The Cove

I watched this documentary in class. It's called The Cove and it has got to be one of the most heartbreaking documentaries I have ever seen. It's about an inspiring activist named, Ric O'Barry. In the 1960s he captured and trained dolphins for a television show called Flipper. Kathy was one of his favourite dolphins. She lived in The Miami Seaquarium, after they were done filming, they brought her with them as if she were a prop, she also performed for crowds. O'Barry claims that she "committed suicide" in his arms due to stress from excessive noise.


He said that dolphins, unlike humans, are conscientious of their breathing, and that they could just stop at any time.When Kathy committed suicide O'Barry started to realize something he'd been blind about for years. Kathy just suffer from stress due to being in captivity. Dolphins in captivity are stressed because of all the noise coming from the spectators. For dolphins, their sense of hearing is their strongest sense and the noise was so loud it caused many to die.

He founded the Dolphin Project in 1970, it was a group designed to educate the public of captivity and even free some of the dolphins in captivity, he has been doing this for 40 years. The first dolphin he saved was from a sub-standard sea pen in Bimini, the dolphin was swimming in its own feces.

He then went to Taiji, Japan. He found out that people were capturing as many dolphins as they could and the young dolphins were to be trained, while the older dolphins were brought to the Killer Cove, where they killed 23 000 dolphins a year. 

At first the fishermen said that they killed these dolphins for the meat, but O'Barry went around Taiji asking people if they knew about the dolphin killing, no one did. Everyone said that they don't consider dolphin as food, the dolphins just entertain them. They started giving school kids free dolphin meat at lunch as a form of propaganda. The legal amount of toxicity in meat is 0.4 parts per million. The dolphins they were killing were not within the restrictions.

Next the fishermen said that they were told to kill them by the government, that it was about pest control. That isn't true because they would drive around the sea in speedboats and forced the dolphins to swim toward shore.

In reality, the government kept it under the radar because for every dolphin they got that was alive sold for $150 000, every dead dolphin was sold for $500. The fishermen said the they were trying to keep as many alive as they can. I'm guessing that boat has about 13 dead dolphins in it, and that water doesn't even look like water. I seriously doubt they tried to keep too many of the dolphins alive.

Ric O'Barry and some of his fellow activists put cameras in fake rocks that they placed by the cove to get footage of what was happening. It was gruesome, the fishermen brought thousands of dolphins to that cove daily just to kill them. O'Barry went to a meeting for the IWC (International Whaling Commission) with a T.V. strapped to his torso, the T.V. displayed the footage they got of what the fishermen do in the cove. He also stood in the streets of Taiji just playing the footage over and over for the public to see.

The thing I hate the most is that this world is so corrupted that people will standby and let these horrible things happen for no other reason than because there's a lot of money involved. Also I want to know what makes those people think that a dolphin's life has any less value than ours. They are intelligent beings they know whats happening when they're brought out to that cove, they know when they're being taken away from family members, they have just as much right to live as we do.

O'Barry mentions that in this generation not many people are stepping up to plate and trying to help. Here's a link to a petition, if you feel the same way I do, sign it, if you don't sign it, well then just remember this: It's still happening right now as you are reading this and it's not something that will just go away.

The last 8 words of the documentary are: Unless we stop it. Unless you stop it.