The Cove
Sundays are one of my favourite and least favourite days of the week, I'm sure many people feel this way about Sundays due to Monday being the very next day, a new start to the WORKING week.
Anyways, Sunday is my "Lazy" days which I prefer to spend in front of my TV watching everything I possibly can! I am a "former" TV Addict!
That evening I was channel hopping and saw that academy award and Oscar winning film "The Cove by Richard O'Barry" was being played that night (I didn't know until the next day that it won an Academy award and Oscar and numerous other awards), somehow the name sparked a wave of curiosity in me and I decided to read the synopsis of the film, it was quite a brief synopsis and had I made a decision based on it, I probably wouldn't have taken the time to watch it (thanks DSTV). Boy was I glad I did.
The Cove is a documentary about dolphin slaughtering in Taiji Japan. Usually I wouldn't watch this type of documentary unless there was nothing else to watch. Could it be that it reminded me of the time when I was obsessed with dolphins as a child?
Basically the documentary follows Richard O'Barry plight to educate the world about the barbaric practises and mass slaughter of more than 23,000 dolphins each year.
Richard is a world renowned dolphin activist and flipper the dolphins former trainer,Before he became an activist, he worked for 10 years in the dolphin captivity industry and for the last 38 years against it.
Why is this happening? Well, for money of course. I believe that wars, massacres, drug dealing, hostile take-overs, prostitution, slavery and genocides are all caused by greed.I always ask myself when terrible things happen, how is it that we do not know about it? why is it not on the front page of our newspapers? Well with an ongoing war happening in the Middle East, Famine taking centre stage in Africa, America trying to take over the world, why would a massacre of dolphins make the front page? I am not saying that the above mentioned is not important and should be ignored, that is another story for another day!
Each year thousands of dolphins are driven into the bay in Taiji where trainers capture them and sell them to aquariums and marine parks all over the world for about $150 000 per dolphin, the unlucky dolphins who are not sold into captivity are then slaughtered in the "secret" cove and sold to supermarkets all over Asia as "whale meat".
What amazed me about the quaint beautiful little town is that they appeared to be devoted to the wonder of whales and dolphins that swim off its coast!
So besides the poor dolphins being gruesomely killed, people are being fed so that is a good thing right? Wrong! Dolphin meat contains dangerously high amounts of mercury, of which is being distributed to schools in Japan (according to the documentary). Pregnant woman who consume the so called "whale meat" are giving birth to babies with the congenital form of Minamata disease. Minamata disease is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poison.Symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death follow within weeks of the onset of symptoms.
What saddened me the most about this documentary was the fact that fishermen of Taiji went to great extent to stop this documentary being filmed, not once did they think about the innocent asian people out there who are being poisoned without knowing it. The Mayor of Taiji as well as the Japanese government were involved in covering up this senseless practice!
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| The End product |
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| Massacre of dolphins |
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| A scene from the Cove |
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| Richard O'Barry |
So, what can I as an individual do to help? I strongly suggest each individual to watch The Cove and then do the following:
Sign the petition and educate yourself so that you can educate the next person.
"Knowledge is Power".
http://savejapandolphins.org/
References:
http://thecovemovie.com/
http://savejapandolphins.org/
