The Cove
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The Cove is a 2009 documentary film of the purported annual killing of about 2,300 dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Wakayama in Japan. The film highlights that this is about three times the amount of whales killed in the Antarctic, and purports that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year. The migrating dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and killed by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan's most recent progress report 1,569 cetaceans in Taiji were killed during the 2007 season, including methods other than drive hunting. A total of 13,080 cetaceans were killed throughout Japan in 2007. Only 1,239 cetaceans were killed by drive hunting.
The film was directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, and portions were filmed secretly during 2007 using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks.
The documentary won the U.S. Audience Award at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. It was selected out of the 879 submissions in the category.
Furthermore, The Cove has been shortlisted for an Oscar nomination at the 2010 82nd Academy Awards. It is up against 14 other films competing for five open slots for Best Documentary Feature.
The movie follows former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry's quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. In the 1960s, O'Barry captured and trained the five wild dolphins who would play the role of "Flipper" in the hit television series of the same name. This pop-culture phenomenon fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins. It was when one of the dolphins committed a form of suicide in his arms, closing her blowhole voluntarily in order to suffocate, that O'Barry came to see it as a curse not a blessing. Days later, he found himself off the island of Bimini, attempting to cut a hole in the sea pen in order to set free a captured dolphin. Since then O'Barry has worked tirelessly as an advocate on behalf of dolphins around the world.
After meeting with O'Barry, Psihoyos and his crew wind up in the small town of Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonder and mysteries of the dolphins and whales that swim off their coast. But in a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by wire and "Keep Out" signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under the cover of night, that the fisherman of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in the unseen killing. Together with the Ocean Preservation Society, Psihoyos, O'Barry, and the crew utilizes special tactics and embark on a mission to get the truth on what is really going on in the cove and why it matters to everyone else in the world.
The film also reports on the alleged "buying" by Japan of votes in the International Whaling Commission.
Among the challenges faced by the production team were the tight security and inaccessibility of the cove. To address some of these issues KernerFX, previously part of Industrial Light & Magic, contributed specialized camouflaged high-definition cameras that were designed to look like rocks. These hidden cameras helped capture footage for the film and were so well camouflaged that, according to Director Louie Psihoyos, the crew had a hard time finding them again.
The documentary demonstrates that despite attempts to work with the town of Taiji, the local and national government were unwilling to participate. Director Psihoyos commented that he originally wanted to do the story legally and with permission from the Japanese government:
“After a tour of the town with Richard [O’Barry], I contacted the Taiji mayor’s office and the dolphin hunters’ union. I wanted to get their side of the story and I wanted to do the story legally. I had noticed that I had picked up a tail; I had 24-hour police surveillance while I was in town. But the town was not interested in cooperating; they were making too much money with the captive dolphin industry to jeopardize it by having a journalist milling about. The mayor told me that I could get hurt or killed by getting too close to the dolphin hunters or the secret cove."
The film received very positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (out of four), calling the film "a certain Oscar nominee." Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the film "an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller," going on to describe it as "one of the most audacious and perilous operations in the history of the conservation movement." Other reviewers also played up the espionage angle of the film, including Time Magazine's Mary Pols who said that The Cove "puts Hollywood capers like Mission Impossible to shame," and Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor who agreed, calling it "a rousing piece of real-world thriller filmmaking." Film review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 27, summarizing the consensus as "Though decidedly one-sided, The Cove is an impeccably crafted, suspenseful expose of the covert slaughter of dolphins in Japan." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 82, based on 26 reviews.
David Cox of The Guardian Film Blog gave a less favourable review:
Why would you pay good money to be told what to think? Because you like it, apparently. If we must have blatant propaganda on screen, it might as well be good propaganda. The Cove passes this test with ease. The effectiveness of this piece of evangelism is intuitively unsurprising but theoretically puzzling. If corporate greed is destroying our way of life, or profligate carbon consumption threatening our survival, it's clear why we should care. It's not so obvious why the fate of a few thousand cetaceans should exercise us rather more. The film's spearspersons are certainly puzzled. Westerners, they point out, kill and eat cows. Easterners eat dolphins. What's the difference?
Michelle Orange of Movie Line also concludes that: "How much of this (The Cove) should we believe? As a piece of propaganda, The Cove is brilliant; as a story of ingenuity and triumph over what seems like senseless brutality, it is exceptionally well-told; but as a conscientious overview of a complex and deeply fraught, layered issue, it invokes the same phrase as even the most well-intentioned, impassioned activist docs: Buyer beware."
Brendan O’Neill of Spiked touched on the racist undertones he felt were in the docu-thriller:
The Japanese are depicted as suppressed and unquestioning: we’re shown speeded-up footage of hordes of Japanese people walking through garishly-lit, buzzing city centres, their travels to work or home crudely reduced to pointless, super-fast marching through the streets, and we’re told that there’s a saying in Japan that ‘if a nail is sticking up, pound it down’ – in other words, Japanese culture is stultifyingly automaton. Where old racist America depicted the Japanese as rats, contemporary countercultural America depicts them as members of a rat race. The Taiji fishermen – sorry, the hook-wielding crazy killers of beautiful dolphins – come off the worst. The film dehumanises them to an alarming degree.
The film was shown at the 2009 Tokyo International Film Festival.
After the screening of the film in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane film festivals, the councillors of Shire of Broome, Western Australia unanimously voted in August 2009 to suspend its sister city relationship with the Japanese whaling port town of Taiji, as long as Taiji continues its whale slaughter. The decision was reversed in October 2009.
Dolphin hunting season in Japan begins on September 1 each year. In reaction to the publicity generated by the film, the 2009 dolphin hunting season was postponed until September 9.Out of the 100 dolphins captured on September 9, some were sold into captivity and 70 of the bottlenose dolphins were released. In addition, there were 50 pilot whales killed and sold for meat on the same day. Although Japan remains unclear on their slaughter policy, it has become apparent that The Cove is having an impact on the way in which Japanese fisherman normally conduct the dolphin hunt.
A recent international study showed that, on average, dolphin meat contains 5 times the maximum allowable level of mercury. After the filming of The Cove, dolphin meat was taken off the school lunch menu in Taiji. The Japanese government has issued warnings about pregnant women eating dolphin meat, but maintains that it is safe to consume in small quantities.[citation needed]
Mercury poisoning can damage the brain, kidneys and central nervous system. Studies have also linked mercury with cardiovascular disease, infertility, and high blood pressure. In 2008, dolphins found dead in Australia were found to have suffered severe neurological damage from mercury poisoning. The cause for the high levels of mercury seems to be due to a process called bioaccumulation. Over time, mercury builds up in ocean life through repeated exposure to low-levels of toxins. Oceans become polluted with mercury when atmospheric emissionsfrom coal and industrial plants are transported into the sea.[citation needed]
The Cove has won fourteen awards from eleven film festivals:
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