A few years back, the normally sleepy town of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture was filled with activists furious with its traditional dolphin hunt, which was featured in “The Cove,” a 2009 Academy Award-winning documentary.

But as the fury ebbs, the town is now betting its future on dolphins.

“It was a bit wild back then — we never knew what was going to happen,” says dolphin hunter Mitsunori Kobata. He shakes his head as he recalls when foreign activists descended on his small hometown.

There was the time a dozen people surrounded his pickup truck on the way to work, penning him in and accosting him until a policeman could make the 30-minute drive from the next town over. Or when the activists marched through town waving a giant black flag bearing a cross and bones, or when they stopped children on their way to school to show them bloody pictures of whales and dolphins.

Western protesters had been coming to Taiji, one of the nation’s last active whaling towns and home to two dozen dolphin hunters like Kobata, since at least the 1980s. But this was different. After “The Cove,” which used hidden cameras to capture bloody footage of the local hunts, their numbers surged. The town of 3,000 was inundated, and while there was little outright violence, angry confrontations with fishermen and whalers were common.

Now, the fury over “The Cove” is fading. The activists have largely stopped coming, and Taiji is spurning international criticism against its dolphin hunts with a number of bold initiatives. The town is pursuing projects like a new sister town relationship with a town in the Faroe Islands that also hunts dolphins; a five-year, nearly $15 million deal with Chinese aquariums to supply hundreds of live dolphins and training; and a bold initiative to convert a local bay into a massive dolphin pool.