The Cove has been described as doing for dolphins what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for global warming. In this film, director Louie Psihoyos teams up with converted dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry to expose the annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, a secret 'dark side' to the Japanese fishing town where according to Psihoyos, everything else from shops to murals says “I love dolphins!”

The movie has won awards worldwide from Sundance 2009 to the Galway film festival in Ireland. It shows explicit footage of the hunt with 'guerilla style' filming. The crew were met with such resistance by the local fishermen that they had to wear camouflage and military tactics included hiding cameras in fake rocks.

The Cove reveals that between twenty and twenty-five thousand dolphins are captured annually in Japan with 2500 targeted by the annual dolphin drive hunt in Taiji which continues from September through to March. Some dolphins are purchased by the captivity industry for marine parks while others are slaughtered for meat and sold domestically, often labelled as 'whale meat' which is more expensive to buy.  

Taiji is a tourist town with a population of approximately3500 people and Ric O’Barry is quick to point out that a small minority of only 20-25 fishermen are responsible for the dolphin drive hunt. The fishermen justify the hunt as ‘pest control’, blaming the dolphins for declining fish stocks and they have a permit from the Japanese government to carry out the hunt.

The dolphin hunters take around 13 boats out to sea and corral the dolphins into the cove in Taiji. The method is described as brutal with the hunters using hammers and 15 foot long metal poles to create an underwater ‘wall of sound’ that separates the dolphins from the open sea. It’s then easy to drive the dolphins into the shallow water of the cove, dropping nets at the entrance to seal off the area.

Sustainable marine eco-tourism would provide a sustainable alternative to the hunt in Taiji with whale and dolphin watching trips giving fishermen an alternative source of income while protecting the marine environment and marine wildlife.

The captivity industry is the economic backbone of the hunt with dolphins being sold for up to $150,000 and Ric O'Barry holds marine parks responsible for the hunt. However, it's the toxic levels of mercury that can be found in dolphin meat that is providing the strongest argument for stopping the hunt.

Dolphin meat contains toxic levels of mercury because of polluted coastal waters and the film reveals that dolphin meat is supplied to school lunch programmes but that the public are not made aware of the health risks of contaminated meat. Ric O'Barry has been promoting the movie around the world and in September he was promoting it in Japan. Because of the publicity and the presence of the media in Taiji, the start of the hunt has been delayed this year.

Atlantic bottlenose dolphins are the most commonly found dolphins in marine parks. The bottlenose dolphin's soft mouth line curves upwards creating the impression of a smile. In 1989, Ric O'Barry wrote Behind the Dolphin Smile to highlight the difference between the behaviour of wild dolphins and their behaviour in captivity.

Having trained the five dolphins that played the part of Flipper in the popular 1960s television show, Ric O'Barry has become the world's foremost campaigner against the multi-billion dollar industry that has grown around the captivity of dolphins for marine parks and 'swim with dolphin' programmes.

O'Barry pre-empts sensitive questions like 'What about Make-a-Wish kids?" In a matter of fact way O'Barry says that these kids "would benefit just as much by getting a puppy from the pound." A more flexible option might be a wildlife sanctuary where kids have the opportunity to see wild animals up close, knowing that these animals will be rehabilitated and released to the wild.

You can support the SaveJapanDolphins campaign by avoiding dolphinariums while on holiday and going on a whale or dolphin-watching trip instead. Bottlenose dolphins can swim up to 40 miles a day and dive to depths of 500 metres. They have small pod families of approximately 15 members, often schooling with other species, including pilot whales, to form large groups. They use echolocation to hunt for food, emitting sounds and listening for the echo to calculate distance and they are gifted at mimicking the sounds of other species. According to the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group website (www.iwdg.ie), bottlenose dolphins are the 'Casanovas' of the sea with courtship rituals that include muzzling and clicking.

Objections to the captivity of dolphins include the lack of space, the separation from pod families and the noise interference with their sense of echolocation. Other than that, the antics that make dolphins so entertaining to watch in a theme park are manipulations of natural behaviours that are more thrilling to watch in their natural environment. On a dolphin-watching trip, you might have dolphins bow riding the ship by surfing the currents at the bow; you might see them breaching or leaping clear out of the water or you might see them lobtailing or slapping their flukes or tails down on the water.

Add to that the sea-spray, a good local guide, seabirds and the views and a whale and dolphin-watching trip has got to beat the false environment created by theme parks.