“The Cove” Reflection

Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji, Japan

Dolphin's Meat at Local Store

The Cove is a documentary about the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. And at the same time, this documentary is use to give awareness to people about dolphins. Richard O’Berry who was a captivity dolphins’ trainer leads this documentary. And one day when a dolphin commited suicide by suffocating itself on his arm, he assertively combating the captivity industry, because he thinks that dolphins in captivity experienced pressure and cause stress and they should be free in the wild. Since then, he began his campaign to stop dolphin captivity.

According to the video, most Japanese are unaware of the dophin hunting and slaughtering and even the marketing of dolphi meat. And in addition, in the film it is stated that dolphin meat contains dagerously high levels of mercury that can affects to the brain, kidney, and lungs and at the same time, this toxic can causes some deseases such as acrodynia, Hunter-Russell syndrome, and Minamata desease. Yet, even though dolphin’s meat is not safe to consume, Taiji’s fishermen serve the remaining dolphin meat to the school canteen as student’s lunch. Not just people in Taiji consume and affected by the mercury from the dolphin meat. Dolphin meat is sold at local store in other parts of Japan as well and horribly they repackaged the dolphin meat as whale meat. In addition, the government and high-ranking officials are aware of this and they still keep the slaughter and selling the mercury contimated meat to their citizens and even the future of Japan.