The Cove

The Cove is a 2009 documentary film of the unveiling of annual killing about 2, 300 dolphins in a National Park at Taiji, Japan. The film highlights 23, 000 dolphins and porpoises which are killed in Japan every year, three times more than whales killed in Antartic each year. the migration dolphins are herded into a hidden cove where they are netted and killed by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats.

Ric O'Barry

The movie follows former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Japan. In the 1960s, O'Barry captured and trained the five wild dolphins that would play the role of "Flipper" in the hit television series of the same name. 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. Since then O'Barry has worked tirelessly as an advocate on behalf of dolphins around the world.

"The Cove"

After meeting with O'Barry, Psihoyos and his crew travel to the small town of Taiji, a town that appears to be devoted to the wonder and mysteries of the dolphins and whales that swim off their coast. But in an isolated cove, surrounded by wire and "Keep Out" signs, some of the townspeople hide a stark reality. Also, among the challenges faced by the production team were the tight security and inaccessibility of the cove.

Filming is tough though especially in restricted area in Taiji

Ric's crew spying dolphin slaughtering activity in "The Cove"

Together with the Ocean Preservation Society, Psihoyos, O'Barry, and the crew utilizes special tactics and embark on a mission to get the truth on what is really going on in the cove and why it matters to everyone else in the world. To address some of these issues KernerFX, previously part of Industrial Light & Magic, contributed specialized camouflaged high-definition cameras that were designed to look like rocks. These hidden cameras helped capture footage for the film and were so well camouflaged that, according to Director Louie Psihoyos, the crew had a hard time finding them again.

The film received very positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars (out of four), calling the film "a certain Oscar nominee”. Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the film "an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller," going on to describe it as "one of the most audacious and perilous operations in the history of the conservation movement." Other reviewers also played up the espionage angle of the film, including Time Magazine's Mary Pols who said that The Cove "puts Hollywood capers like Mission Impossible to shame". Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 27, summarizing the consensus as "Though decidedly one-sided, The Cove is an impeccably crafted, suspenseful expose of the covert slaughter of dolphins in Japan." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 82, based on 26 reviews.