The Cove (on Japanese Dolphin Slaughter)

It’s hard for me to write a review of the actual documentary in a calm and collected manner due to the horrifying topic that it tackles; the mass dolphin butchering that takes place in Taiji, a small coastal town in Japan.

Featured in the documentary is Ric O’Barry, founder of the Dolphin Project, who has been a dolphin activist for about 45 years. The specially selected crew and O’Barry use covert methods and go to great lengths to expose the inhumane methods by which dolphins in the ocean near Taiji are slaughtered in the months of September through March.

– THERE WILL BE DISTURBING DETAILS FROM HERE ON (and spoilers)-

The film itself is pretty gruesome and contains shocking videos, I even cried at one point. The method is that when dolphins are spotted near the cove on the Taiji coastline, the fishermen go out in boats and cause a racket, thus scaring the dolphins away from them – into the bay. There they are quickly sealed off with nets, and left overnight to calm down. In the morning dolphin trainers gather on the beach and select dolphins to take to various dolphin facilities cross the world. The rest are killed.

Japanese fishermen are using sadistic methods for killing dolphins, it appears in the movie that it takes several stabs to the head and body of the dolphin with  long, sharp pole of sorts in order for the animal to either bleed to death or for the spinal cord to be severed. The water in the little bay in which this takes place turns red from the blood, and the cries of the dolphins can be heard, alongside the laughter of these fishermen.

The butchered dolphins are sold for food. Once again, the shit hits the fan when tests done on this dolphin meat conclude that there are levels of mercury in the meat that far exceed the international health guidelines…. and this dolphin meat is being given to children at schools and sold (mislabeled) as whale meat to the people! (Tests done on the locals confirm high levels of mercury contamination). According to the documentary, dolphin meat has been taken off school lunch menus in Taiji since the time it was filmed.

The people who are involved in this barbaric practice have gone to great lengths in order for details of this operation to never reach the general public. This of course makes it hard to get footage of what really goes down, but luckily the activists do succeed in doing so, and are able to expose the savagery.

The practice however, has not stopped. Dolphin hunts do start every September still. The Japanese government does still give dolphin hunting and whaling permits every year. I’d also like to highlight that Japan is not the only nation that hasn’t ordered a halt on this. It is happening on the Faroe Islands and in Peru (although it isn’t legal, about 1000-2000 dolphins are killed here every year illegally).

All in all, the documentary is jarring, and anyone who feels on any level emotionally invested in animal welfare is right to be angered by what is happening annually to these intelligent, benevolent animals. I can’t even begin to understand what the other side of the argument is… anything they claim (they claim that the methods are humane, that it is tradition and that it is pest control) becomes totally invalid when you see these wounded dolphins thrashing about from the pain, and hear their cries.

I’m not sure where humanity is headed.