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Feel-Bad Travel: 'The Cove' Makes Us Want to Apologize to Flipper

Where: Taiji, Japan
August 8, 2009 at 3:26 PM | by Victor Ozols | 2 Comments

Did you ever go to an aquarium or amusement park as a kid and watch a dolphin show? Did you clap your hands and squeal with glee as the beautiful, smiling animals performed amazing feats of athleticism and intelligence? You did? Well you are an awful, awful person! That's because by supporting venues that use trained dolphins, you're contributing to the barbaric practice of dolphin harvesting that goes on in the coastal town of Taiji, Japan. According to a new documentary called The Cove, 23,000 dolphins are brutally slaughtered there every year in the search for a handful of dolphins that are deemed attractive enough to be trained for amusement parks and other entertainment experiences. The rest become mercury-tainted food.

The film is getting rave reviews for its gripping and painful footage of the dolphin roundup, a practice that, while legal, the town makes every effort to keep secret. The filmmakers, which include the original trainer of TV's Flipper, Richard O’Barry, planted remote cameras in rocks and under water to capture the footage, which shows the water red with blood after the roundup. It's shocking stuff, and it makes me wonder if people would still pay up for those swim-with-dolphins experiences if they knew the violent way in which the animals are captured from the sea.

I hope a humane way to gather dolphins can one day be found, because it would be a shame to never have a chance to interact with them. They seem like the coolest creatures, and they might have something to teach us. But if this is what it takes to put on a dolphin show, count me out.

[Photo: TMZ]

Related Stories:
· The Cove [Official Site]
· From Flipper's Trainer to Dolphin's Defender [The New York Times]
· Wild Animal Travel [Jaunted]

2 Comments

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Return to » Feel-Bad Travel: 'The Cove' Makes Us Want to Apologize to Flipper

  1. Noelia

    Jaunted Member

    Dolphin Show!

    What a good news you have in here! I love dolphin shows! It gives me all the childhood emotions. It give me relaxation whenever I hear the sound of oceans and waves, and of course the dolphins whistle. It takes me to a mysterious relaxation through island ambience, in where dolphins are playing. Imagine the joy on a child's face as they play with their own dolphin, and it's so easy, any child can do it! They can run around the house and pretend they're playing with flipper the dolphin if you remember that tv show having a bunch of water fun with flipper. So have your cash advances sit back and enjoy the dolphin show!
    August 10, 2009 at 5:01 AM
    #Permalink

  1. Victor Ozols

    Jaunted Editor

    Funny!

    That last comment is obviously spam, but I'm going to leave it because it's so hilarious. After all, how else would we know that Personal Money Store (TM) absolutely LOVES the rampant slaughter of unattractive dolphins in Japan. Yay! Let's all get our cash advances from this wonderful internet-based operation, and then go watch the the massacre. I see no downside to this.
    August 10, 2009 at 9:42 AM
    #Permalink

Return to » Feel-Bad Travel: 'The Cove' Makes Us Want to Apologize to Flipper

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