NAGOYA--this week, representatives of Port Nagoya Aquarium are in Norway to negotiate the capture of six killer whales for its new facilities, according to environmentalists upset at Japan's determination to capture the orcas and other cetaceans.

"The captivity of whales and dolphins is an experiment that has failed miserably, and it's time to move on. This (sea aquarium) industry should find something better to do with its money," said Mark Berman, international marine mammal project coordinator for the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute, which is threatening consumer boycotts of Norwegian products if the country captures killer whales for Japan or any other country.

The new port Nagoya Aquarium facility--slated to open in 2001--costs Y20.6 billion, footed equally by Aichi Prefecture, the city of Nagoya, and Nagoya Port Authority, a public organization that owns the aquarium.

Officials of the port authority neither denied nor confirmed reports about whether its representatives are visiting Norway, but admitted the aquarium has plans to obtain killer whales.

The Tokyo-based NGO Free the Orcas sponsored a nation-wide tour by Berman and orca expert Paul Spong in February to promote allowing killer whales to remain in the wild--even returning them to it--and to urge Port Nagoya Aquarium to drop its plans.

"If the Nagoya aquarium wants to teach people about whales and dolphins, I think it's ppossible to do so without taking them away from the ocean and putting them in a cement tank," Spong said.

He recommended that Japanese aquarium officials visit the cetacean-free Monterey Aquarium in Southern Calfornia, which simulates a natural ecosystem and is the most popular aquarium in the U.S. in terms of revenue and visitors.

Six more orcas would bring Japan's total captive population to 18, second in the world after 21 in the U.S.

Short life in captivity

An unnaturally brief life span and high mortality rate underscores the fate of most captive killer whales, Berman said. Of about 135 kept in captivity worldwide since 1961, approximately 74 percent have died, with an average captive life span of five years, according to the Whale and Dolphine Conservation Society based in Bath, England.

Japanese-caught killer whales have fared worse: Of 16 captured for aquariums at Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, since 1978, 11 died after spending an average 22 months in captivity.

Young killer whales are the ones usually caught. In the wild, however, males can live as long as 70 years and females 90 years, the society said.

"Today, almost all reseach on orcas is done exclusively in the wild. The scientists who do study captive orcas are always complaing how little access they have, because more time is given to show training," said Spong, who has been on the forefront of orca research since he became the first to study killer whales in the wild in 1970.

In Japan, no such research at sea has been done, accoring to Hideki Tanakura of the whale division of the Fisheries Agency's Marine Products Administration.

Shoichi Shimochi, an orca trainer at Taiji Wahle Museum in Wakayama, said, "If you just watch them swimming (in the sea), you can't research them."

Two years ago, five killer whales were captured off Taiji amid heated national and international protest. They were sold to the Taiji Whale Museum and other Japanese aquariums for up to Y30 million apiece, all ostensibly for "scientific research."

However, of six aquarium representatives interviewed, only one was prepared to provide detailed information about such research.

Breeding said necessary

Japanese aquarium officials claimed that breeding research on captive orcas is necessary to try to preserve the species.

While not considered endangered, killer whales number as few as 100,000 worldwide, Spong estimated.

Captive research is a front enabling aquariums to keep their orca shows stocked with performers, Berman argued, pointing out that 30 years of captive breeding attempts have failed to produce a sustainable population and have resulted in more deaths than births.

Aquariums want newborn calves because they are the most attractive in terms of public draw, said Hidehiro Kato, head of the cetacean population biology program at the National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries.

But conditions in small cement tanks, chlorinated water, relative isolation and public performances render an extremely unnatural life that is stressful for cetaceans, Spong said, especially for orcas, which spend their life in close-knit family pods and swim up to 160 km a day.

"We use one of our orcas in a show so the public will understand various facts about orcas, how they move, how they jump," said Masatoshi Mano of the public relations department for Izuhakone Railways, owner of the Izu Mito Sea Paradise aquarium.

Spong, however, argued: "These places claim to be educating people about orcas, but they cover up the most basic information. They will tell you how big it is, how many teeth it has, but nothing about the fact that these animals have a family they were taken away from, that they had a very close bond with."

Bans in other nations

Public opinion is turning agains captive cetaceans in other developed countries, Berman said, noting that the United States and Canada banned their capture in their waters in 1976 and Iceland did likewise in 1989.

Whale watching is meanwhile booming, as is the push to free captive cetaceans. Keiko, the 20-year-old orca star of the 1993 Hollywood movie, "Free Willy," now awaits an unprecedented release in his native Icelandic waters, where supporters hope he'll soon rejoin his family after 18 years in captivity.

"When Keiko is released, we will learn so much about the social side of orcas' lives," Spong explained.

Berman, Spong and their Japanese sponsors are urging Japan to work toward the release of all captive killer whales in the country, especially three of five surviving orcas in Taiji.

"We think that Japan once had a population of resident (coastal) orcas, and that they're now entirely extinct. This (orca) family off Taiji was actually a very rare example of a healthy family that just passed through Japanese waters, and was destroyed," Spong said, citing the capture as having very serious repercussions for the future of the comparatively few killer whales that remain around Japan farther out at sea.

Postwar records show that orcas were regularly captured by Japanese whalers, peaking at 169 in 1965 and averaging 72 per year until 1968, when the number plummeted. From 1972, the catch stood at five or less each year until 1991, when it hit zero.

Tanakura of the Fisheries Agency, said: "We don't know why they decreased so suddenly. No studies have been done."

- Catherine Pawasarat