Hunting Season: Slavery was once legal too…

By Isabelle Naimo

“If you didn’t know what was going on over here, you’d think this was a town that really loves dolphins and whales…”

-Richard O’Barry

Directed by Louie Psihoyos, The Cove is a 2009 documentary exposing the horrors of Japanese fishing practices while also shining light on the mass slaughters of dolphins and raising concern over the risk of mercury in dolphin meat. It’s a remarkably well-made film in the sense that it can be seen as more of a thriller instead of the usual documentary. Psihoyos and his team go undercover - night vision, hidden identities, and bugged hotel rooms included - to expose what’s really happening in the “cove.”

From the outside the small town of Taiji, Japan appears to be a place full of dolphin and whale lovers. The faces of happy animated whales are painted on billboards and street corners, serve as statues across the town, and shops are filled with whale memorabilia. But the town is hiding a very dark secret – up to 23,000 dolphins are killed every year in Japan. Victims that are not sold for captivity in amusement parks and aquariums are slaughtered and have their meat sold to supermarkets around the globe.

Witnessing The Cove is devastating to say the least. The dolphins’ cries for help gave me chills and the footage of one dolphin desperately thrashing through the water, trying to escape its murder, was enough to bring tears to my eyes. Each time he came up for air he left a trail of blood behind him, until finally he went under and never returned. Nothing was as mortifying though as the overview footage of the “cove.” While the vast ocean is a shade of crisp dark blue, the cove is tainted red in blood – truly a crime scene. Having this image imprinted into the viewer’s mind serves as a method to leave them with enough anger and disgust to seek ways to stop this cruelty.

Aside from animal cruelty, the practice of selling dolphin meat is incredibly irresponsible and deceitful to consumers in regard to the dangerously high levels of mercury. Despite the devastation The Cove left me with, at the very least I was left with satisfaction when the credits roll: Hideki Moronuki was not only fired from his position as deputy of the Japanese fisheries, but a sample of his hair also tested positive for mercury poisoning. Karma.

Dolphins are highly intellectual creatures. It is even stated in The Cove that they can understand us, however, we cannot understand them. And if that information wasn’t enough, we were the story of the dolphin t-boning a tiger shark, saving a surfer’s life. I have always been sickened by the fact that animals are made into a commodity. Humans view them as a way to profit instead of being viewed as what they are – living sentiment beings that are capable of feeling pain and suffering.

All too often humans overlook an animal’s possibility to feel emotion. Alice Walker discusses this in her essay, “Am I Blue?” Walker assigns human characteristics to Blue, the horse. Her use of imagery works to demonstrate this as she describes Blue’s “flexible dark lips, huge, cube like teeth” and how she could see loneliness and boredom in the depth of his eyes until he is placed with a mate. After that point, Walker’s use of anthropomorphism is seen when she recalls seeing a feeling of “this is itness” in his eyes. Blue was placed with a partner in order to conceive, but once his partner was impregnated, she was taken from him. According to Walker, the expression in his eyes changed – “If I had been born into slavery, and my partner had been sold or killed, my eyes would have looked like that.”

I personally found the conclusion to Walker’s essay very powerful, stating that she can almost laugh (because she’s too sad to cry) at the fact that some humans don’t believe animals suffer. She describes a look of disgust in Blue’s eyes, disgust towards humans. I share a similar feeling of disgust. I am disgusted that some people find it acceptable to treat animals as if they don’t feel pain, completely ignoring the animal’s cry for help. They communicate to us when they feel pain, when they are scared, when they don’t want to die… we’re just not listening. As if their sole purpose on this earth is to be used by us, as if they are happy to sacrifice their lives. Walker concludes as she sat down to a steak dinner, “I am eating misery.” That piece of steak that sat on her fork was the flesh of a once living being that trembled with fear before meeting its fate. That piece of steak was a life taken so that someone could temporarily satisfy his or her taste buds. Nothing could ever convince me to find that morally justified.

In author Linda Hogan’s essay “Deify the Wolf” talks about the exploitation humans cause animals. In fact, she chalks up contact with the human world is the number one leading cause of death in wolves. “Deify the Wolf” is both similar to The Cove and “Am I Blue?” in how it expresses how animals have become commodities in human culture. Similar to how dolphins are held in captivity for our viewing pleasure, Hogan ironically speaks of a man who wants to see the threatened wolves before they become extinct and a woman who “thinks seeing the wolves would be like in the movies.” This can also be compared to Walker’s belief that “animals are forced to become for us merely images of what they once so beautifully expressed.”

Hogan talks about a common attitude regarding wolf population to be, “there is no wolf like a dead wolf.” However it’s important to protect the species. Written by Laura Thompson, the article “Howling for Echo: How One Wolf’s Legacy has Taught Us the Importance of Protecting This Species” brings up the benefit the wolf population can have on the ecosystem. For example, in Yellowstone Park, the growing wolf population has brought a natural balance to the ecosystem by controlling the elk herds that were overgrazing vegetation.

William Ralph Inge once said, “We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.” Every day, millions of animal lives are sacrificed for fashion, for food, for “sport”, and for entertainment. And what’s revolting is that it’s legal. But just because something is legal does not mean that it is right. This is often viewed as personal choice. There has already been the undeniable fact that our everyday life choices contribute to climate change, resource depletion, and garbage consumption. The choice to contribute to the slaughter of animals isn’t any different. Animal agriculture has been linked to having an impact on the environment and consuming animal products has shown to have an impact socially. A choice stops being personal when it begins to effect the lives of others. Millions of animals have the right to live and can be granted that quality of life we cherish so much, if only we can begin to look outside ourselves. If you don’t like hearing about it, if you don’t like seeing it, and if you wouldn’t like it to happening to you or your loved ones, it is absolutely the time to take action. 

Thousands of dolphins every hunting season are still being slaughtered in Taiji, Japan, unfortunately. If you haven’t done so already, please take part and sign the petition in the effort to save these intelligent creatures. It may seem like a small step but no step is small when it is seen through the eyes of the victim.