The movie, which opens nationwide this Friday, won the audience award at Sundance and is as brilliant and spectacular as everyone says it is; it will wrench the hearts of those who neither call themselves animal lover nor environmentalist, and will go a long way toward inspiring people to take action and hopefully demand protection for dolphins in much the same way that the International Whaling Commission ban did for whales although Japan is still technically allowed to continue whaling under scientific research permits -- more on this later.
Much of the film's story centers around activist Richard O'Barry, a marine mammal specialist for the Earth Island Institute and the original trainer for the five dolphins who played Flipper in that eponymous mainstay of s television.
After spending 10 years working with dolphins in captivity, he came to recognize their profound intelligence -- even advanced consciousness -- and the cruelty of their imprisonment. When Kathy, the dolphin who played Flipper most of the time, died in his arms after being depressed from years in captivity, he vowed to devote his life to freeing these sensitive creatures.
It's this determination that led O'Barry to Taiji, a fishing village that has become a big player in the billion-dollar dolphin entertainment industry, capturing countless dolphins for aquariums and marine parks around the world. But what's hidden from the public in a remote cove is the grizzly fate of the dolphins who are not selected for a show biz future. After teaming up with filmmaker Louis Psihoyos, the Oceanic Preservation Society , and a Mossad-worthy team of experts including a Hollywood special effects expert and world-renowned freedivers , the crew set out on a mission to film the dolphin massacre and reveal it to the world.
After seeing The Cove this past weekend, there's one question I can't seem to answer -- and, spectacular as their investigative reporting is, the filmmakers can't really figure out, either: Why are Japanese fishermen and the Japanese government hell-bent on killing dolphins?
Only a tiny percentage of people in Japan actually knowingly eat dolphin, and most are unaware that it is even consumed at all -- Tokyo residents interviewed for the film were shocked to learn that dolphins were being slaughtered for food.
Much of the dolphin purchased in the country is falsely labeled as whale meat, and a Nippon Research Center survey revealed that 95 percent of Japanese have never eaten, or rarely eat, whale meat. History of Whaling. The large decline in whale populations led to growing concerns among groups and organizations that began to worry about various species of whale becoming endangered and possibly even facing extinction.
Aside from the profit and industry-based whaling efforts, there are several other reasons whales are being killed, including chemical pollution, noise pollution, getting trapped in fishing nets, collisions with ships, and global warming. The Japanese government has a similarly pro-whaling attitude. The country has long continued whaling, on the grounds that it does so to further scientific research — which the IWC allows.
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