The Cove utilizes equipment and tactics never previously used by filmmakers in order to obtain footage that the Japanese government refused to allow the film crew to capture. It's amazing to watch what these filmmakers went out and did. They put their lives on the line to expose something that is really unbelievable and sadly, still goes on today.
The movie follows former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry's quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. In the 1960s, O'Barry captured and trained the five wild dolphins who would play the role of "Flipper" in the hit television series of the same name. This pop-culture phenomenon fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins. It was when one of the dolphins committed a form of suicide in his arms, closing her blowhole voluntarily in order to suffocate, that O'Barry came to see it as a curse not a blessing.
The director Louie Psihoyos and O'Barry met at a marine conference where O'Barry was scheduled to be a keynote speaker. When the event's sponsor, Sea World, suddenly removed O'Barry from the event Psihoyos was curious to know why. O'Barry informed Psihoyos of his mission against the captivity industry.
In particular, O'Barry mentioned Taiji where dolphin drive hunting is an annual tradition taking place between September and March. When the two made a trip to Japan Psihoyos found that "the cove" was actually a National Park that the government had fenced off and prohibited the public from venturing into. Together O'Barry, Psihoyos, and a specially selected film crew devised a plan to get the annual killing on camera.
What the team uncovered was an industry making over 2 billion dollars a year on captured cetaceans, government corruption, a human health hazard due to mercury poisoning, and a massive killing of mammals that goes virtually unnoticed by most of the world.
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