Film sharing----"The Cove"

I watched a documentary called The Cove in past few days, and I was shocked and impressed by the scene in this documentary. Therefore, in my third blog, I would like to share my opinions about it. .

The Cove is a documentary which illustrated the dolphins hunting situation in Taiji of Japan. Dolphins that being hunted are mainly sold to the Marine Parks all around the world for entertainment or being killed for eating purpose. This film hoped to raise people’s awareness about the dolphins’ protection and call for the action to stop the slaughtering and trading of dolphins in Japan.

The film indicated that the trading of dolphins brought huge profits to the local people. Dolphin which sold to marine parks for the dolphin shows worth $150,000 each. There are also dolphin performances every day in the Ocean Park in Hong Kong. People are entertained but dolphins are suffered a lot because of it. Dolphin actually felt very painful while in captivity as they are very sensitive to the sound and the filtration system in those marine parks are noisy, so made they feel stressful and this killed them. Therefore, trading of dolphins between Taiji and marine parks around the world and the dolphin shows should be banned. Apart from selling dolphin to the marine parks, the fishermen hunted it for making dolphin meats. However, there is high level of mercury in dolphin meats. It is toxic and will harm human health. Thus, people should stop selling and consuming dolphin meats.

The scene that dolphins are being bounded together by a net in a cove and the fishermen used spear and knife to kill the dolphins made me feel shocked and grieved. Dolphin’s blood stained the cove and it became red. It is a very bloody and cruel process. I cannot imagine how the people can treat dolphin like this. I believe this heart wrenching scene can let the Japanese and people all around the world know what is happening in Taiji and raise their awareness about protection of dolphin as well as the biodiversity.

 

The number of dolphins that being caught and killed every year are astonishing. I opine that the Japan local government should bear the responsibility for this problem. Because of their cover-up of the cruel hunting practice of the fishermen, fishermen killed more and more dolphin in order to gain economic benefits from it. As shown in the film, ordinary people in Japan did not know the truth that 23,000 dolphins are killed for meet and some of them even do not know that there are dolphin meats in the market. Furthermore, environment activists, like Ric O'Barry are being threatened to stop the investigation by police and the government officials in Taiji. I think that International community and the NGOs should follow up this serious problem and urge the Japanese government to solve it as soon as possible. The traditional thought of the fishermen should be changed and policy should be formulated to forbid the large-scale hunting of dolphin.

All in all, I think that we should not sacrifice the ecology for the purpose of pursuing huge economic profits. It is because the damaged ecosystem takes a long time to recover or even could not be recovered.  If people continued the large-scale slaughtering of dolphin, dolphins might be extincted. We have to strike a balance between the economic development and environmental protection. Not only in Japan, but also other countries ought to prohibit large-scale hunting of dolphin and the dolphin performance in Marine Park in order to protect the dolphin.