Media Attention
Western media attention regarding Japan's whaling industry has increased. Animal Planet's television series, Whale Wars, places a camera crew on board the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activist ships to document the annual interference with Japan's Antarctic whaling program. Japan has denounced the program as deceptive and supportive of eco-terrorists to increase ratings. Animal Planet has made requests to also film from the perspective of Japan's whaling fleet but the requests were denied.
The animated series South Park lampooned both Japan's whaling traditions and the anti-whaling activists featured on Whale Wars in the episode "Whale Whores".
A 2009 Oscar winning documentary, The Cove, focused entirely on Japan's dolphin drive fisheries, mercury content of dolphin meat and the whaling town, Taiji. The film also concentrated on the difficulty in observing Taiji fishermen at work due to obstruction from the local community, police and inaccessible locations.
Peter James Bethune received a 2 year suspended sentence after boarding the ship which collided with his, the Ady Gil.
The New York Times reported the whaling town of Ayukawa, in Ishinomaki, Miyagi was badly damaged by the 2011 TÅhoku earthquake and tsunami. After the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011, radioactive cesium was found in two minke whales caught off the coast of Hokkaido.
Read more about this topic: Whaling In Japan
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