The Cove

  

       

       The other day, I had the opportunity to watch an extremely interesting and shocking documentary, The Cove. It was produced in 2009 and was filmed in the years leading up to 2009, taking place mostly in Taiji, Japan.  In this documentary, a group of American Environmentalists traveled to Japan to capture footage of mass dolphin killing taking place in a cove in the town of Taiji. 

In this small cove, a group of fisherman trap the migrating dolphins into nets. They have two choices once they have captured them: they keep the attractive ones, selling them to aquariums, museums, or other aquatic zoos for about $150,000 each, and they kill the rest with spears and knives, leaving the water completely red and bloody. The dolphins that they kill are getting sent to markets to be cut up and sold to be eaten. But what the public does not know, is that the dolphin meat contains extremely high levels of Mercury, leading to huge numbers of Mercury poisoning amongst the population. Also, the population has no idea about the way the dolphins are being tortured and killed because the cove is kept completely off limits. There is supposed to be absolutely no filming in the cove, so the activists set up high definition cameras hidden in rocks and trees in order to capture the footage for the film. The activists took a huge risk going to Japan trying to prove their point. If they had been caught, they would have gone straight to prison. 

This documentary is calling out to us, to attempt to make change and make a difference. However, as this issue is taking place in a foreign country, it is difficult for us to make an immediate difference, and save the dolphins instantly. Seven years since the documentary has been filmed, and five years since the movie has been produced, the mass killing of dolphins in Taiji is still taking place. I find that it may be extremely possible for more of United States citizens to be informed of the dolphin killing than Japanese citizens. The fact that the government is not willing to tell their citizens about how they are killing their food, and the mercury that is contained in their food emphasizes the idea that the Japanese government may have many more hidden secrets. The mercury is causing extreme birth defects in children, and the government has no explanation to the people who are having to deal with the mercury effects on their or their children's bodies.

In America, majority of our fast food and frozen food products are made from Pink Slime, a completely artificial meat product. However, our society is completely informed of the artificial meat we are eating, and they still eat it. Although it is an not an equal comparison, I wonder if the Japanese government informed their society of the dangers of the dolphin meat they were eating, if they still would. 

The treatment of the dolphins is completely unneccesary, and unfortunate. Dolphins are not meant to be killed and eaten, they are meant to live in the wild. Leading to the issue of Sea Worlds and other aquatic zoos. Dolphins taken into Sea Worlds is almost equilavent to killing them. In this envrionment, they live a very stressful life. Dolphins in the ocean travel about 40 miles a day, compared to a zoo where they are in a tiny swim tank until they die. This could easily be called a method of torture. So just like the Japanese culture, Americans are also uninformed how they are indirectly torturing the dolphins in zoos and Sea Worlds.

The dolphin issues are expanding greatly, and the best way for us bring the torture to a halt, is to continue informing.