Dolphins taken by other fisheries such as in large-mesh drift nets were also landed at the Choshi Fish Market Table 211 distinguishes the catch of the hand-harpoon fishery from that of other fisheries only since 1977 Kasuya (1976, in Japanese) reported information obtained from the Choshi Fish Market that indicated that the hand-harpoon fishery mostly took striped dolphins and estimated the total annual landing of the species by various fisheries at around 1500, although the basis of the estimation was unclear

TABLE 2.10 Take of Small Cetaceans in Japanese Fisheries, a Comparison between 1988 and 2004

Table 211 shows as an indication of magnitude of the hand-harpoon fishery the numbers of operating entities and vessels that landed small cetaceans After 1977, there were declines both in the number of operating entities and in their catches This means that small-cetacean hunting has changed into a side business of other fisheries

Since 1993, the fishery has obtained an annual quota of 80 striped dolphins but reported only a few catches In the 2008/2009 season, 11 hand-harpoon vessels in Chiba Prefecture obtained a quota of 64 striped dolphins This quota was eight animals fewer than in the previous season while the fleet size was the same

The Taiji Area has a long tradition of hunting and consuming cetaceans In the early 1960s, a small-type whaler Katsu-maru based at Taiji operated daily for small cetaceans Other small fishing vessels that worked in various fisheries also occasionally landed hand-harpooned dolphins at the Taiji Fish Market, which was operated by the Taiji Fishery Cooperative Union The small-type whalers took larger species such as the shortfinned pilot whale, which was particularly preferred by local people, the killer whale, and ziphiids, and the smaller fishing vessels caught various smaller species including striped dolphins

The small-cetacean fishery of Taiji recorded three successive changes in a short period around 1970:

1 First drive of short-finned pilot whales located by scouting vessel(s) in offshore waters in 1969

2 Expansion of the hand-harpoon fishery for striped dolphins in 1970 (the hand-harpoon hunters formed a cooperative group and became the founding group

of the drive fishery, which began in 1971 on shortfinned pilot whales and later expanded to striped dolphins and other species)

3 Start of driving striped dolphins in 1973 by the earlier mentioned cooperative group

Miyazaki (1980) analyzed records of cetaceans landed at the Taiji Fish Market during 17 years (1963-1979) Statistics for subsequent years are available in Kishiro and Kasuya (1993) The following are the average annual landings of dolphins compared between before and after the previously mentioned changes in the cetacean fisheries Ranges are in parentheses (statistics are based on Myazaki 1980)

Other small-cetacean species landed at Taiji during this period were 53 killer whales and 40 Cuvier’s beaked whales, which are most likely to have been taken by the small-type whalers The striped dolphin was the most numerous in the catch through the whole period, followed by the short-finned pilot whale The catches of these two species doubled after the changes in the fishery around 1970 As a result of the establishment of such efficient ways of hunting, other fishermen almost ceased harpooning dolphins (Kishirao and Kasuya 1993) In the 1980s, the drive fishery further increased catches of the striped dolphin, short-finned pilot whale, and bottlenose dolphin (Chapter 3)

Small-type whaling is a type of modern whaling using vessels smaller than 50 gross tons equipped with a whaling cannon of caliber 50 mm or smaller It is allowed to take minke

Take of Small Cetaceans in Japanese Fisheries, a Comparison between 1988 and 2004

whales and toothed whales other than sperm whales The operation was placed under a license system in December 1947 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Ohsumi 1975) The fishery received a catch quota of minke whales first in 1977 (Tato 1985, in Japanese), Baird’s beaked whales in 1984 (Kasuya 1995b, in Japanese), and northern-form short-finned pilot whales in 1986 (Kasuya and Tai 1993; Kasuya 1995a, in Japanese) Hunting of other species was unregulated for a

longer period A small catcher boat of the category, Katsumaru, operated in Taiji until 1979, but it moved operations elsewhere during the period 1980-1987 because it could not compete with the drive fishery in the hunting of pilot whales (Kasuya 1976, in Japanese; Kishiro and Kasuya 1993)

Rough-toothed and spotted dolphins have been identified in sighting surveys off Taiji, and skeletons of these species were located in the bone yards of small-type whalers in Taiji

Dolphins Landed at Choshi in Chiba Prefecturea

men or small-type whalers have taken these species However, we do not find records of these species in the earlier catch statistics, suggesting that these species have not been distinguished in the statistics from striped or bottlenose dolphins

Dolphin hunters in Taiji once identified a type of dolphin called haukasu. According to K Shimizu, gunner captain of the small-type whaler Katsu-maru, the name meant “hybrid species with blotches (or spots)” Kasuya and Yamada (1995) took into account a statement by a local fish dealer S Mizutani that it “had no spots on the body,” but “had dark color on the belly, white lips, and a rostrum longer than a bottlenose dolphin” and concluded that it was a rough-toothed dolphin (Chapter 11) A firm conclusion would require more information

As noted earlier, the hand-harpoon fishery for small cetaceans required a license beginning in 1989, and the license was issued only for vessels that had a record of recent operation This was an early step toward control of the fishery with quotas and was a response of the Coastal Division of the Fisheries Agency to the criticisms against leaving smallcetacean fisheries uncontrolled Another factor behind the government effort was a fear of uncontrollable expansion of small-cetacean fisheries following the cessation of commercial whaling for large cetaceans In 1989, 15 Taiji vessels obtained a license for the hand-harpoon fishery for small cetaceans with a season from February 1 to August 31 I do not have a list of these vessels, but the number agrees with the number of vessels that belonged to the cooperative group of drive fisheries in the 1980s Shortly later, fishermen in other nearby villages such as Katsuura and Miwasaki found the prospect attractive and started hand-harpoon fisheries Such unlicensed operations increased to 147 vessels by the year 1991 and became a political issue Finally, all the vessels obtained licenses (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993)

The hand-harpoon fishermen in Wakayama Prefecture obtained a catch quota of 300 dolphins of unspecified species (including short-finned pilot whales, but excluding killer whales) in 1991 and reported a total take of 456 dolphins, which included 253 Risso’s dolphins, 57 bottlenose dolphins, 45 spotted dolphins, 10 striped dolphins, 4 rough-toothed dolphins, 3 short-finned pilot whales, and 84 unidentified dolphins (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993) In 1992, the quota increased to 400 dolphins (short-finned pilot whales not included) In 1993, a total quota of 520 dolphins was given by species: 100 striped dolphins, 70 spotted dolphins, 100 bottlenose dolphins, and 250 Risso’s dolphins The Taiji driving team probably objected to sharing their quota for the valuable short-finned pilot whales with the newcomers (dolphin hunters in nearby locations) and instead agreed to give them Risso’s dolphins The Japanese government replaced the given catch quotas with new ones in 2007/2008 season for the 100 licensees The total number was 547 dolphins, which was an increase of 27 dolphins as a result of an addition of 36 Pacific white-sided dolphins and a subtraction of 5 bottlenose dolphins and 4 Risso’s dolphins (Table 212)

The license for hand-harpoon hunting for dolphins is not renewed if the licensee does not operate within a certain period

Thus, the number of licensees decreased with time (Table  23) The total number of licensees in Wakayama Prefecture was 116 in 1994, 116 in 1996, and 100 in the 2000/2001 to 2007/2008 seasons According to another record of the Coastal Division of the Fisheries Agency, a total of 104 licenses in 1994 were distributed to 10 FCUs, from the largest of 32 at Katsuura and 28 at Taiji to the smallest of 2 at Shingu and 1 at Shimo-tawara and Tanabe It would seem to be difficult to control operations of so many hand-harpoon vessels working with rather small catch quotas

In the past, Taiji people did not favor meat of the Risso’s dolphin, and fishermen even discarded the meat overboard after removing the internal organs for personal consumption However, since 1988 when Japanese commercial whaling for large cetaceans ended, the price of Risso’s

Dolphins Taken by Hand-Harpoon Fishery in Wakayama Prefecture (Which Includes Taiji and Other Locations) since 1993, When the Fishery Operated with Species Quotas Given by the Government

The increase rate (1991/1987) was 39 times for the species, which was much higher than the value of 26 times for short-finned pilot whales, the most favored species by Taiji people, or 21 times for other smaller delphinids (Table 321) Reportedly, the color of the meat, which resembles minke whale meat, attracted the eyes of consumers This situation might be changing now because of an oversupply of baleen whale meat from Japanese scientific whaling programs (Sakuma 2006, in Japanese)

Nago (26°35′N, 128°00′E) on Okinawa Island in the southwestern islands of Japan was known to have traditional opportunistic dolphin driving cooperatively operated by the community This tradition almost disappeared in the 1970s (Chapter 3), but the tradition of dolphin meat consumption remained The crossbow fishery started in Nago to respond to the demand in 1975 The Japanese Fisheries Agency classified this fishery as a hand-harpoon fishery for regulatory purposes, although the technique used was quite different from that in the hand-harpoon fishery

It is my understanding that this technique was invented to take advantage of a loophole in Japanese whaling regulation In Japan, whaling was defined as an activity of fishing for whales with harpoon discharged from cannon mounted on motor-powered vessel, and the activity was strictly regulated and finally prohibited for commercial purpose as of April 1988 (Chapter 7) One of the loopholes was to shoot the harpoon from a crossbow, and another was the use of a sailing vessel A person with the latter plan or idea of using a sailing vessel was reported in a newspaper around 1988 but did not carry through with it

The equipment of the crossbow fishery is described by Okinawa-ken Suisan Shikenjo (Fishery Experimental Station of Okinawa) (1986, in Japanese) The fishermen use a fishing vessel of 3-5 gross tons with a crew of 2-3 A swivel is placed on the bow for the crossbow The crossbow is T-shaped; the vertical arm works as a slide for the harpoon and the bottom end as a handle A rubber belt attached to both ends of the transverse arm propels the harpoon when the trigger is released The harpoon is made of a steel pipe 27 m in length and 16 mm in diameter, equipped with a detachable harpoon head on the front end, and is fitted to the middle of the rubber belt The rubber belt is stretched by hand with the help of a gear to the trigger cock The shooting range is about 20 m

The crossbow fishery at Nago was first started by 6-7 vessels (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993) in 1975 when no license was required Six vessels obtained a license from the Regional Fishery Coordination Committee in February 1, 1989, following the policy of the Fisheries Agency (see Chapter 6) In 1994, the fishery had six vessels in the range from 25 gross tons (with engine of 35 hp) to 85 gross tons (with 120 hp engine)

The group of vessel owners set a voluntary quota of a total of 100 dolphins/year in 1991 (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993)

short-finned pilot whales, 10 false killer whales, and 10 bottlenose dolphins (Kasuya 1997, in Japanese) This was replaced in the 2007/2008 season (ie, the fishing season that started in 2007) by a new quota of 92 short-finned pilot whales, 20 false killer whales, and 9 bottlenose dolphins for a total of six vessels (Tables 213 and 322) The statistics of number and species have to rely on the reports of fishermen or the weight landed, because most of the catch is processed offshore Compliance with the quotas appears to me as a problem in this fishery as for other hand-harpoon fisheries

The Nago fishery is allowed to operate from February 1 to October 31, with an annual quota determined, for management purpose, for the 12-month period that starts on October 1

TABLE 2.13 Dolphins Taken by Crossbow Fishery in Nago in Okinawa Prefecture since 1993, When the Fishery Operated with Species Quotas Given by the Government

During  the fishing season, crossbow vessels repeat trips, extending for a maximum of 5-6 days each The catches are flensed on board and the meat stored on ice until return to port The catch used to be boiled at dockside in Nago Port and sent to Nago City (Kishiro and Kasuya 1993) When I visited the Nago Port in February 1991, there were several half oil drums for cooking whale meat but no trace of recent use, perhaps because of the beginning of the season or change in the distribution system The price of dolphin meat was reportedly 1000 yen/kg in 1991 Endo (2008, in Japanese) reported a system that started around 1993, in which meat of short-finned pilot whales and false killer whales was sent through the Nago Fishery Cooperative Union to Fukuoka Chuo Wholesale Market in Fukuoka (33°35′N, 130°25′E), northern Kyushu, and meat of other dolphin species was sold locally Kasuya (1997, in Japanese) also recorded that when the supply of whale meat declined around 1988, some of the meat of short-finned pilot whales was transshipped by sea to Osaka (34°40′N, 135°30′E) and to Shimonoseki (34°55′N, 130°55′E) at the western end of Honshu

Table 213 shows the statistics of operation by species quota that started in 1993 The earlier statistics are in Table 322, where drive and crossbow fisheries are not separated and perhaps some real hand-harpoon catch is also included before 1980 when there are too many vessels recorded The record of 140 melon-headed whales in 1979 could be from a driving operation conducted with the cooperation of a number of vessels

In the mid-1980s, with news that the crossbow fishery in Okinawa was going well, some fishermen in Ayukawa on the Pacific coast of northern Honshu planned to use this method for hunting northern-form short-finned pilot whales In 1982, small-type whalers resumed hunting the species off Ayukawa and were eager to increase the annual catch, but we scientists refused the request with a belief that the population was not large enough to sustain added take (Chapters 7 and 12) We feared repetition of the mismanagement of the stock that happened after World War II (Kasuya and Tai 1993) The idea of using the then unregulated crossbow method for the fishery appeared to be a way to escape government regulation This idea did not proceed further, probably because of adverse pressure by the Fisheries Agency