The Peculiarities of Dolphin Industry in the Documentary The Cove
Speaking of dolphins, most people’s first thought will be of the performing dolphins in various aquariums. They jump out of the water with a smile to make various performances. However, behind this beauty hides a lot of blood and cruelty. The documentary film The Cove by Louie Psihoyos in 2009 reveals the dolphin hunting hidden behind the Taiji city in Japan, which was the largest supplier of dolphins around the world at that time. The purpose of this documentary is to protect dolphins from the large-scale hunting and capturing of dolphins.
The film originated from the actor Ric O'barry. At the beginning, he was a dolphin instructor at the Miami Dolphinarium. The five dolphins he trained played the role of flipper in the TV show Flipper in the 1960s. However, when his career was booming, he chose to quit the industry and turned to work to rescue dolphins from captivity. Compared with dolphin trainers, this industry is not only unrewarded but also full of dangers. He has been jailed many times for releasing imprisoned wild dolphins and his two colleagues Jane Tipson and Jenny May have paid their lives for this. And all this is for the freedom and life of dolphins.
Most people know that the IQ of dolphins is very high. Not only can they use tools, such as attaching sponges to their noses when looking for food to reduce the damage caused by the sand and mud on the seabed, but also have language skills, the scientists even think that dolphins have their own independent language communication. Beside that, their behavior of saving human lives has also been confirmed by many people. In the movie, Dave Rastovich who is a famous free surfer described the scene of a dolphin hitting a tiger shark to save himself and his companions. However, the suicide of dolphins is little known, this is also the reason caused Ric O'Barry's change. According to his memories, he could feel the depression of the dolphins. One of the five dolphins he trained, swam into his arms, looked at his eyes, and took a breath. When Ric O'Barry let her go, she sank straight down on her belly to the bottom of the pool. Although dolphins are mammals just like us humans, their breathing is conscious, which means that when they feel that life is too painful, they can end their lives. This is also the most touching part of the whole movie. The gentle background music and Ric O'Barry's soft description can even make people feel the depression of life before the dolphin commits suicide.
Unlike most documentaries nowadays, this film consists of interviews with various people, Ric O'Barry's experience and some captured exposure shots. According to the data in the film, an estimated 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered in Japan each year, and Taiji City, as the main supplier of dolphins, has dolphin hunting activities every year. Ric O'Barry wanted to expose the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji City to protect the dolphins, but this violated the interests of local fishermen. In the movie, many fishermen provoke him and shout at the camera. Ric O'Barry even said in the movie: 'if these fishermen could catch me and kill me, they would.' However, He has been patient with the ridicule and insult of the fishermen, because he knows that whenever he makes any illegal actions, he will be out of the game.
Due to the fierce resistance of local fishermen and the government, many scenes were completed by various night vision cameras. In order to get the real scenes at the time, the crew even found a military-grade thermal imager and found someone to make a high-definition camera camouflaged in a stone. As the first line at the beginning of the movie said: 'I do want to say that we try to do the story legally.' The shooting technique of the exposure shot is more like a spy movie. All the actors act at night, avoiding the Japanese who guard them outside the hotel, hiding various equipment in the jungle in the middle of the night, and then returning to the hotel. Although the shots taken in this way are not as clear as those shot in the movie studio, the scene of the massacre is still shocking. The sea was stained red by the blood of dead dolphins.
As a hearing animal, dolphins have extremely sensitive hearing and can even resemble bats living in water through echolocation. This is the ability to help them locate and travel, but in Taiji City, this ability has become one of the reasons why they are in desperation. Dolphins have some fixed migratory routes, and the fishermen in Taiji City, after familiarizing themselves with these routes, wait for them to arrive during their annual migration. According to the principle of advanced hearing of dolphins, fishermen drive fishing boats to extend some long poles with flanges at the bottom into the water, and hit the heads of the long poles with hammers. The sound of a large number of fishing boats forms a sound wall which will scare the dolphins, thus driving them to a cove surrounded by islands on three sides, where is the hell of all dolphins. The fishermen trapped all the dolphins in the cove, waiting for further treatment. These shots of the siege of the dolphins are all on the distant mountains. We can see the dolphins jumping and struggling in the cove, but the crew is helpless. The audience can even feel the despair of dolphins.
The next morning, trainers from various dolphinariums came back to select dolphins, and the selected dolphins would be sent around the world for performances. The siege of dolphins lasted from September to March of the following year, and the remaining dolphins would be slaughtered for food. At the local whale museum in Taiji, there are dolphin decorations everywhere, and the film also satirizes this scene, 'you would think this is a town that loved dolphins and whales'. Visitors can eat dolphin meat while watching a dolphin show in the Whale Museum. Fishermen can get 600 dollars for a dead dolphin, but a living dolphin used for performances can get them more than 150,000 dollars. It is precisely because of the huge industrial chain profits hidden behind dolphin hunting that all exposure has been blocked.
The explanation given by local fishermen about hunting and eating dolphin meat is, 'this is our tradition, this is our culture, you eat cows, well, we eat dolphins.' Regarding the fishermen's explanation, the crew did an interview in Tokyo about dolphin slaughter and eating dolphin meat, and found that most people did not know about this. This shows that this is a 'traditional culture' that no one knows about. The media covered it up, and another thing was covered up, that is mercury poisoning.
The movie pointed out that mercury, as the most toxic non-radiation substance on the earth, can cause serious harm to the human body, especially the fetus. Mercury starts from the smallest body, and every time it reaches the upper level of the food chain, the mercury content increases by about ten times. As a creature at the top of the food chain like humans, the mercury content of dolphins far exceeds food safety standards. For this reason, the crew found a professor from Hokkaido Medical University and asked him to test the mercury content of dolphin meat. The results were shocking. In Japan, the recommended mercury content for seafood is 0.44ppm (approximately one part per million), but the mercury content of dolphin meat is 2000ppm. As mentioned in the film, creatures such as dolphins can be said to be “swimming poison reservoirs”.
Therefore, Only a handful of people eat dolphin meat knowingly, but where does the meat from the large number of dolphins slaughtered every year go? The crew found the answer. There are various types of whale meat circulating in the Japanese market, and some of the whale meat marked with high prices is actually dolphin meat. Because the mercury content of dolphins exceeds the standard, if it is marked as dolphin meat, the price will be lowered. This can make dolphin meat sell at higher prices without worrying about sales. In addition, they also donated dolphin meat to the school for free, but did not inform that the meat contained excessive mercury.
In fact, there was an international organization that managed the protection of cetaceans (a marine mammal of the order Cetacea, such as whale, dolphin, or porpoise)at that time, but due to the influence of various whaling countries such as Japan, South Korea and Brazil, small cetaceans like dolphins were not protected. This organization is IWC (international whaling commission). Ric O'Barry was even blacklisted by it which means he has been banned permanently from attending the IWC.
At the end of the film, Ric O'Barry walked into the IWC conference hall with a video screen that hung on him, which showed the slaughter of dolphins in the cove. More and more reporters began to shoot the videos he played. Apart from this, he also took the screen to stand in Tokyo for many hours just to let the public know the truth. As more and more people paid attention to this matter, the pressure of public opinion on the Taiji government is also increasing. Finally, the government agreed to keep only 50 dolphins for performances and release the remaining thousands. Ric O’Barry succeeded.
