The carefully organized parley in Taiji was given a jolt before it even started Tuesday when Ric O'Barry, the dolphin savior star of the movie, said he would boycott the meeting due to "severe restrictions on the Japanese and international media."

Taiji's hunt each year draws a motley group of protesters who videotape the slaughter and occasionally scuffle with local fishermen. This season — the first since the Oscar was awarded — the attention has been particularly intense, and the usually unresponsive town leaders agreed to a discussion at the town's community center.

But the two-hour meeting was filled with acrimony from the start, and ended up being fruitless.

The village fisherman defended the hunt as part of a centuries-long tradition, pointing out that Westerners kill other animals for food. Activists countered that the killings are barbaric — and that dolphin meat is laced with dangerous toxins.

O'Barry said he was upset over the event's tight restrictions, including banning some major news outlets and accepting only pre-submitted questions selected by a Japanese moderator from a right-wing organization. His objections kicked off a chaotic meeting during which the moderator repeatedly ordered several news organizations, including The Associated Press, to leave.

The remaining activists were nearly all foreigners, including a member of Sea Shepherd, a strident conservation group that has repeatedly clashed with Japanese whalers at sea, along with other anti-whaling groups.

They sat opposite the stage and across a deep philosophical divide from Taiji Mayor Kazutaka Sangen and other town officials, many of whom are proud descendants of whalers in Taiji, the small town of 3,500 that was the birthplace of Japanese whaling centuries ago.

Both sides quickly made their stance clear.

"There's no compromise to be made. There will be no stopping of our activities until the harassment, capture and slaughter of both dolphins and whales on this planet ends," said Sea Shepherd member Scott West, who has been in the area for nearly two months to monitor the hunts.

Town Council chief Katsutoshi Mihara countered that those in the town do not view dolphins and whales as more special than other animals.

"We believe that these are natural resources, to be used effectively," he said.

The two sides also went back and forth on topics such as whether dolphins could be killed humanely and if the meat is healthy to consume.

The hunts are legal under Japanese law. The village fishermen kill up to 2,000 dolphins a year, about 10 percent of Japan's total. The town has long drawn the collective ire of activists. Unlike in other parts of the country, entire pods are chased into a sheltered cove, where some animals are picked for sale to aquariums and others are slaughtered close to shore.

Activists say about 100 have been killed so far this year, and West said several dozen more have been sold as show animals. The town does not release exact numbers, although the national Fisheries Agency publishes yearly figures by region — in 2008, the prefecture caught 1,857 dolphins.

As Tuesday's event came to a close, the Taiji side quickly filed out, with the foreign protesters remaining for another round of questions and media attention, which they later said was their intent.

"You're not going to get anything changed if people don't pay attention," West said. — AP