A speared, dying dolphin gets through the fishnet and starts swimming towards the boat, leaving a bloody trail behind. The camera follows its every move. No, this is not a horror movie scene. It is actually a real moment shown in the documentary The Cove, which was released early this year.
The movie follows the attempts of a group of activists to document the hunting and mass slaughtering of dolphins in a small cove in Taijii, Japan. The research methods of the activists and their adventures stand up to any Hollywood thriller and suspense flick, and the horrors and lawlessness witnessed by the group turns out to be only the tip of the iceberg.
For the short time since its premiere, The Cove managed to win 10 prizes from festivals such as Sundance, and its reviews include sentences like „a sure Oscar nomination“, „the reason to keep making films“ and „one of the boldest and dangerous nature preservation operations in history“.
Louie Psihoyos, the director of the film, former National Geographic photographer and founder of the environmental organization OPS (Oceanic Preservation Society) is already being compared to prominent directors in the genre like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.
The whole story of the film is in our October issue and here we are posting the full version of our phone interview with him
How did you shoot this film – from the point of view of an activist or of a director? Was this an emotional experience for you? I started out a director but became an activist but I wear both hats now. I cannot go outside without either.
You encountered numerous difficulties while shooting this film. Could you tell us more about that?
Spielberg was right, It’s hard enough to make a film in the best of circumstances but when you add in unpredictable variables like boats that make unstable shooting platforms, weather problems, water clarity, animal behavior, water currents, your success rate or shooting ratio of success shooting goes down enormously. Also, throw into the mix shooting at night, working 100 hour weeks months at a time, trying to get into a cove where if caught people patrolling the area with knives would love to kill you and 24/7 police surveillance, you have some idea of the odds against making a great film. But I think it was Frank Lloyd Wright who said that sometimes your liabilities can be your greatest assets. In this case my own inexperience and the crew’s inexperience didn’t allow us to see the obstacles that would have sent a professional crew into a mutiny the first day. But in my heart, we were not trying to make a movie as much as we were trying to start a movement. A movement to save these incredible animals as well as alert the world that we are making their environment so toxic that they are now poison. We didn’t need filmmakers to make The Cove – we needed pirates. But we felt we were pirates working on the side of angels and this allowed us all to accomplish an amazing film. Everybody on the crew brought into the mission an extraordinary set of skills, except not as filmmakers – the joke during production was, “We’re all professionals – just not at this.”
Did you encounter any difficulties distributing the film? There was interest in distributing the film from the first screening at Sundance but they were very low offers. We have a 2½ million dollar loan to finish the movie and nothing we were offered came close to that. Norman Lear is perhaps the most successful television producer on the planet and he’s also had a hand in the making of some great films. His wife Lyn saw The Cove at Sundance and had a screening of movie in their living room with about 30 very powerful Hollywood players who are friends of theirs. Michael Burns was there, the COO of Lionsgate and Jeff Skoll, who started Ebay and uses part of his fortune with his company Participant Media to finance social outreach campaigns for movies like An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc, and Darfur Now. It was at one of those screening the team came together. It happened as if in a dream, I’m very grateful to Lyn and Norman for making this happen. They changed my life by allowing this film to be seen in their living room.
Capturing dolphins for amusement parks is the root of the problem; quite a few people are involved in this multi million dollar business. Do you believe that it is possible to change the deeply corrupted local and international structures involved in it? Indeed hope is all we have – slavery in America probably looked like a hopeless problem to abolitionists back in the 1800’s. Racism did not end with slaves becoming free after our Civil War that divided our country. It took one passionate woman, Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus to start the chain of events that because the Civil Rights Movement in America. And now we have a black man as the president of the United States. You can draw a straight line from the simple act of civil disobedience of a black woman standing up for the passion for her basic human rights and Obama becoming president. This is what gives me hope to carry on a fight that can seem daunting. I may not win the fight in my lifetime but perhaps some child inspired by my team’s collective achievement of The Cove will be able to close down the last dolphinarium, or the last coal plant. It is not so important that you win but that you are in the fight.
Why, in your opinion, is whale and dolphin meat so eagerly promoted in Japanese society (to the point where it was mandatorily introduced in school cafeterias)? Is it an attempt to show cultural independence from the West or is the reason purely economical? Before the election in Japan on August 30th, Japan was controlled by a very corrupt oligarchy that used whaling to subsidize their cronies. Whaling does not make economic or ecological sense and we’re hoping the new government understands that without subsidies the industry would fail. The Japanese government actually does import whale meat now from other whaling countries. What all the whaling countries are missing is that far more money has been made whale watching rather than whale killing. Even accounting for money made throughout all time and adjusting for what it was worth then whales and dolphins are worth far more to be appreciated in nature than they have on the butcher’s block.
While shooting the film you found out that dolphin meat is highly toxic and exceeds the acceptable levels of mercury according to the Japanese health system. Tell us a little bit more about this. A dolphin can have anywhere from 5-5000 times more mercury than allowed by Japanese health standards. The Japanese people had a huge problem with mercury once before in the mid 1950’s in Minamata where Chisso Minamata, the most advanced company in Japan was dumping mercury into the environment. It was discovered that not only was the company aware of the problem but the Japanese government was helping them to cover up the problem thereby allowing thousands of more people to become poisoned. The Japanese Supreme Court actually convicted their own government of covering up the problem and ordered them to pay damages to the victims. The last of those cases was settled only last year – after more than 50 years since the problem began. So the outgoing Japanese government was very sensitive to opening up this very wound that they thought was healed. In fact it was never really solved, the system that allowed the problem to exist had never healed, it just became more corrupt.
There is no amount of money that can compensate one for becoming poisoned with mercury. The effects of high dose mercury poisoning are not reversible and the symptoms at the most acute level are similar to mental retardation or cerebral palsy in children and look like dementia in adults. Low dose mercury poisoning is also a huge problem, the symptoms include muscle stiffness, Dysesthia, abnormal touch sensations, hand tremors, dizziness, loss of pain sensation, muscle cramps, upper arm atrophy, chest pain, palpitations, fatigue, visual dimness, staggering, insomnia, forgetfulness, hair loss, headache, trouble thinking and performing complex tasks, memory loss, gastro-intestinal upset, abdominal pain and nausea.
The most deleterious effects are to the developing brains of a fetus and young children. Yet of you go to the website of the Japanese Minister of Health Labour and Welfare and type in pregnancy and mercury their first recommendation for a pregnant woman is to eat bottlenose dolphin despite every part of the animal being toxic.
Mercury is found in nature but the primary build up of mercury in the environment comes through the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. A recent UN study calculated that mercury has risen about 3-5 times since the Industrial Revolution or about 1.5-3% per year. Mercury bio-accumulates up the food chain so that each step up the toxins magnify about 10 times. A pound of swordfish has about a million times more mercury than a pound of diatoms, a microscopic organism floating in the ocean.
A dolphin is the only wild animal throughout history known to for saving the lives of humans. From the time of Aristotle and Pliny they have been legendary and in ancient Greece it was a crime punishable by death to harm a dolphin. Somewhere throughout history we have lost respect for these animals and the environment. It is a tragic irony that the only way to save a dolphin now is to prove that we have made their environment so toxic that they cannot be eaten.
What do you expect will happen from here on? Is there any real chance of preventing the murdering of dolphins? Last week Taiji began a no slaughter policy at the cove due to international outcry from The Cove. They captured about 150 dolphins at the cove. Of 100 bottlenose dolphins they sold 30 into slavery for dolphin them parks and returned 70 back into the wild. However there were 50 pilot whales that were captured with them that they killed for human consumption. The Japanese regard pilot whales as whales but they are actually very large dolphins but very very toxic. We have asked Japanese journalists to test meat from these animals and publish the results because we know the meat will be found to be toxic. But this is all a very good start for the movement and the movie. This film proves that one passionate person like Ric O’ Barry can make a difference and a few of us together can change the world – if you don’t believe it – you haven’t seen The Cove.
What are your futures plans? Do you believe there’s point in organizations like yours, Sea Shepherd, Greenpeace, etc. joining forces in order to achieve a significant solution? For example, to pass laws for protection of endangered species and fishing in international waters. We have been working actively with both Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace to promote the film. We work with other great organizations as well like NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Human Society, Save the Whales Again, Surfers for Cetaceans and many others. There is a lot of power in us all working together. I have another documentary I want to do, as well as an animated movie that would encompass ocean issues for children.
The Director Behind The Cove
A speared, dying dolphin gets through the fishnet and starts swimming towards the boat, leaving a bloody trail behind. The camera follows its every move. No, this is not a horror movie scene. It is actually a real moment shown in the documentary The Cove, which was released early this year.
The movie follows the attempts of a group of activists to document the hunting and mass slaughtering of dolphins in a small cove in Taijii, Japan. The research methods of the activists and their adventures stand up to any Hollywood thriller and suspense flick, and the horrors and lawlessness witnessed by the group turns out to be only the tip of the iceberg.
For the short time since its premiere, The Cove managed to win 10 prizes from festivals such as Sundance, and its reviews include sentences like „a sure Oscar nomination“, „the reason to keep making films“ and „one of the boldest and dangerous nature preservation operations in history“.
Louie Psihoyos, the director of the film, former National Geographic photographer and founder of the environmental organization OPS (Oceanic Preservation Society) is already being compared to prominent directors in the genre like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock.
The whole story of the film is in our October issue and here we are posting the full version of our phone interview with him
How did you shoot this film – from the point of view of an activist or of a director? Was this an emotional experience for you? I started out a director but became an activist but I wear both hats now. I cannot go outside without either.
You encountered numerous difficulties while shooting this film. Could you tell us more about that?
Spielberg was right, It’s hard enough to make a film in the best of circumstances but when you add in unpredictable variables like boats that make unstable shooting platforms, weather problems, water clarity, animal behavior, water currents, your success rate or shooting ratio of success shooting goes down enormously. Also, throw into the mix shooting at night, working 100 hour weeks months at a time, trying to get into a cove where if caught people patrolling the area with knives would love to kill you and 24/7 police surveillance, you have some idea of the odds against making a great film. But I think it was Frank Lloyd Wright who said that sometimes your liabilities can be your greatest assets. In this case my own inexperience and the crew’s inexperience didn’t allow us to see the obstacles that would have sent a professional crew into a mutiny the first day. But in my heart, we were not trying to make a movie as much as we were trying to start a movement. A movement to save these incredible animals as well as alert the world that we are making their environment so toxic that they are now poison. We didn’t need filmmakers to make The Cove – we needed pirates. But we felt we were pirates working on the side of angels and this allowed us all to accomplish an amazing film. Everybody on the crew brought into the mission an extraordinary set of skills, except not as filmmakers – the joke during production was, “We’re all professionals – just not at this.”
Did you encounter any difficulties distributing the film? There was interest in distributing the film from the first screening at Sundance but they were very low offers. We have a 2½ million dollar loan to finish the movie and nothing we were offered came close to that. Norman Lear is perhaps the most successful television producer on the planet and he’s also had a hand in the making of some great films. His wife Lyn saw The Cove at Sundance and had a screening of movie in their living room with about 30 very powerful Hollywood players who are friends of theirs. Michael Burns was there, the COO of Lionsgate and Jeff Skoll, who started Ebay and uses part of his fortune with his company Participant Media to finance social outreach campaigns for movies like An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc, and Darfur Now. It was at one of those screening the team came together. It happened as if in a dream, I’m very grateful to Lyn and Norman for making this happen. They changed my life by allowing this film to be seen in their living room.
Capturing dolphins for amusement parks is the root of the problem; quite a few people are involved in this multi million dollar business. Do you believe that it is possible to change the deeply corrupted local and international structures involved in it? Indeed hope is all we have – slavery in America probably looked like a hopeless problem to abolitionists back in the 1800’s. Racism did not end with slaves becoming free after our Civil War that divided our country. It took one passionate woman, Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus to start the chain of events that because the Civil Rights Movement in America. And now we have a black man as the president of the United States. You can draw a straight line from the simple act of civil disobedience of a black woman standing up for the passion for her basic human rights and Obama becoming president. This is what gives me hope to carry on a fight that can seem daunting. I may not win the fight in my lifetime but perhaps some child inspired by my team’s collective achievement of The Cove will be able to close down the last dolphinarium, or the last coal plant. It is not so important that you win but that you are in the fight.
Why, in your opinion, is whale and dolphin meat so eagerly promoted in Japanese society (to the point where it was mandatorily introduced in school cafeterias)? Is it an attempt to show cultural independence from the West or is the reason purely economical? Before the election in Japan on August 30th, Japan was controlled by a very corrupt oligarchy that used whaling to subsidize their cronies. Whaling does not make economic or ecological sense and we’re hoping the new government understands that without subsidies the industry would fail. The Japanese government actually does import whale meat now from other whaling countries. What all the whaling countries are missing is that far more money has been made whale watching rather than whale killing. Even accounting for money made throughout all time and adjusting for what it was worth then whales and dolphins are worth far more to be appreciated in nature than they have on the butcher’s block.
While shooting the film you found out that dolphin meat is highly toxic and exceeds the acceptable levels of mercury according to the Japanese health system. Tell us a little bit more about this. A dolphin can have anywhere from 5-5000 times more mercury than allowed by Japanese health standards. The Japanese people had a huge problem with mercury once before in the mid 1950’s in Minamata where Chisso Minamata, the most advanced company in Japan was dumping mercury into the environment. It was discovered that not only was the company aware of the problem but the Japanese government was helping them to cover up the problem thereby allowing thousands of more people to become poisoned. The Japanese Supreme Court actually convicted their own government of covering up the problem and ordered them to pay damages to the victims. The last of those cases was settled only last year – after more than 50 years since the problem began. So the outgoing Japanese government was very sensitive to opening up this very wound that they thought was healed. In fact it was never really solved, the system that allowed the problem to exist had never healed, it just became more corrupt.
There is no amount of money that can compensate one for becoming poisoned with mercury. The effects of high dose mercury poisoning are not reversible and the symptoms at the most acute level are similar to mental retardation or cerebral palsy in children and look like dementia in adults. Low dose mercury poisoning is also a huge problem, the symptoms include muscle stiffness, Dysesthia, abnormal touch sensations, hand tremors, dizziness, loss of pain sensation, muscle cramps, upper arm atrophy, chest pain, palpitations, fatigue, visual dimness, staggering, insomnia, forgetfulness, hair loss, headache, trouble thinking and performing complex tasks, memory loss, gastro-intestinal upset, abdominal pain and nausea.
The most deleterious effects are to the developing brains of a fetus and young children. Yet of you go to the website of the Japanese Minister of Health Labour and Welfare and type in pregnancy and mercury their first recommendation for a pregnant woman is to eat bottlenose dolphin despite every part of the animal being toxic.
Mercury is found in nature but the primary build up of mercury in the environment comes through the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. A recent UN study calculated that mercury has risen about 3-5 times since the Industrial Revolution or about 1.5-3% per year. Mercury bio-accumulates up the food chain so that each step up the toxins magnify about 10 times. A pound of swordfish has about a million times more mercury than a pound of diatoms, a microscopic organism floating in the ocean.
A dolphin is the only wild animal throughout history known to for saving the lives of humans. From the time of Aristotle and Pliny they have been legendary and in ancient Greece it was a crime punishable by death to harm a dolphin. Somewhere throughout history we have lost respect for these animals and the environment. It is a tragic irony that the only way to save a dolphin now is to prove that we have made their environment so toxic that they cannot be eaten.
What do you expect will happen from here on? Is there any real chance of preventing the murdering of dolphins? Last week Taiji began a no slaughter policy at the cove due to international outcry from The Cove. They captured about 150 dolphins at the cove. Of 100 bottlenose dolphins they sold 30 into slavery for dolphin them parks and returned 70 back into the wild. However there were 50 pilot whales that were captured with them that they killed for human consumption. The Japanese regard pilot whales as whales but they are actually very large dolphins but very very toxic. We have asked Japanese journalists to test meat from these animals and publish the results because we know the meat will be found to be toxic. But this is all a very good start for the movement and the movie. This film proves that one passionate person like Ric O’ Barry can make a difference and a few of us together can change the world – if you don’t believe it – you haven’t seen The Cove.
What are your futures plans? Do you believe there’s point in organizations like yours, Sea Shepherd, Greenpeace, etc. joining forces in order to achieve a significant solution? For example, to pass laws for protection of endangered species and fishing in international waters. We have been working actively with both Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace to promote the film. We work with other great organizations as well like NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Human Society, Save the Whales Again, Surfers for Cetaceans and many others. There is a lot of power in us all working together. I have another documentary I want to do, as well as an animated movie that would encompass ocean issues for children.
interview by Vera Gotseva