June 26, 2009 | 
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‘You’ll see him smilin’,’ but is he really?
One of the opening lines in the soon-to-be-released documentary, “The Cove” is chilling: “If these fishermen could catch me, they’d kill me.” The courageous speaker, Richard O’Barry, had a significant role in expanding awareness of the magnificent sea creature known as a dolphin; back in the ‘60s, he captured and trained the five dolphins who alternatively played the role of Flipper.
A 30-minute children’s television series launched in full color on September 18, 1964, when many shows were still broadcast in black and white, Flipper featured a bottlenose dolphin. Remember the theme music? Flipper, Flipper, you’ll see him smilin’.
Right from the start, he’ll play it smart…
Your answer may be proof that Flipper captivated the hearts of not only children, but their parents and grandparents as well. And now, Flipper’s trainer lives with deep remorse over the billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry he inadvertently helped to spawn. Since he started The Dolphin Project on Earth Day of 1970, O’Barry has dedicated his life to fighting the industry because he believes it’s simply wrong.
“I never planned to be an activist,” O’Barry continues as the camera introduces us to Taiji, Japan, and to the Japanese interrogator asking repetitive questions seeking assurance the visiting American has not come to oppose the fishing operations in Taiji. Clearly there is concern that the local economy would not survive if the world should find out what’s going on here. And clearly, O’Barry has come here precisely to oppose this fishing industry. By movie’s end, we know the dramatic story of how he has managed to indeed tell the world what’s going on here.
Stealth, ingenuity and intrigue keep viewers mesmerized as O’Barry and his team outsmart the viciously vigilant guardians of the well-fortified secret cove to bring home this masterwork exposing its dark secret. The film incontrovertibly reveals how hundreds of dolphins are regularly lured and slaughtered in the breathtakingly beautiful, calm lagoon observed on the big screen of the Sebastiani Theatre in a recent premier showing.
O’Barry mournfully admits, “The Flipper series created this dolphin slaughter. And I helped make it happen.”
He came to love those five dolphins. After the principal actor Cathy died in his arms, he began to rethink his occupation and discovered captivity disastrously damages every single aspect of dolphins’ lives. Obviously they lose their freedom and must swim in small circles until they die. U.S. government records indicate most live only seven years once captured at any age.
We were shocked when told monstrous quantities of Maalox and Tagamet are poured regularly into dolphins’ holding tanks to help alleviate physical and mental stress in a lifestyle about which the mammals have no choices. Even the water in which they subsist creates discomfort, being artificial sea-water treated with ozone, chlorine or both.
Those “smiles” we see on the faces of performing dolphins, and sing about in Flipper’s theme-song, have nothing at all to do with happiness. Mother dolphins ripped from their babies and from their well-established and well-ordered dolphin society, transported in bewilderment to another part of the world by noisy truck, boat or plane and thrust into a completely foreign and stressful environment for the rest of their lives have nothing whatsoever to smile about. And it is the females who are most picked by Sea World and other aquatic performance companies, as their coats tend to be unblemished by battle scars, as males’ often are.
Think for a moment about the noisiness of transport vehicles and consider that it’s in a dolphin’s DNA to be extremely sensitive to sound. Loud or unusual sounds make them needful of the pain relievers without which many are literally drawn to suicide; the sounds drive them to madness. Consider the effect on dolphins in the wild when we and other nations conduct oceanic sonar experiments.
Now consider that magnificent lagoon in Taiji into which dolphins are driven by deliberate banging in the ocean’s depths. There, life as they’ve known it is suddenly terminated by capture or slaughter. Ironically, there is no ready market for the slaughtered dolphin; who wants to eat those graceful, “smiling” creatures? Guess what? Dolphin meat, which typically happens to be loaded with mercury, is widely sold under pseudonyms; let the buyer beware.
O’Barry asks the world to take action. “If we can’t stop what’s happening in this one small body of water, forget about the bigger issues. There’s no hope.” Go to thecovemovie.com to learn how you can help keep the hope alive.
Marty Olmstead stopped at the Sonoma Market after leaving the Sebastiani and accidentally spilled her handbag in the parking lot. A young couple rushed to help gather scattered contents, soon joined by another young fellow. Marty mentioned being upset as she had just watched a disturbing film about dolphins. Instantaneously, the three strangers responded almost in chorus, “Oh, you mean Japan?”
“Our generation may be unaware,” Marty says. “But there’s still hope! Our wonderful, alert and intelligent young people do know what’s going on.”
Watch for “The Cove,” scheduled for a September release, so we’ll all know what’s going on and then together we can do something about it.
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