You Need To Watch The Cove

So they were painting the office and I had a few hours to burn, so I sent it to Cavendish in The Bee Gees car and got my haircut, then swung it wide around a corner and burnt into DVD Nouveau, minced my way to the counter and asked if ‘The Cove’ was available. Indeed it was! So I flat footed it home, spun the disc into the DVD player and was absolutely thrilled in the best and worst ways possible. I hate seeing animal cruelty and I love all things relating to the environment. Some people won’t watch these sorts of documentaries because they don’t want to see animals being hurt. And no one does, but if you really care, you need to open your eyes to the world.

I love the world today because we have a monumental amount of information at our fingertips and even when our access to information is hindered, we have people fighting to get the message out. I never want to be out of touch with the world we live in and I never want to miss out on stories because they’re sad. I’ll be honest I was in tears watching The Cove, it is incredibly sad. In the documentary we learn that dolphins suffer incredibly from emotional stress, and that’s why some will die in captivity. They’re used to being free in the vast oceans of the world. In humans, breathing is natural, whereas in dolphins it is a conscious effort. So in extremely stressful instances, they can in effect commit suicide, which is what ‘Flipper’ did in his trainers arms.

It’s a phenomenal story centred largely around Richard O’Barry, who was once a part of the captive dolphin industry, having trained ‘Flipper’. The lengths and risks they went into to get the footage of the dolphin massacre is absolutely phenomenal. They planted cameras at night, used friends in the set building business to disguise cameras as rocks, set camera up in trees disguised as birds nests and risked everything to get the story out. Check out the trailer:

The Cove is about a small cove in Taiji and dolphins are herded in, and dolphin trainers come to select the ones they want for aquariums around the world. The rest are slaughtered in a brutal fashion, with the bay turning blood red from the killings. I’d normally say don’t watch this sort of thing if you’re a little squeamish, but this isn’t some Hollywood money spinner. This is real life and people just like you or me are brutally killing the dolphins. Watch the DVD, donate and support the cause and spread the word.

The Cove is available from all good DVD stores, I got it at DVD Nouveau, Newlands.

Click here for The Cove website, where you can take further action.