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The Cove “The
Cove” is a documentary that should be shown on national television
– make that international television – rather than be seen by the
few thousand who will come to it in theatres. It is the story of a slaughter of
dolphins, going on now, in a cove near the Japanese seaside fishing town of Taiji. Every
year thousands of dolphins pass by along the coast on their migration route,
and every year the fishermen of the town come out to herd them into a small
cove where they are killed, one by one, by the men who plunge sharpened
spears into them. The water in
the cove runs red with dolphin blood as the slaughter goes on. On average, the men kill about
twenty-three thousand dolphins each year. We
know this because even though the Japanese have hidden the cove from prying
eyes, with razor wire and guards, and the cove itself is set in an area of
rocky cliffs, an international group of saviours
– there’s no other word – has snuck into the cove and
recorded on tape the entire process.
It is sickening, compelling, essential viewing. The saviours,
who risk Japanese prison if caught, are a group of climbers, free-divers and
cameramen (and women) who place their recording devices (using night vision
to see their way), led by an American named Richard O’Barry. O’Barry
is the man who made a fortune by training the dolphins that were used for the
television show “Flipper” forty years ago and has regretted it
ever since. Along
with the footage of the slaughter, the film also visits the International
Whaling Commission, which has so far refused to include dolphins as protected
species (they are cetacians) |