In Taiji, whaling is done using a method called drive hunting.

As long as the weather is acceptable and they don't have something else going on, they'll go out every single morning.

There's 12 boats if they're all operating, and they kind of spread out in a fan with Taiji at its center, and they go out about 15 miles at a relatively slow speed, and they're just scanning, scanning, scanning the horizon, looking for birds or spouts.

Anything to give them a hint that there's one of the species that they're allowed to catch, and if one of them finds a species, he'll call it in on the radio and the 12 will have like an impromptu conference on their wireless radios, and if they decide to go for it, they'll all assemble behind the pod and they'll line up the boats, and then they have these metal poles that are kind of flanged at the bottom, and they'll put the flange side into the water, and they're very long, they're very coordinated.

They'll just push the pod slowly, slowly, slowly towards Taiji and then they get them to a certain cove, it, you know, the cove, and seal it off with ropes and then either take the animals for meat or live for show animals.

That's one thing that's unique on Taiji is that because they do this method of hunting, the animals aren't killed at sea.

That's good news if you eat whale meat.

Whale is served across Japan, and it has regional varieties.