The Cove

During speech class, this girl gave the most heart touching speech about dolphins. Her topic was on the 2009 award winning documentary called "The Cove," and her speech not only informed but moved the audience (and if not, at least I was moved, and that's something).


According to her, dolphins are lured into this cove somewhere in Japan to be either captured or made into fish meat. Those "fortunate enough" are hand picked to live a life in captivity and forced to perform in water shows. Those who aren't, are simply slaughtered. The documentary gives a lot of bloody disgusting imagery, no pun intended. One of the most famous dolphin trainers, Ric O'Barry, described how one of his Flippers committed suicide on him. Dolphins are incredibly intelligent creatures, whom some scientists say have brains more developed than humans. Dolphins must constantly breathe in survive and one of Barry's most stressed out dolphins decided to end her life in front of him.

Dolphins in captivity are stressed out by their trainers for performance. They developed such high levels of stress that they develop stomach ulcers that need to be treated with drugs. It's no wonder that one of Barry's dolphins pulled the plug on herself. After that, Barry decided to dedicate his life to freeing dolphins instead of training them. Yearly, dolphins are slaughtered in a bloodbath, literally a bloodbath, in this cove. No this is not photoshopped. Predators lure hundreds of dolphins to this area and butcher them. The irony of this is that dolphins are not safe to eat. They have high levels of mercury which can lead to mercury poisoning in humans. I haven't watched it yet but I feel if I do, I'll be very depressed.

Youtube trailer of the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KRD8e20fBo