A Flim

I would like to introduce a film named “The Cove”. The film is a 2009 documentary film that analyzes and questions of Japan’s dolphin hunting culture. The main character of this film is Richard O’Barry. He was the man who captured and trained the 5 dolphins for the television show named Flipper. Flipper is a 1964 TV series. O’Barry is a world famous for his work with dolphins. He was arrested many times for trying to free some captive dolphins.

We always watch dolphin performance in the dolphinarium. They always look happy. Actually dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception. It’s hard to see the problem. It creates the illusion they’re always happy. But did you know? The nerve center of any dolphinarium is the fish house. If you go to any one of these fish house, you will see bottles of Maalox and Tagamet. The dolphin trainer will feed the dolphins bottles of Maalox and Tagamet. 

They are used because the dolphins in the fish house get ulcers, and it is because the dolphins are all stressed out. You have to see them in the wild to understand why captivity doesn’t work. In the wild, they’re traveling 40 miles a day. (64km) They could be surfing in one area in the morning, and one next hour they could be 25 miles away feeding or socializing. So, can you imaging that a dolphin is trapped in a small space for 1 or 2 years? They lost their freedom just like we keep ourselves in a room for 1 or 2 years. I believed that you can’t afford up to 1 month.

Dolphins are acoustic creatures. That is their primary sense. The dolphins can see right through you if you are in the water. They can see your heart beating. They can see your bones. They can even see if you’re pregnant. They can get a lot of information with their sound. They are very sensitive to sound. There were a case of dolphin were dying left and right when the industry was opened. The people couldn’t keep dolphins alive and they finally figured out that because the filtration system was making a lot of noise. It’s the stress that kills them. It is because dolphin is captured and put in a concrete tank surrounded by a stadium full of screaming people.

There was a dolphin name Kathy in the Flipper TV show. It died in O’Barry’s arms. O'Barry contends Kathy was committed suicide. Why he will contends Kathy as committed suicide? Dolphins and other whales are not automatic air breathers, like us. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. And so they can end their life whenever life becomes too unbearable by not taking the next breath. Because of this, O’Barry used the word suicide. O'Barry made a radical transition from training dolphins in captivity to assertively combating the captivity industry soon after Kathy. Since that time, he has become one of the leading advocates against cetaceans in captivity and for the preservation of cetaceans in the wild.

There has a place named Taiji in Japan. Hundreds and thousands of dolphins were caught and seal at there. Then all of the dolphin trainers will be lined up selecting the ones that they want for the dolphinariums or flown to different parts of the world. Nobody knows where the dolphins that weren’t selected are slaughtered at the secret cove and sold for their meat. There is no reason for kill the rest of the dolphins and there are almost 23,000 dolphins are slaughtered every year. Why didn’t they set them free? O’Barry and filmmaker were trying to expose the place where hunt the wild dolphin in the world in Taiji, Japan.

They found that a lot of the packages that were labeled as expensive meats from large whales were actually is dolphin meat. Dolphins contain high level of mercury that are 20 times higher than World Health Organization recommendations. The government knows it but still cover it up. They are poisoning their citizens who are no idea to buy those packages of meat at the market. Dolphin’s meat is heavily laced with mercury. Mercury is the most toxic non-radioactive substance on Earth. The reason is due to the burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution, the mercury content in the bad environment annually increased by 1-3%.

He called his buddy and build up a team to record a video in order to expose what happen at Taiji. He found out some experts and professionals that can help him to discover the truth. Some guys who can create all these weird ways hide Hi-Def cameras and hydrophones. He also found a guy who are world class freedivers and can go down 300 feet on one breath of air and come back on her own power. It is in order to put the hydrophone (high tech sound devices) into underwater housing to heard the dolphins from the lagoon and how deep of the water and so on.

Finally, Ric O’Barry was success to record the scene of the dolphins being slaughtered.  He plays the video on a television with a jacket that put it on his body and shows it to the ambassador during the meeting. However, he was being cast out by the security during the meeting because he had disturbed the meeting.

 “I was going to free every captive dolphin I could, I spent 10 years building that industry up. And I spent the last 35 years trying to tear it down.” said Ric O’Barry.

The action that Ric O’Barry did during the meeting make me proud of it because he willing to show his spirit to save dolphins. He is guilty that he done of this and he trying to save it up as possible as he could. 
He is the man who deserve me to respect!

"I have to see this end in my lifetime. Right now i'm focusing on that one little body of water where that slaughtered takes place. If we can't stop that, if we can't fix that, forget about the bigger issues. There's no hope." by Richard O'Barry.