Have you ever gone to Sea World, or any aquarium or zoo that has a dolphin exhibit? Or, perhaps, been on vacation and thought it would be cool to do a “swim with the dolphins” as a part of your vacation fun? The Cove, one of two closing night films at the AFI Dallas 2009 Film Festival (the other being James Toback’s Tyson), will make you think twice about just what we’re doing when we support the capture of dolphins for our own entertainment.
The Cove is a searing thriller of a documentary about a team of activists who put themselves on the line to expose the slaughter of 23,000 dolphins a year in Taiji, Japan, which also supplies most of the dolphins that get shipped around the world to be used for entertainment of humans at places like Sea World, aquariums, and “swim with the dolphins” programs — a highly profitable, billion-dollar industry. At the heart of the story is Ric O’Barry, the man who holds himself personally responsible for the plight of dolphins in this business, and had dedicated his life to atoning for what his work on Flipper has wrought.

Sure, you remember Flipper, that adorable dolphin who swam faster than lightning and acted as a sort of Lassie-of-the-sea to his human companions. O’Barry was the man responsible for the capture and training of the five (female) dolphins who played the role of Flipper in the beloved family television series, and for many years he profited greatly from that enterprise, never considering whether what he was doing was morally right or fair to the sea mammals that many scientists believe to be among the smartest creatures on our planet.
O’Barry had an epiphany of sorts, though, when Kathy, the primary dolphin who played the part of Flipper, exhibited signs of depression and ultimately, he says, “committed suicide” in his arms. For dolphins, O’Barry tells us, breathing is not an automatic function like it is for humans; a dolphin can choose to end it’s life by simply not taking in another breath. And a day after Kathy died in his arms, O’Barry was arrested (for the first of many times) for freeing some captive dolphins; from that point on, the course of his life changed, and he became the world’s most outspoken and controversial advocate for dolphins in captivity.
The film The Cove started out over ten years ago as a documentary about the degridation of the ocean, but evolved into an attempt to capture, for the first time, what really goes on in a hidden cove in Taiji after dolphin trainers from around the world select the ones they want for their shows and aquariums. The town and the workers who herd the dolphins in Taiji are aggressive about hiding what really happens there from the world. Signs are posted everywhere warning visitors to stay out of protected areas, and the fisherman themselves get angry and belligerent about cameras and videos. O’Barry himself is well-known in Taiji, and at first you might think he’s a little paranoid in thinking he’s being followed everywhere he goes — until you realize that he is.
To get the footage for this film, director Louie Psihoyos assembles a crack “Oceans Eleven”-type team — Mandy-Rae Cruikshank and Kirk Krack, freedivers who will place underwater mics and cameras; a special effects team to design and build fake rocks to house hidden cameras; Simon Hutchins, Expedition Director, who uses his military background to plan the mission and perform recognizance with night goggles to ensure the team won’t be caught by guards when they sneak in under cover of darkness to place, and later retrieve, their equipment, and Charles Hambleton, Clandestine Operations. There’s also Scott Baker, a DNA scientist who brings along a portable DNA lab to prove that meat being labled and sold as whale meat is, in fact, dolphin meat — which is highly toxic due to its mercury content. Dolphin meat which, by the by, officials in Taiji plan to include in the compulsary lunches fed to schoolchildren.
The editing of the film is taut with a great dramatic structure; this isn’t your average talking-heads documentary, it’s a thrilling real-life adventure with high stakes for the people on the team and the dolphins whose plight they’re trying to show the world. The footage they get is shocking, intense, and heartbreaking to watch, but almost as shocking is the attitude of the Japanese officials who surround the entire business and shroud it in secrecy.
The Cove is one of the best examples of compelling, fascinating documentary filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time. To an extent it’s what one might call an “activist documentary” in that its goal is both to educate and to compel those who watch the film to get involved to both push for global changes around both dolphins in captivity and the 23,000 dolphins who are slaughtered each year in Taiji and to change their own behavior that supports this billion-dollar industry by not going to zoos, aquariums, swim with dolphins programs and SeaWorld.
But it’s really the horror the hidden cameras reveal of what goes on in Taiji that compels that action, and O’Barry himself, which his unswerving dedication to righting a wrong he sees himself as responsible for. While The Cove isn’t exactly this year’s March of the Penguins — much of the footage is unrelentingly intense and horrifying and could, quite honestly, traumatize the hell out of younger children — it’s the must-see documentary of the year for older kids and adults. After seeing The Cove, you’ll never think of that family vacation to Sea World or that life-enhacing swim with the dolphins in quite the same way ever again.
The Cove comes out in limited release July 31. Don’t miss it.

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