With hidden cameras and guerilla filmmaking tactics, The Cove reveals the practice of mass dolphin slaughtering in Taiji, Japan with the aim of stopping it.
After three decades of praise for his skill at training captured dophins, and his role in producing the highly rated 1970's television series, Flipper, Ric O’Barry has turned into an activist against this practice.
From September through March, fishermen in Taiji, government permit in hand, participate in a dolphin hunt. in About a dozen boats go out to sea at sunrise looking for migrating dolphins. The fisherman bang on metal pipes submerged into the water to terrorize the dolphins, putting them into a state of panic. Next, the dolphins are herded into a secret cove in Taiji, a small fishing village where they are slaughtered.
Although the meat from these dolphins contains toxic levels of mercury it can be purchased in supermarkets and it is given to schools for use in free lunch programs.
The goverment allows fishermen to kill dolphins as a means of pest control--the dolphins eat too much fish and thus must be exterminated, activists say. Research has shown that dolphins are highly intelligent creatures.
O'Barry has been banned from participating policy making discussions on dolphin captivity at international organizations that regulate this multibillion dollar industry. Some industry groups, he says, are complicit in the practice because the annual dolphin slaughter provides an easy way for dolphinariums to obtain animals for dolphin shows, such as the ones at SeaWorld, and swim-with-dolphins programs.
O'Barry can't travel in Japan without being followed. But the only way he can be successful in his new mission is by getting proof of the killings. That's where gifted photojournalist Louie Psihoyos comes into the picture.
With the help of fake rocks developed by Hollywood set designers to hide small video cameras, a military grade infrared camera smuggled into the Japan, and a filmmaking crew with a passion for advocacy and guerilla movie making, O'Barry and Psihoyos get into the heavily policed cove and they get their story.
“I’m more of an activist than I am a filmmaker,” Mr. Psihoyos said at a film premiere this summer. “The point to me is not $10 and a box of popcorn, the point to me is to make a difference.”
Disributed by Lionsgate, The Cove is now playing at Landmark Theatres E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda Row Theatre in Bethesda, Md. and as well as theatres around the country. For more on the film click here. For more information on the saving dolphins in Japan, visit. http://www.takepart.com/thecove. Check out the trailer now.
Photo: Courtesy of The Cove
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