The Cove

In Japan, there is a small town called Taiji. In Taiji, there is a place called the Cove. It is a secret place, a place where 23,000 dolphins are killed every year. The dolphins are not just killed, they are in fact slaughtered in the most brutal way imaginable. And all this without anyone really knowing that it goes on.

I've heard of dolphins being killed in the nets when they catch tuna, but I've never thought that people actually hunted down dolphins as a source of food. Dolphins, like any whale really, seem a bit too majestic and mysterious to just slaughter like pigs and cows, at least to me. And if this movie is to be believed, they can also be quite dangerous to eat, as they contain a high amount of mercury.

This movie is a doc...

There is something pretty harrowing about this documentary and it's definitely not for the squeamish. It follows a clandestine investigation by some American conservationists who suspect that a remote cove near the Japanese town of Taiji is being used by local fisherman to kettle and then slaughter hundreds of dolphins. Facing the hostility of the locals and the authorities, the team are determined to capture video evidence of this atrocity and so using state of the art technology and quite a bit of legerdemain, they attempt to infiltrate the highly secure locale to obtain it. In the course of their planning, we are made aware of the role the International Whaling Commission has in policing the fishing of cetaceans around the world, and pla...