"The Cove" exposed more than the brutal slaughter of dolphins. The meat, highly contaminated with mercury, was also sold to schools for children's lunches with disastrous consequences.
PHOTO BY OCEANIC PRESERVATION SOCIETY  |
Every September bottlenose dolphins are lured into a cove in Taiji, Japan and killed by fishermen. It is a region that appears to love dolphins and whales. Murals of these peaceful sea creatures cover the walls and even buses and boats are shaped like dolphins. In reality, this is a little town with a big secret. To locals and outsiders, it would be impossible to believe that dolphins are being brutally killed in a cove and one wonders how something so horrible can be so secret. This is the question that Ric O'Barry and his team of activists answered when they created their documentary, "The Cove."
O'Barry spent 10 years working for the Miami Seaquarium, capturing dolphins and teaching them tricks. He is the man who captured the five dolphins that used to play Flipper on the international TV show of the same name. He was especially fond of one of the dolphins, Kathy. He spent most of his time working with her and noticed that Kathy had been acting differently for a while. One morning he went out to the dock in front of his house to play with Kathy and she swam into his arms.
Every breath that a dolphin takes when above water is a conscious choice. Looking directly into O'Barry's eyes, Kathy took a breath of air, closed her blowhole and never took another. "It was as if she committed suicide in my arms," he said. In that moment, he understood that capturing and training dolphins was wrong.
On the first Earth Day in 1970, he founded the Dolphin Project, dedicated to freeing captive dolphins and educating people throughout the world to the plight of dolphins in captivity. O'Barry soon became known throughout the world as the man who was constantly –and illegally – freeing dolphins from captivity. Any time there was a dolphin in trouble, he was there to cut the nets or unlock the gates that trap them. When he heard about the dolphins being slaughtered in Japan, he knew he had to bring awareness to the problem. He gathered up activists, marine experts and a production team, and filmed a documentary, "The Cove," to show the world what was going on.
"The Cove"
My parents and I were trying to decide on a movie to go see one evening and mentioned "The Cove." It had been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times as a powerful, must-see film. I wanted to see a different movie, but went anyway, not expecting to be interested in it. Boy, was I wrong!
From start to finish, it had my utmost attention. It was almost impossible for me to believe that something so horrible has been going on for so long. Once the footage of the dolphins being killed was shown, I realized everyone in the theater was crying, including myself. The image that is forever stuck in my mind is the image of a baby dolphin being stabbed multiple times and trying desperately to escape. Watching this, I felt the fear the dolphin was feeling. It attempted to swim to shore as the water around it turned red from the blood gushing out of its blowhole. That was the hardest thing I've ever had to watch and as soon as the scene had passed, I knew I would never let those dolphins in Japan be far from my mind. They are the most peaceful, friendly creatures in the sea and don't deserve to be captured and trained for our amusement.
Another powerful part of the film was when O'Barry barged in on a meeting of nations that were discussing the fish market and the policy of killing dolphins. He had a television set strapped to his chest showing footage of dolphins floating lifelessly in the bloody water of the cove. Every person in the room gasped in horror at what they were seeing. It was obvious the fishermen of Taiji were doing everything to hide their acts of slaughter. As I watched this part of the film, everyone in the theater began clapping. I felt my heart swell up with happiness and thankfulness to O' Barry.
As soon as the film ended, information on how to be involved in protecting the dolphins was shown on the screen. My parents and I instantly pulled out our phones and typed in the information. By text messaging the number provided ("DOLPHIN" to 441-44), I now have daily alerts sent to my phone about the dolphins of Taiji and about O'Barry's efforts. I also visited the website (www.thecovemovie.com), spending that entire night on my laptop trying to learn as much as I could about these dolphins. On the website is a petition anyone can sign to support the protection of the dolphins. I signed the petition that night and put up information about the movie on my Facebook page so all of my friends could be aware of what was going on.
I am so appreciative that people like O'Barry and his team – who risked their lives to make this documentary – are doing everything they can to bring attention to the horror in the Taiji cove.
In the words of Ric O'Barry, "Dolphins are free-ranging, intelligent, and complex wild animals, and they belong in the oceans, not playing the clown in our human schemes."
Update
"The Cove" and the relentless team of people who were a part of the documentary are responsible for saving the lives of 70 bottlenose dolphins last September. Two months into the killing season, no small dolphins have been killed, but the fishermen have continued killing pilot whales, which are part of the dolphin species. Many Japanese are suffering from mercury poisoning because they have been consuming the dolphin meat that is labeled as "whale meat" in the fish markets.
Dolphins and whales are highly contaminated with mercury from coal-burning industries and other chemical contaminants that find their way into the ocean and the food chain. Pilot whales' meat is even more deadly than dolphin meat as pilot whales are said to contain the highest levels of mercury. Dolphin meat was even sold to the school systems in Japan to provide lunch for the children, who became ill from the high levels of mercury (See sidebar, "The Poisoning of Minimata").
"The Cove" is available for purchase on DVD. To sign the petition to save the dolphins and learn more about them, visit www.thecovemovie.com, or savejapandolphins.org, or text message "DOLPHIN" to 441-44. For information about the Oceanic Preservation Society team, visit opsociety.org. O'Barry's books, Behind the Dolphin Smile, (1989) and To Free A Dolphin, (2000) are first-hand accounts of his work and dedication.
The Poisoning of Minimata
In the 1950s and 1960s, the town of Minimata, Japan, experienced one of the worst incidents of mercury poisoning in contemporary history. The Chisso petrochemical factory dumped an estimated 27 tons of mercury compounds in the bay, poisoning the fish that the locals eat as the linchpin of their diet. The mysterious illnesses – numb limbs, slurred speech, palsy, blindness and birth defects – that resulted became known as "Minamata Disease," the result of toxic mercury.
Douglas Allchin, editor of the University of Minnesota's SHiPS Teachers' Resource Center, wrote an article, The Poisoning of Minamata, that appeared in its newsletter and is excerpted here:
"It started out quite simply, with the strangeness of cats ‘dancing' in the street – and sometimes collapsing and dying. Who would have known, in a modest Japanese fishing village in the 1950s, that when friends or family members occasionally shouted uncontrollably, slurred their speech, or dropped their chopsticks at dinner, that one was witnessing the subtle early symptoms of a debilitating nervous condition caused by ingesting mercury? Yet when such scattered, apparently unconnected, and mildly mysterious events began to haunt the town of Minamata, Japan, they were the first signs of one of the most dramatic and emotionally moving cases of industrial pollution in history.
"Chisso finally stopped production of acetaledyde in 1968 – when an alternative technology for producing plastics was developed. Still, through the 1970s and 80s, new patients continued to surface….
"No one can be sure of the extent of the damage, but one neuropsychiatrist at a local university estimates that 10,000 victims exist currently and that at least 3,000 have died. Over $611 million has been paid to victims in compensation. But it is hard to measure the real cost."
