Blog #6- The Cove

Blog #6-The Cove

The documentary The Cove (2009) was directed my Louie Psihoyos and is a dramatic documentary about the capture and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. The objective of the producers of this film was to expose Japan’s cruelty towards these animals and their blatant disregard for the dolphins. Throughout the entire film, The Cove made the viewer feel uncomfortable because of the tense situations the participants of the film were put in, like going into restricted areas, sneaking into the cove, hiding cameras, and taking pictures of things they weren’t supposed to. The Cove had two major scenes where the tension of these situations were highest.

The first scene where the tension was highest was when the participants of the film were watching the images they had captured on the cameras they had placed in different areas of the cove. As they all sat together, they watched as the Japanese fishermen corralled the dolphins into one area by hitting on long sticks to make loud sounds because dolphins are very sensitive to noise. Once the fishermen had all of the dolphins together, they would start stabbing the dolphins and the entire cove turned a deep red color. The once beautiful, clear water of the cove was immediately polluted with all of the dolphins’ blood. The images were horrific and made the viewer want to look away, but also made it impossible because the images were so horrible that it was unbelievable that something like that was actually happening. 

The other scene that was very tense was the scene where Ric O’Barry walked into the meeting for the International Whaling Commission wearing a television on his chest with videos taken from the cove. This was a huge deal because the representative from Japan was telling the other members of the IWC that Japan was not using any cruel means of capturing these dolphins and that it was a quick death for all the dolphins that were caught. The videos on O’Barry’s chest showed everyone in that meeting that the Japanese representative was lying and that the dolphins were dying a slow, painful death. 

These scenes of high tension were both satisfying and unsatisfying. They were satisfying in the sense that we finally got to see actual evidence of what was going on in Japan and knowing that there were people taking steps to stop those actions. It was unsatisfying, though, because not much happened after this movie. Although the Japanese representative at the IWC was replaced, the slaughter of the dolphins still began in September and there has been no movement towards ending it.