A friend told me to watch a movie I knew I didn’t want to watch. The subject of the documentary film is the senseless slaughter of dolphins by the Japanese. I can’t think of a more cowardly act than wanton cruelty toward defenseless animals, and the thought of it sickens me. While I knew it would an uncomfortable thing to watch, I also knew the purpose of the film wasn’t to revel in the atrocities, but rather to bring them into the public spotlight as a step toward a solution.
Dolphins are a very advanced animal species, highly intelligent and showing every sign of being self-aware. I was introduced to the wonders of dolphins from watching the TV show “Flipper”, as was most of my generation. Ironically, Ric O’Berry, the man who captured and trained the dolphins (there were five) used in the show is now the leader of the movement to stop their capture and slaughter. He realized that the popularity of “Flipper” led to the demand for dolphins for aquatic shows around the world, and to the horrors perpetrated in a small cove in Taiji, Japan, from where come the vast majority of dolphins used in the shows.
O’Berry’s conviction that dolphins shouldn’t be held in captivity came from watching, Kathy, one of the dolphins from the TV show, commit suicide in his arms. While dolphins appear to be happy and even smiling in water shows, it’s not a happy smile and is very misleading. Captive dolphins are highly stressed, developing ulcers that must be treated with high doses of ulcer medicine. Their highly developed auditory systems are compromised in enclosed spaces, and they long for the freedom of the open seas. Dolphins and whales, unlike humans, make a conscious choice whether to breath or not, and this dolphin decided to not take that next breath. And Kathy was well-treated by his captors, unlike many dolphins around the world who are treated poorly.
But the real story isn’t about the small percentage of dolphins from the cove that are bought for shows. It would make sense, at least in human terms, to release the thousands of unbought dolphins back to the wild, but that’s not the case. Instead, they are cruelly slaughtered by so-called fishermen. It’s a heart-wrenching scene that was captured on film due to the heroic efforts of O’Berry and his team, who risked arrest, or worse (two activists have been murdered), to obtain the footage.
And the story doesn’t stop there. It’s well-known that the higher up the aquatic food chain, the greater the levels of mercury in fish. Dolphins and whales, which are also a target of the Japanese, have some of the highest levels of mercury, making them highly toxic and dangerous to consume. Yet, corrupt Japanese officials who profit greatly from the dolphin harvest and want to justify it to their population went so far as to mandate that dolphin meat be served to school children throughout Japan, thereby poisoning their young generation.
The motivations behind the Japanese governmental insistence on continuing the slaughter of whales and dolphins are complex, going beyond simple greed and corruption. There are deep-seated cultural motivations, many of which involve tradition, “saving face” and not letting the outside world tell them what to do. Unfortunately, that means the issue is bound to become a political football, with all that entails, and while it is being kicked around the slaughter continues.
“The Cove” came out in 2009 and is fairly easy to find. It won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010. I watched it on Netflix on demand. Yet, if a friend hadn’t steered me to it I might have missed it. So I’m returning the favor. You may not want to watch it, but you really should.
