The Cove Documentary

Note:  I wrote a blog about the “Saddest Show on Earth” two weeks ago and I’d like to direct you to a short video that specifically emphasizes everything I was talking about and more.  Alec Baldwin speaks for PETA, and this is a must see.  You cannot walk away from this unaffected:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/03/you-can-hate-peta-but-this-is-fking-bullshit/   After watching this video, the only circus you will ever attend in the future will be the Cirque du Soleil.

In my “Rethinking Swimming with the Dolphins” blog two days ago, I mention the 2009 documentary film The Cove, which analyzes and questions Japan’s dolphin hunting culture. The documentary won 25 well-respected awards, including the 2009 U.S. Audience Award at the 25^th annual Sundance Film Festival and the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.   The idea began in 2007, when former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos and dolphin activist Richard O’Barry and crew traveled to Japan to covertly document the clandestine slaughter of dolphins using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks. The film claims that from October 1^st through March every year 23,000 dolphins are killed by Japan’s whaling industry, a number several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic. The dolphin meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan, often times labeled as the more expensive whale meat.

Taiji fishermen engage in dolphin “drive hunting” whereby migrating dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and killed with spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats, creating a massive blood bath. 


Most Japanese people are unaware of this annual government-sanctioned dolphin killing; the capture of these dolphins in Taiji is carried out by about 26 fishermen. They kill the dolphins with permits from their government. The film also alleges Japan “buys” votes from the International Whaling Commission, by paying support to smaller countries in favor of whaling, such as Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Kiribati, Laos, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/06/14/japans-vote-buying-at-the-iwc/) and ignores IWC's resolutions which bans the hunting of all whale species (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/oceans/the-international-whaling-commission-0). 

The film argues that dolphin hunting as practiced in Japan is unnecessary and cruel and is motivated by capitalism.  Dolphinariums (dolphin aquariums) are always looking for more dolphins to exhibit.  The fishermen drive a large school of bottlenose dolphins into the killing cove, and dolphin trainers and marine mammal veterinarians seek out the best-looking dolphins for display.  A live dolphin sold to a dolphinarium brings in a much higher profit than dead dolphin meat, which only brings about $600.  Live bottlenose dolphins have sold for as much as $150,000 each (http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_13000526).  The dolphins that are too old, too young, or have too many blemishes are not worth displaying and are slaughtered and the meat is sold in markets.  Japan has more than 50 dolphinariums and swim-with-dolphin programs, ranging from large aquarium facilities with huge tanks and dolphin shows to small tanks at motels or floating sea pens in harbors.  Then there is the smallest dolphinarium located close to the killing cove that I mentioned in my last blog. 

Thus far my interpretation of these issues is gleaned from a variety of focused environmental or animal advocacy perspectives. So what right do we as Westerners have to tell the Japanese what to do?   Dolphins are food, just as cows and pigs are food in America.  Do our slaughterhouses resemble the killing cove?

From the Japanese perspective, whales and dolphins are not particularly special. (I'm sure they were never interested in the "Flipper" tv series.)  Indeed scientific evidence supports their position, that while cetaceans do have large, complex brains, much of their neurons are devoted to maintaining their large bodies and energy-intensive sonar lobes.  However, the film indicates that most Japanese are unaware of the cruel drive hunting or the marketing of dolphin meat.   As noted earlier, dolphin meat is sometimes purposefully mislabeled as whale meat, and contains high concentrations of mercury, which causes memory, hearing, and eyesight loss, along with cerebral palsy and mental retardation.  For this reason, local politicians have advocated the removal of dolphin meat from children’s school lunches. 

Japanese consumption of whale and dolphin meat and Japan's general spurring of International Whaling Commission resolutions are multi-faceted and layered issues.  From another perspective, the problem is not that killing dolphins and whales is inherently immoral, as The Cove sensationalizes, but that the Japanese are taking more than their fair share of what belongs to everybody despite unanimous censure as well as humanitarian, ecological, and public health concerns.