The Cove

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I just finished watching The Cove, which recently won the Oscar for Best Documentary Film, as well as some of the special features on the DVD.

Highly, highly recommended -- not, perhaps, as transcendent a documentary as Man on Wire, which won last year, but an extremely important film, and also an extremely engaging one. (And a very well reviewed one, too.)

As you may know, it's about the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins in a secret cove in Taiji, Japan, and about the efforts of an Oceans 11-like team of activists to document it and educate people about what's really going on both there and more generally -- and yet, it's about so much more, including the international whaling trade (led by Japan, which lies about its involvement and essentially pays off smaller countries in the Carribean and Africa to supports its aims), the hugely profitable dolphin-show industry (i.e., Flipper, SeaWorld), and the mercury-poisoning epidemic (examined more closely in a short special-feature documentary on the DVD -- mercury is present in high levels in large fish and oceanic mammals like dolphins and tuna, and is also used as a preservative in vaccines).

I'm generally enamored of all things Japanese, and I love sushi and seafood generally, but, well, let's just say this film leaves me deeply unsettled.

As it was meant to. The mass slaughter of the dolphins, as of the whales, is utterly horrific. So, too, is human pollution of the oceans and other bodies of water, leading to rising mercury levels in the fish we eat, and more broadly the human exploitation of the environment, including overfishing.

We would do well to think seriously about how we treat the world around us, as well as those who inhabit it with us. And we would do well to do something about it. The Cove, a very fine film that is also a compelling piece of activism, could help lead the way forward.