Below is a response submitted by Mark Palmer to Aaron Mesh, film critic for the Willamette Week Magazine, regarding his review of the film 'The Cove'. Mark is Associate Director of the International Marine Mammal Project and Director of Wildlife Alive at Earth Island Institute.
Dear Editor:
I've just read the review of
The Cove by Aaron Mesh, who repeats several errors that should be corrected.
Mr. Mesh states that "here it has to be noted that neither bottlenose nor any other ocean dolphins are endangered species, or even close to it." This is misleading. While globally these oceanic dolphin populations are generally in good shape and not near extinction, local populations being targeted by Japan off their own shores are in danger of extermination by the hunts. The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission has repeatedly urged Japan to reduce quotas and provide detailed data on the status of Dall's porpoise stocks offshore Japan, which are likely being depleted by the heavy kills. The Japan government has refused to cooperate.
It is likely that even local bottlenose dolphins can be impacted ‹ several fishing towns in Japan which originally had dolphin drive hunts, such as Iki Island, are no longer in business because the dolphins have either been exterminated or driven off.
Mr. Mesh goes on to claim that: "For every mammal saved by 'dolphin-safe tuna' netting practices, 382 mahi-mahi, 182 wahoo and 27 sharks and rays are killed." This is rubbish. The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission(IATTC) and the Mexican government have raised this claim because their tuna is no longer sold in the US by US companies because they continue to kill dolphins. Their argument that alternative dolphin-safe means of catching tuna kill other species is questionable on many levels, most importantly because the IATTC and Mexico have resisted any conservation practices, advocated by Earth Island Institute (which established the Dolphin Safe tuna program in 1990) and other environmental groups, to reduce such bycatch.
You will see these statistics, but you will never see any regulations to restrain dolphin-safe fishing alternatives, because any such solution would weaken Mexico¹s case to continue targeting, netting and killing dolphins. Fishermen fish opportunistically, so allowing fishermen to kill more dolphins will not reduce other bycatch, it will only open up more carnage.
Earth Island's Dolphin Safe tuna policy includes provisions to prevent loss of other fish species, such as prohibiting fining of sharks (recently adopted by several international tuna commissions), a requirement to release non-target fish species (patterned after the language of the US Magnuson Fisheries Act), a requirement for live release of sea turtles, etc. Earth Island has further advocated time- and/or area-closures for tuna fishing in order to reduce bycatch of non-target species. Recently, both the IATTC and the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Commission adopted closures for the 2009 fishing year, being urged by Earth Island and other environmental and fishing industry groups. There is still a ways to go to reduce bycatch and ensure sustainable tuna species, but we are making progress, contrary to claims by those who falsely say dolphin-safe fishing hurts other species.
The Dolphin Safe tuna program is one of the most successful private conservation efforts in the world. It should not be denigrated in the interests of making false choices, especially based on dubious data repeated by dolphin-killing commissions and governments. We can catch tuna in ways which protects the marine environment, but putting up trite choices like ³if we save dolphins, we kill sharks² is a good way to destroy the rest of the marine environment.
For more information on Dolphin Safe tuna, your readers can view our
website:
http://www.DolphinSafe.orgFor more information on ³The Cove² and the slaughter of dolphins in Japan, your readers can view our website:
http://www.SaveJapanDolphins.org Sincerely,
-- Mark J. Palmer********************************************
Aaron's Review has been removed from the Willamette Week website, so here it is for your reading:
The CoveBY AARON MESH | amesh at wweek dot com
[August 5th, 2009]Flipper killed himself. Actually, it was a dolphin named Kathy—one of five bottlenoses who played Flipper—who killed herself, but the point is the same really. This is the takeaway that former porpoise trainer Ric O’Barry wants you to gain from documentary The Cove: Three years after the marine adventure TV show went off the air, Kathy swam up to O’Barry, nestled into his arms, and closed her blowhole for good.
(Dolphin respiration is not automatic.) She despaired in captivity—“The dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception,” O’Barry says—and took her leave in the hands of the man who imprisoned her. So long and thanks for all the fish, asshole. After nearly 40 years of protesting marine parks, O’Barry finally has found a means of restitution. In this scintillating new activist documentary, he has joined with director Louie Psihoyos and a squad of divers and cameramen, handsomely funded by Netscape founder Jim Clark, to infiltrate a closely guarded inlet in the fishing village of Taiji, Japan—a cove that serves as an abattoir for 23,000 bottlenoses a year.
These are the dolphins the local fishermen have deemed not cute enough to sell to seaquariums, so they hack them to ribbons with spears.(They’re just pests, after all.) Psihoyos’ team is tasked with obtaining incriminating footage of the slaughter, while old crank O’Barry serves as a decoy for the local authorities. It’s a heist movie: Ocean’s 11 in the, you know, actual ocean.
As the scheme gets under way (complete with cameras hidden in fake rocks, courtesy of Industrial Light Magic), The Cove keeps uncovering further nefariousness on the part of Taiji officials—who are trying to slip dolphin meat, crawling with mercury, into school lunches—and the Japanese flunkies on the International Whaling Commission, who suborn deregulation votes from countries like St. Kitts and Cameroon. When the mission finally gathers its video and audio, the wanton butchery—of animals that seem very much to want to be our friends—is overwhelming. I haven’t seen a pool of blood this large since the elevator doors opened in The Shining.
The awful force of the climactic violence will tend to obscure nagging questions. The Cove is a documentary certain to rouse a torrent of indignation, because it is also a movie that traffics chiefly on the level of symbolism. O’Barry hopes to stir another public outcry like the one that led to the 1986 ban on commercial whaling—but here it has to be noted that neither bottlenose nor any other ocean dolphins are endangered species, or even close to it. The movie mocks Japanese officials for suggesting that porpoises are pests destroying fish populations, and rightly so—it’s a ridiculous assertion. But not so ridiculous are the Environmental Justice Foundation studies (unmentioned in The Cove) showing the unintended results of venerating one species in fishing regulations: For every mammal saved by “dolphin-safe tuna” netting practices, 382 mahi-mahi, 182 wahoo and 27 sharks and rays are killed.
There are, as they say, other fish in the sea, though the movie doesn’t complicate matters with them. And it’s worth asking how we would respond to an American special-ops unit invading a sovereign nation if cute critters weren’t at stake. None of this is meant to impugn the movie’s power, which is considerable, or its intentions, which are on the side of the aquatic angels. But when audiences leave The Cove, it’s possible that their outrage, like a dolphin’s smile, won’t mean anything. PG-13.
