The Cove/ the most inspiring movie

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As Ric O’ Barry began working in the stage of Flipper he began to create a bond with both Sue and Kathy two of the prominent characters who played Flipper. Every Sunday he would bring a TV outside to the dolphins and soon he began to understand that they could distinguish themselves from each other. Ric soon began to realize that these mammals carried a non-human intelligence and a full consciousness of their existence. Capable of feeling, communicating, and not to mention any ultrasonic system that we use is nothing compared to a dolphins sonar system. There fore these acoustic beings have the ability of seeing beyond our bones and determining diseases or pregnancies. Knowing that their primary sense is their sensibility towards sounds. Imagine how a dolphin feels in a stadium full of music and cheering crowds.

So why exactly is Ric O’ Barry trying to liberate dolphins from captivity? Well After the 1964 Flipper TV series aquariums and marine amusement parks skyrocketed over 300 dolphin parks opened including Sea World becoming a multi-million dollar industry; people began to have the aspiration of surrounding themselves with dolphins. At aquariums or at Sea World we see dolphins interacting and somehow we believe that their facial gestures suggest they are happy but the reality is that behind the scenes a vast amount of dolphins die of ulcers caused by the stress they obtain when being exposed to a vast amount of cheering people and the effects of living in captivity. It’s easy to see this as quite insignificant but if we look closely we can understand why they don’t belong in captivity. In the wild regularly a dolphin swims over 40 miles a day which means they can be somewhere in the afternoon and in an hour they can be up to 25 miles away.

So what is it that happens in Taiji, Japan? Well every September for 6 months in Taiji, Japan Boats head to Dolphin migratory routes and knowing of the dolphin’s sensibility to sounds they create a tedious noise by hammering large poles they submerge into the water. Eventually Dolphins are cornered in Taiji, Japan. The next day marine park owners from the U.S and all parts of the world arrive to choose bottle-nosed female dolphins buying them off at about 150,000 thousand dollars which brings a profit of 2-3 million dollars yearly. After marine park owners leave the rest of the dolphins are brutally slaughtered with axes or long knifes. It is estimated that about 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered yearly in only Taiji. This means that by us attending to any aquarium or a Sea World park we are contributing to the captures of thousands of dolphins and paying the fishermen and Taiji Whale Brokers since Taiji is the only largest supplier of dolphins to all marine parks and swim with dolphin programs around the world. So where does all this meat go to? Even though dolphin meat is undesirable for its large amount of mercury. Investigators found that most of Japan’s grocery markets sell their dolphin meat as fine whale meats making a profit of almost 1,000 for each dead dolphin.

 It is interesting how in the 1970’s Roger Payne created a massive social awareness towards the whale slaughtering by bringing exposure of the killings through records of music flourishing Whales acoustic sounds. This erupted creating a wave of revolts against the British government. It only took one man to make a difference by only exposing these actions to the people. So I believe that it only takes exposure for us to create a massive social awareness once again. The best action we can take is to expose this slaughtering, by watching Ric O’ Barry’s film The Cove, and preventing others from going to aquariums or Sea World. We need to comprehend that just like us they are aware of themselves and their families and are able to feel like we do.  By only bringing this social awareness of how the Dolphin industry plays a vast role in the slaughtering of Dolphins in Taji, Japan. We can make a difference.