Review - "The Cove" documentary movie.

“The Cove” is an Academy Award-winning documentary about the horrifying and merciless slaughter of dolphins in the Taiji, a small fishing village in Japan. It sets on exposing the dolphin trade and why the public needs to act against it with such urgency. 

At first glance, the place seemed to be a dolphin and whale’s paradise. There were posters, graffiti, statues, and parks inspired of dolphins and whales scattered around the small community. The Japanese claim their whaling is conducted for research purposes as stated under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. However, as the story unfolds, this small town of Taiji is actually keeping a very dark secret—it was a small scale version of an international large-scale dolphin trade.

An organization called the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) has found out that there are around 23,000 dolphins which have been killed every year in Taiji. At first, the fishermen did not let OPS get near the shore but OPS placed spy cameras camouflaged with rocks and in the water. The things recorded were devastating. Dolphins being attacked with harpoons and deep red blood flowing in the sea water. Although, the OPS have shown the recorded clips to people in Taiji, the slaughtering didn’t stop but less dolphins were being slaughtered.

Dolphins are slaughtered because fishermen want money, selling one dolphin is already worth 150,000 USD. They are captured for multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, and for high market demand for dolphin meat. But the Japanese government would go through extreme lengths to make sure that these discoveries do not go public. Moreover, the Japanese Fisheries Agency was able to manipulate the International Whaling Commission’s mandate, something that has dangerous repercussions to the rest of the world. What is more shocking, the truth about the cove in Taiji, and the covert operations of the Japanese fishermen was not something that is known by most Japanese! The government of Japan proceeds to give away dolphin meat, for free, to schoolchildren and also placed on supermarket shelves masked as other types of fish. They did not know that mercury (one of the most toxic non man-made chemical and can give many diseases to human beings) levels in the meat remain dangerously high, according to the research presented in The Cove.

 Knowledge is powerful, and it gives one a certain responsibility to action, particularly in this case. The dolphin massacre at Taiji is just one piece of the puzzle surrounding the future of our global resources, our food system, our health, our planet’s ecology — basically, our everything. The movie was very inspirational especially for me to think beyond my personal problems. There are various social concerns and issues that we are facing right now that if we did not do something to address it would cause domino effect that affects us all—whichever part of the world we live.