The Cove Reflection

I have watched the movie, “The Cove” which is about catch and slaughter dolphin in Taiji, Japan. This is a documentary of how the protectors get to Taiji to record the slaughter and the way they try to raise people attention on this hidden incident.

This is the first time I notices there are slaughter of dolphin happen in Japan. The first question pop up to my mind is, why do they have to kill so many dolphin? What are the purpose of catching dolphin every day from September to next year March? The documentary answer me then. Some of those dolphins caught in Taiji will be sent to aquarium all over the world. People love to see and interact with dolphins because they are cute and clever. Therefore, aquarium would like to train dolphins to perform

As mention, the fisherman will sell dolphin meat for money. And in Taiji, dolphin meat is provided for school meal. There are high rate of mercury inside dolphin meat. Because of water pollution cause by the industry, fish in the ocean will easily absorb those pollutant like mercury and brings these toxic metal into the food chain. Human will absorb mercury while eating fishes contenting it. Absorbing too much mercury will cause Minamata disease and may lead to death at the end. Although eating dolphin meat will have bad impact on human health, the Japan government do not tend to have policy to stop the selling of those meat. And most of the Japanese do not realize there are slaughter dolphin happening in their own country.

In my opinion, dolphin slaughter should be stop as soon as possible. The documentary was filmed in 2007, but the slaughter of dolphin is still continuing currently in Japan. The only thing Taiji fisherman has done is to use a large cloth to hide how they kill dolphins. Dolphin is belong to the ocean, people catch and trap them in the aquarium is a kind of maltreatment on them. Also, the meat of dolphin are toxic to human, therefore, it is not appropriate for the fisherman to sell those meat as it is bad to human