The Cove is activist filmmaking at its best. It has achieved what organizations such as Greenpeace have been trying to do for decades: it brought enough worldwide attention to the antiquated dolphin slaughter practice at a cove in the small town of Taiji, Japan - to stop it. Hopefully for good.
Ric O'Barry: Dolphin Trainer Turned Activist
The driving force behind the whole covert and dangerous operation to film what happens at the cove – compared by the filmmakers to an Ocean’s 11 venture – is Ric O’Barry, a dolphin trainer for the famous and beloved 1960s TV series Flipper, who feels personally responsible for helping to create the dolphin-as-entertainment industry and places like Sea World. Ric has been on a mission to release every dolphin in captivity he could, since one of the stars of Flipper, the dolphin Kathy, became depressed and died in his arms after refusing to breathe. He has created several organisations for this purpose, Save Japan Dolphins amongst them.
The film discusses some not widely known facts about dolphins, such as their conscious breathing (versus automatic breathing in humans) and that due to being primarily auditory animals, they get so stressed out by noise in auditoriums they suffer from ulcers and have to be injected with drugs. Their sonar sense is what makes them so vulnerable to the hunters, who corral them into the cove and, after selecting a few show dolphins (worth $150,000 USD each), harpoon the rest to death turning the water an unforgettable shade of crimson.
The Japanese Side of the Dolphin Hunt Story
A dead dolphin is worth around $600 USD each and its meat sells on fish markets, mislabeled as whale meat. ‘It’s the tragic irony of this movie that the only way that we can save the dolphin now is to prove that we’ve made its environment so toxic that we can’t eat them,’ says director Louis Psihoyos, a former National Geographic photographer. This is the vital piece of information which helped prevent dolphin meat containing toxic levels of mercury from becoming compulsory school lunch for Japanese children.
The other side of the story is the stance of the town’s people. They have been hunting whales and dolphins for centuries, as their region is unsuitable for farming. They resent the filmmakers for “pushing their own values.” Dolphins are seen as a natural food resource, similar to cows in the Western world, and a species that is not only not endangered, but even considered a “pest” depleting the oceans of fish. Dolphin culling however stays well below local legal limits and the ubiquitous dolphin imagery in the town, so shocking to the filmmakers in context of what happens there, is a traditional expression of gratitude to the spirits of the animals which bring nourishment and wealth to the town's inhabitants.
Save the Dolphins, Then What?
Psihoyos initially wanted to document the decline of the world’s reefs. After meeting O’Barry and focusing on a very small-scale (in global terms) issue of the Taiji dolphins, he came to the realization of the odds: ‘If we cannot solve this, there is no hope for any larger issues.’ This truth is confronting and yes, the movie does make you cry. The devastating ineffectiveness of organisations such as the International Whaling Commission, the other Japanese towns that have decimated their dolphins completely, the government cover-ups, the pervasive ignorance and lack of awareness of long-term consequences are all staggering indictments. Amongst the unanswered questions is how do such toxic levels of mercury affect the dolphins themselves? Environmental issues are raised expertly here and the documentary's pace and wealth of emotionally affecting material plus superb photography make it a must-see.
What is so inspiring and rewarding to watch in The Cove is the passionate humanity and incredible effort on the part of the filmmakers themselves, a team of activists, gadget-masters form Industrial Light and Magic (who helped hide cameras in “rocks”), event organizers, adrenaline junkies and free diving champions, who committed at considerable personal risk to bring this story to worldwide audiences – in order to inspire change. They are proof that where there is a will, there is also a way, despite the most gruesome of odds and the most inflexible of mind-sets.
Patricia Bieszk - Patricia has a PhD in Cinema Studies from University of Melbourne and a couple of MA's in English Literature and Media Comm. She has ...
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