Men's Journal

from left: Lincoln O'Barry, Ben Stiller, Richard O'Barry, and Fisher Stevens at the New York premiere Photo credit: Seth Browarnik/Red Eye Productions

Each year, a horrific dolphin slaughter occurs in a small Japanese fishing village. The gripping new documentary The Cove aims to put a stop to it.

by Nicole Cusick

Read Men’s Journal’s original story, Peter Heller’s “Raid on the Killing Cove,” here.

Documentaries don’t get much more exciting or raw than The Cove, an in-your-face depiction of the dolphin fishing industry in Taiji, a small Japanese town that supplies many of the world’s water parks with their show dolphins. More gruesomely, the town’s fishermen also routinely harpoon the 2,000-plus captured dolphins that aren’t selected by “swim with dolphin” attractions. The reason? The fishermen, who until recently were selling the mercury-laden meat to the country’s school lunch programs, view the dolphins as pests.

At the heart of The Cove, which won an Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is Richard O’Barry, an activist who began his career with marine mammals at the Miami Seaquarium and was the captor and trainer of the five dolphins who played Flipper in the wildly popular television series of the 1960s. O’Barry formed a tight bond with the dolphins, particularly one he called Kathy, who O’Barry says was eventually so depressed with captivity that she stopped breathing, an act he firmly believes was intentional suicide. After that incident, O’Barry began doing everything he could (wracking up arrests along the way) to free captive dolphins from theme parks — an industry he’d admittedly contributed to by his involvement with Flipper.

The Cove follows O’Barry and a team of activists to Taiji as they use all means necessary (hidden cameras, the star-power of Hayden Panettiere, world record-holding free divers, microphones embedded in rocks) to uncover the grisly truth about what’s happening in the town’s secret cove. Men’s Journal caught up with O’Barry to ask him about his crusade and the film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles July 31.

Men’s Journal: This list of animals that are illegally fished is a long one. Why do you feel that dolphins are somehow unique?

Richard O’Barry: Humans and dolphins have a lot in common. Dolphins are self aware, just like us. In other words, dolphins can look into a mirror and know exactly what they’re looking at. They have bigger brains than humans. They are highly intelligent, social creatures that routinely make decisions regarding the details of their life. Thus, they are entitled to freedom. Driving them into a cove and brutality slaughtering them is simply wrong. Dolphins want us to leave them alone. They speak to us daily with their body language, but we don’t listen.

MJ: What do you think the crusade outlined in The Cove says about conservation and activism efforts? 

RO: The Cove is a call to action, and the public is already responding. Activist is a negative word to some people, but the movie is a form of validation — it says that it’s okay to be an activist. We need to be reminded that our country was founded by activists and the civil disobedient. Activism is extremely important in saving the planet. It’s the only hope.  If the slaughter of dolphins and other whales is abolished, it will be abolished by grass-roots activism.

MJ: And what do you think the slaughter of these animals says about humans and our destructive tendencies? 

RO: You have to understand that the dolphin slaughter is conducted by a very small minority of people in some few remote villages in Japan. It’s not fair to blame these crimes against nature on everyone in Japan — most Japanese people would never harm a dolphin knowingly.

MJ: When you saw the first images and sounds from the hidden cameras and microphones in the cove, what was your reaction?

RO: My first reaction was great sadness, and then anger, then resolve. I am focused like a laser beam on stopping this slaughter.

MJ: What is your involvement with the cause now?

RO: I continue to return to Japan as much as possible in order to stop the dolphin slaughter and the related dolphin captures.

MJ: What’s the situation now in Taiji, and what will it take to change things there?

RO: The situation is hopeful because of the movie. I believe the dolphin slaughter will be abolished once the Japanese people see it. They don’t have the information that we take for granted. If we can get The Cove on the Internet for free, I think we can shut down the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan — maybe even whaling too.

MJ: How can people get involved?

RO: The most important thing your readers can do is visit SaveJapanDolphins.org. Take action on that website and make a donation regardless of how small. We need to fill our empty war-chest to continue to fight the good fight.

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