Dark Underbelly of the Dolphin Trade Revealed in "The Cove"

Film review by Lisa Rosen

Dolphins hold a special place in the hearts of almost anyone who comes across them. I call them the fireworks of the sea, because whenever beachgoers are lucky enough to see one leaping through the water, they actually ooh and ahh as if they were watching the skies light up with magical bursts of color. I posit that it’s impossible to watch dolphins in their element without smiling.

That is, unless you’re watching “The Cove.” The film, out today from Roadside Attractions, is easily one of the best movies of the year. And we’re not talking about a sweet, delightful look at the ever-smiling charmers, but a heist, a thriller, and a horror film that has repercussions far beyond the seas in which they cavort.

Like most Americans of a certain age, I first saw a dolphin thanks on the television show “Flipper.” Make that five dolphins, all female, who assayed the role. Their trainer, Richard O’Barry, worked with them from the first day of the show to the last. As the show’s popularity grew, so did O’Barry’s realization that the dolphins he had caught and trained were self-aware, highly intelligent beings who were living miserable lives, thanks to him. The day after one of them died in his arms, he turned into a dolphin abolitionist, vowing to undo the damage he wrought.

Unfortunately, dolphin captivity is a massive moneymaker. Parks like Sea World, and ‘swim with the dolphin’ programs, insure a continual demand for dolphin captures. According to O’Barry, half of all captive dolphins die within two years. In the wild, their life span is 40-50 years. They have sonar abilities far greater than anything any lab has ever come up with, so the constant noises they’re constantly subjected to in captivity are torture to them.

If only that were the worst of it. In his work, O’Barry has discovered a tiny place in a tiny Japanese fishing town called Taiji, the cove of the title. The area is adjacent to the dolphins’ migration route. Fishermen lure the dolphins into the cove by disorienting them with a ‘wall of sound,’ and then capture them with nets. Dolphin trainers look over the caught animals, selecting the prettiest to ship off to dolphin parks worldwide; one dolphin can fetch up to $150,000. The process goes on for six months every year, starting in September.

Then there’s the matter of the remaining animals. They aren’t released back into the ocean. O’Barry had heard horrible stories of dolphin slaughter, in annual numbers as high as 23,000 in that one cove alone. He couldn’t verify the activities because the area is heavily guarded, even though it’s part of a national park. O’Barry enlisted Louie Psihoyos, who served as both director and onscreen participant, to help him get evidence of what was actually going on in that protected inlet.

What comes next is jokingly referred to in the movie as a kind of “Ocean’s Eleven” – the men assemble a team of free divers, filmmakers, activists and adventurers to illegally sneak into the cove and record what’s happening. The group is constantly followed by unmarked cars, their actions are monitored by the police, and the fishermen publicly harass them, trying to start a fight that would lead to arrests. The filmmakers ratchet up the tension like any good suspense story, but we don’t get the break of thinking it’s only a movie. This is real, and it’s clear that this isn’t just illegal, it’s potentially life-threatening.

As Psihoyos explains in the movie, he wanted to tell the story legally, with official involvement, but his every attempt was faced with a roadblock, both literally and politically. As the action continues, the filmmakers are careful to rebut the argument put forth by the Taiji representatives that killing dolphins is an age-old practice. The activists want the people of Japan to see what’s going on, along with the people in the rest of the world, because once seen, it would never be tolerated.

As important as the well-being of dolphins is, this isn’t just about their safety. The fishermen have been taught to see the dolphins as pests, eating too many of the fish and threatening a primary food source. The real culprits, however, are human fishing methods, which have dangerously depleted the sea’s creatures as well as littering the ocean with thousands of miles of nets.

Oh, but it gets worse still. The meat from the dolphin slaughter is mislabeled as whale meat and sold across Japan. A program is set up to feed the dolphin meat in free lunches to Taiji schoolchildren. Dolphins are high in the food chain, which means their level of mercury is hundreds of times the accepted level for people to eat. That dolphins have all been poisoned is perhaps more heartbreaking than the more obvious horrors brought on by the Taiji fishermen.

And what is seen is very nearly unwatchable. As the story reaches its conclusion, it’s hard not to scream at the screen, and small children should definitely not attend, unless their parents are in the mood for a week of nightmares. Adults may have them as well, but they also have other recourses. Awareness begets action.

The other day on Huffington Post I saw a fluffy little story – on the site’s Green section no less! – about actress Anna Paquin visiting Sea World with her boyfriend, actor Stephen Moyer. There’s a picture of her kissing a dolphin. She looks delighted. Undoubtedly she has no idea of how the environment is affecting the animal. But there was a small note among the comments below the feature that read, “If they watched THE COVE, this would not be as cute.”

Simply witnessing the film can affect change – it already does so, in the movie, as various people are shown footage that the filmmakers obtained. Just ask any detective, it’s a lot harder to get away with murder when there are witnesses. Is witnessing enough? No. Outrage has to be converted to action to end the dolphin captivity and slaughter business. Psihoyos doesn’t favor any general boycotts of Japanese goods, but has several other suggestions, on the film’s website: www.takepart.com/thecove/

It’s not the most important cause on earth to align yourself with. It’s not even the most pressing ecological nightmare we face. But in this one case, one simple goal could be attained relatively easily. Dolphins are the only wild animals known to rescue humans. The cases of their coming to our aid, even fighting off sharks in the process, are numerous. Now it’s our turn.