Ric O'Barry - The Cove Documentary

I personally have been to Sea World numerous times and never actually thought about dolphins being depressed due to the fact like Ric O’Barry stated, they always look happy, doing amazing tricks, having smiles on their faces. I respect Ric O’Barry and his activism especially due to the fact that he once was the one helping take dolphins out of their habitat and training them for movies like one of the star dolphins who played Flipper in the Flipper television series, Kathy. O’Barry witnessed Kathy “committing suicide”, ending her life by no longer taking the conscious effort to breath. That event alone is what started Ric O’Barry on his marine activism and him having once worked with them shows he has a true, real, compassion for these creatures. Although the documentary has to do with the dolphin drive hunting that goes on in Taiji, Japan, Ric O’Barry also is an activist against captive dolphins.

 Every year 23,000 dolphins he claims are killed in Japan, that’s astonishing and according to his research if the fishing industries keep fishing all marine life like they are now, supplies will only last the next forty years. Not only is the hunting of dolphins depleting the population but it is also poisoning the people of Japan and whoever else eats dolphin meat. Dolphin meat has enormously high amounts of mercury causing mercury poisoning over time if consumed. Before this documentary, a lot of the Japanese people were not aware they were even eating dolphin because it was sold as other type of higher grade whale meat. Ric O’Barry’s concerns not only have to do with dolphins but also humans, which I thought was a very good point to recognize about the documentary.

 The documentary was very moving and had some amazing facts that I did not know before I watched it.  It was set up very biased against the dolphin hunters in Japan but we have to keep in mind the whole point of the documentary was to get out the message Ric O’Barry wanted to get out to the public which is, hunting and capturing dolphins shouldn’t be allowed or at least not in the numbers of dolphin killings it is. In Japan and across the world hunting against bigger whales has been brought to light and has rules and laws set in place for going about it, so Ric O’Barry claims why shouldn’t dolphins, since they are a whale as well.

Why I do think that each country should pay attention to their own and not get involved with other countries affairs, this topic is very different.  The species and populations of animals is a world concern, and one country shouldn’t just be allowed to deplete a species of animal. Dolphins travel the world and move around a lot, so it’s very sad and unfortunate if they so happen to get caught in the walls of sound in Taiji, Japan and are killed by hunters. Yes, the Japanese need them for food but there should still be laws and rules set in place for how many can be killed. Sadly we can not change these rules and laws, only Japan can but documentaries like Ric O’Barry’s help people see what is going on to people who are naive or who are too stubborn and do not want to face the facts about it.