The Cove: dolphins sold and slaughtered

The Cove poster

Last night, I attended a screening of a movie called The Cove, which is as near to perfect a documentary as one could imagine. It has already received several awards on the festival circuit, including the Audience Award at Sundance, and they are clearly well-deserved.  What could have been a ghastly, face-hiding expose becomes a story that pulls you along with both the humans and the dolphins they’re trying to save, impelling you to get involved. The Cove is scheduled for general release on July 31st.

Director Louis Psihoyos, a still photographer for years at National Geographic, assembled a team of videographers, divers, and adventurers to expose the secret annual slaughter of some 23,000 dolphins in the town of Taiji, Japan. Guiding Psihoyos is Richard O’Barry, star of the TV series “Flipper,” who helped the team navigate past their Japanese antagonists into the secluded cove where even hardened activists could not imagine the scenes they would capture on hidden hi-def cameras.

Taiji is a small coastal town that relies on fishing and tourism, including whale and dolphin attractions. Every year, dolphin migration routes skirt the waters near Taiji, where waiting fishermen intercept them dozens at a time. The dolphins are driven into nets with a wall of sound created by the fishermen hammering on submerged pipes. The next morning, young female bottlenose dolphins are separated and sold to amusement parks around the world for as much as $150,000. The day after that, the remainder are killed and processed for their meat. When the cove is empty, it begins again, continuing until the end of the migration season.

The team takes great pains to capture the slaughter on video. Even when you know what’s coming, the actual footage is more shocking than you can imagine. No animal deserves to die this way, much less large, social mammals that are demonstrably self-aware. However, by the time you see it, Psihoyos has steeled you for it, transforming it from “exhibit A” into a call for action.

It’s the lucrative sale of dolphins to multi-million dollar tourist attractions that allows the slaughter to continue, says O’Barry.  And whether the dolphins are sold into captivity or eaten in Japan, they lose out.  Our perception that dolphins are content to perform backflips in tiny pools is belied by the number of dolphins that die at amusement parks from serious environmental stress.

As much a part of the story is the fact that most Japanese outside of Taiji are unaware what is going on there. The dolphin meat is re-labeled as whale meat and sold in markets all over Japan. Baleen whales eaten by the Japanese do not eat fish like the dolphins do, and therefore have a vastly different mercury profile – organic mercury in dolphin meat is dangerously high. Psihoyos compares the deceptive sale of dolphin meat to the Chisso mercury poisonings in Minamata, recalling the profound retardation and disfigurement that resulted in the children there. Were it not for the efforts of the film makers and two local officials, the meat would have been introduced into a local lunch program for school children. “Compulsory,” as one of the officials grimly notes: his young children would have been made to eat every bite.

The film also outlines the inability of the International Whaling Commission to effectively protect cetaceans, and how developing countries are pressured (and bribed) by Japan to join the IWC and vote in favor of the rules that allow Japan to continue harvesting whales and dolphins.

Louis Psihoyos and Richard O’Barry were on hand to answer questions after the screening, entering the theater to a standing ovation.  Psihoyos discussed the how the story was formed, and moment he inserted himself into the story as an activist.  It was evident tha his background as a photojournalist benefitted the movie greatly.

It’s an eye-opener to say the least.  If you skip the summer blockbusters in favor of seeing The Cove, you won’t regret it. Trailer below.  -DA