By KHRYSTA IMPERIAL RARA
EVERYONE likes a thriller, especially one that is based on fact.
Watching the documentary film The Cove is like watching a James Bond movie, where the main characters resort to secret tactics and weapons to outwit the enemy. But unlike James Bond movies which are fiction, The Cove revolves around a gruesome fact: the yearly mass slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
The film documents the annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, the smallest town in Japan’s Wakayama prefecture. The Taiji people say whaling is their tradition; they do it for seven months every year, starting Sept. 1 and ending March the following year.
During this time, local fishermen herd migrating dolphins into the isolated cove in Taiji where they are netted and killed. It is called the drive hunting method.
The Cove documented that hunt, but did so in high-tech secrecy since neither the government nor townsfolk would allow outsiders to film it. And this is how The Cove becomes an extraordinary environmental thriller.
The Cove, which has won 46 international awards, was shown recently to an audience of 900 students, teachers, professionals and environmentalists at the University of the Philippines Film Institute in Diliman, Quezon City.
“What happened at the screening was overwhelming. The people were teary-eyed as they left the theater,” said Trixie Concepcion, regional director of the U.S.-based Earth Island Institute (EII), a nonprofit organization that campaigns to save the planet’s ecosystems.
“Majority of Filipinos don’t know that the Philippines imports dolphins from the hunt. When people see the film and are enlightened, they will want to stop going to dolphin shows in Subic and elsewhere and this will break the financial backbone of the hunt,” Concepcion said.
Carlos Borromeo, 21, a student at the UP College of Architecture, said the film did well in exposing the high-level mercury poisoning among the dolphins which makes dolphin meat toxic. “Most people are not aware of this scenario due to media coverups, even the people in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka are not aware, as mentioned in the movie,” he said.
Borromeo is president of UP Ibalon, an organization of Bicolano students founded 35 years ago in the country’s top state university. The group co-sponsored the screening of the movie with EII.
“I think the movie is a must-see film. It is a powerful documentary that exposes the incognito killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan,” Borromeo added.
The Oscar-winning documentary is the first film of director Louie Psihoyos, a scuba diver, environmentalist, National Geographic photographer and co-founder of the eco-group Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS).
But it was dolphin crusader Ric O’Barry, EII’s marine mammal specialist, who convinced Psihoyos to take on the project. A former actor and trainer of the five bottlenose dolphins used in the hit 1960s TV series Flipper, O’Barry is better known now as an activist who goes around the world liberating dolphins in captivity.
The documentary
The documentary begins with the crew’s arrival in Taiji and its preparations for filming. Psihoyos then explains how he and his crew of experts in different fields filmed the slaughter in secrecy because the Japanese government had refused to give them permission for the project.
The Japanese police tailed the crew throughout their stay in Taiji, constantly interrogating them about their activities, especially O’Barry whom the authorities knew all too well.
A former U.S. Navyman, O’Barry became a dolphin trainer in the early 1960’s and spent 10 years of his life building the dolphin captivity industry and became very rich in the process.
It was only after his favourite dolphin, Cathy, died that he declared war on the industry he once profited from.
In The Cove, O’Barry called Cathy’s death a suicide because dolphins, unlike humans, are not automatic breathers. Breathing is a conscious and voluntary act for them. Like other cetaceans, they have to open their blow holes to let oxygen in. At that instant, Cathy swam to O’Barry and as he cradled her, she opened her blow hole one last time then died in his arms.
Psihoyos and his crew used high-tech equipment for the project, including a drone and a helicopter for filming from the air.
Hidden cameras allowed the viewers to watch and listen to O’Barry’s conversations with the authorities. A thermal camera documented the team’s movements as they went about setting up the hydrophones and the specially designed rocks that camouflaged the cameras on the cliff overlooking the cove.
Access to the cove was impossible during the day. Barbed wire fenced off the area, which is a national park, and police were on constant patrol. All their attempts to film were physically blocked and mocked by the local fishermen. So they resorted to covert tactics—they studied the schedule and the plate numbers of the cars that tailed them and sneaked into the forbidden terrain at night.
Dolphin slaughter
Dolphins are acoustic creatures and Taiji fishermen create deafening noise by banging on tubes underwater to disorient them. The fishermen then choose the young females for oceanariums which pay as much as $150,000 for each animal used in their dolphin shows.
Those that are not chosen are then speared and stabbed to death. The dolphins suffer because they do not die instantly. The Cove films them all bloodied, yet leaping into the air while gasping for breath and trying to swim away.
In one heartwrenching moment, the camera captures a bloodied dolphin that managed to break away from the group. The dolphin is fatally wounded and obviously panic-stricken. It seems to be heading toward the film crew, then dies before he reaches shore. The camera catches its last few breaths before it sinks to the bottom of the sea.
Taiji authorities and fisherfolk claim they supply dolphin meat to the rest of Japan. But the film crew did man-on-the-street interviews in Tokyo and other urban areas where pedestrians were unaware and surprised to hear of the dolphin slaughters in Taiji. Many claimed they didn’t even eat dolphin meat.
The OPS team also had some of the dolphin meat tested. Results showed high levels of mercury contamination.
Japanese reaction
In Japan, ultraright wing groups mounted protests and tried to prevent moviegoers from entering theaters.
Last week, O’Barry formally handed to the U.S. Embassy in Japan two weeks ago some 1.7 million signatures from people of 155 nations calling for an end to the dolphin slaughter.
In a recent emailed message to Concepcion, O’Barry wrote: “We have turned up the heat in Japan and turned another corner in getting positive media coverage, thwarting Japan Fisheries Agency efforts to paint us as imperialists and outsiders just bashing Japanese people.”
“We have reports from all over the world that the Japanese embassies and consulate offices are being bombarded with messages to stop the dolphin slaughter,” he said in his letter to Concepcion. “If enough people around the world learn about this barbaric and anachronistic dolphin slaughter, they might take action.”
Film Title: The COVE
Genre: Documentary
Running Time: 91 minutes
Directed by Louie Psihoyos
Written by Mark Monroe
Produced by Tisher Stevens, Paula DuPre Pesmen
Awards won: 46 international film awards including Best Documentary Film at the 82nd Academy Awards in March 2010, the U.S. Audience Award at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in January 2009 and Best Documentary Feature at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards in December 2009.