Tourists watch Niru, a Risso’s dolphin caught locally, swimming through the crowd looking for chunks of raw squid given by a Taiji Whale Museum employee, left, last week in a small ocean cove in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture in western Japan. The ancient village has a long and complex relationship with the dolphin. In early September, the waters of this same cove will turn blood red, as it becomes a holding pen for the annual dolphin hunts.

Taiji, Japan ? As children in inner tubes bob on the calm waters of this small ocean cove, a 550-pound dolphin zips through the crowd in pursuit of raw squid tossed out by a trainer.

Niru, a Risso’s dolphin caught locally, seems unbothered by all the people and the squeals of surprise and delight. The cove is packed — it’s a bright summer Sunday and hundreds of families have come.

But in two weeks, the waters of the cove will turn blood red, as it becomes a holding pen for annual hunts that capture and kill hundreds of dolphins each year.

The ancient village of Taiji, portrayed in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” has a long and complex relationship with the dolphin. The film portrays the dolphin hunts as a sinister secret, cruel and dangerous because the animals have high mercury levels.

But the hunts are no secret in this village, where Risso meat sells for $10 a pound at the local supermarket. And the villagers are deeply and stubbornly proud of their centuries-old tradition, whatever Hollywood says.

“We will pass down the history of our ancestors to the next generation, preserve it. We have a strong sense of pride about this,” Mayor Kazutaka Sangen told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. “So we are not going to change our plans for the town based on the criticism of foreigners.”

Hunting permitted

For Sangen, dolphins are no more special than other animals, and fishermen have the right to start their hunts when the season opens again Sept. 1. He emphasized he didn’t speak directly for Taiji’s dolphin hunters, who number about 60 and hunt with the permission of the national and prefectural governments.

But to activists such as Ric O’Barry, the “Flipper” trainer-cum-activist who stars in “The Cove,” dolphins deserve to be protected because they are different from other animals.

“Dolphins have a brain larger than the human brain. They’re self-aware, like people and like the great apes. They’re not fish, chicken, cows, pigs or other domesticated animals,” he said while in Tokyo to promote the movie in June.

The dolphins caught in the region are not endangered. In 2008, the prefecture caught 1,857 dolphins, far less than other parts of Japan, which allows about 20,000 to be killed each year. Taiji fishermen use a method called “oikomi” to hunt dolphins, banging on metal poles in their boats to create a wall of sound and herd them to shore, where they are harpooned for meat or captured alive as show animals.

Nestled around a small bay, the tiny town of 3,500 is suffused with a fierce independence. It has refused to join surrounding villages as they merge, and ignores criticism as it seeks to become an international whaling and cetacean research center.

This was the birthplace of Japanese whaling in the 1600s, and shrines to the animals dot the streets, with the history celebrated in a series of annual festivals. While dolphins can be playmates, they are primarily seen as big game animals –an idea many foreigners find difficult to stomach.

‘The Cove’

The success of “The Cove” has thrust the town and its traditions into the international spotlight, with much of the attention negative. Local fishermen decline comment, saying their words have too often been twisted by foreign reporters.

The movie depicts a team of environmentalists with hidden cameras as they capture bloody footage of dolphins being slaughtered. The fishermen who try to block the film crew are presented as rough goons.

Sangen and other officials say that during hunts, the cove is the equivalent of a slaughterhouse, a gory place by nature and usually closed off from public view anywhere in the world.

“We just hope that this issue can be viewed in a more realistic way,” says Katsutoshi Mihara, head of the town council.

The Japanese debut of “The Cove” this summer turned into a battle over free speech, with nationalist groups intimidating cinemas into canceling showings even while intellectuals urged them not to back down.