Essay

'The Cove' and 'The Gulf'

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

As a child, I often went on fishing trips with my family in Biscayne Bay near my home in Miami. On occasion, we would see pods of dolphins arch out of the waves alongside us, like sleek fingers of the ocean itself. The dolphins seemed fearless of the boat's propeller, and unconcerned we might try to catch them — the ultimate extreme athletes. Playful, curious, and eager to surf the wake of our boat, they seemed to seek us out, and they took our breath away with their beauty. They didn't appear to be afraid of us, and it never occurred to us to threaten them.

I grew up within several miles of the filming location for popular TV series "Flipper," and my friends and I watched the show whenever we could. Flipper painted the legend of a loving and smart mammal, an ocean-going Lassie or Hachiko. Looking back, the TV show was pretty inane, but it caused millions of viewers to fall in love with dolphins, to see them as cute and heroic. Of course, actual accounts of surfers and divers being rescued or protected from sharks by dolphins give the cetaceans an additional aura of beneficence that their "smile" seems to reinforce.

Flipper's trainer, Ric O'Barry, after years of working closely with dolphins, came to the conclusion that keeping the intelligent and athletic animals in captivity was cruel. O'Barry, whom I met several years ago, told me he deeply regrets that the Flipper program helped popularize dolphin aquarium shows worldwide. Sickened by the mistreatment of dolphins, O'Barry now tries to atone for his past by rectifying such situations when possible, freeing dolphins even if it requires breaking the law.

O'Barry was instrumental in the production of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, a movie now showing in Japan, despite attempts by some special interest groups to keep it from public release. While most Japanese have never bought or tasted dolphin meat, they are likely to be upset to learn of its mercury contamination, and to be repulsed by scenes of the dolphin slaughter at Taiji. In those sequences, there's a lot of blood, the animals clearly experience pain, and groups of humans surrounding and killing mammals is horrifying — but the slaughter by hand of cows, lambs, or pigs, would, to most, be equally disturbing to watch.

However, the real horrors depicted by the movie are not limited to the fishing village of Taiji. The documentary touches on issues of widespread mercury contamination, unsustainable fishing quotas of various species, reef degradation, pollution and greed-fueled political cover-ups of actions that are fouling all of our oceans. The movie attempts to make humans reassess wanton appropriation of the environment and all that lives in it. Perhaps if Japanese feel provoked or unfairly targeted by this film, they will be motivated to balance the score by exposing problems looming on foreign coasts. In answer to The Cove, how about a film documentary titled The Gulf, showing the devastated coasts of Louisiana, or even Flipper's homeland of Florida? A well-oiled cast and crew awaits, including dolphins, with a plot of cover-ups, vested interests, and dangers that could well make The Cove seem like a tempest in a teacup by comparison.

Shukan ST: July 16, 2010

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