The Cove Page #2

and when you become conscious

of this nonhuman intelligence,

you realize after a while

they don't really belong in captivity.

But I didn't do anything about it.

One day, it all ended.

Like the props, they went

back to the Miami Seaquarium.

When you just walk into this place

and the music is playing,

the dolphin is jumping and smiling,

it's hard to see the problem.

But a dolphin's smile

is nature's greatest deception.

It creates the illusion

they're always happy.

The nerve center of any dolphinarium

is the fish house.

And if you go to any one

of these fish houses,

you'll see bottles

of Maalox and Tagamet.

And they're used

because dolphins get ulcers,

because they're all stressed out.

You have to see them in the wild

to understand

why captivity doesn't work.

In the wild, they're traveling

They could be surfing

in one area in the morning,

and the next hour

they could be 25 miles away

feeding or socializing.

Dolphins are acoustic creatures.

That's their primary sense.

The best sonar that man has

is a toy compared

to the dolphins' sonar.

When you're in the water,

the dolphins can see

right through you.

They can see your heart beating.

They can see your bones.

They can see if you're pregnant.

They get a lot of information

with their sound.

The dolphin is captured

and put in a concrete tank

surrounded by a stadium

full of screaming people.

At the National Aquarium in Baltimore,

when it first opened,

dolphins were dying left and right.

They couldn't keep dolphins alive,

and they finally figured out

it's because the filtration system

was making a lot of noise.

It's the stress that kills them.

So they're very sensitive to sound.

That's their primary sense,

and that's their downfall in Taiji.

There's 12 of them.

This is a classic drive,

what you're watching here.

There are migratory routes

that dolphins have been using

for thousands of years,

and they just wait

till the dolphins come by.

The boats then put these

long poles in the water

which have a flange on the bottom,

and they just bang on these poles

with hammers,

and they create a wall of sound

which frightens the dolphins.

There were several hundred dolphins

being driven ashore.

I'd never seen so many

dolphins before,

and they were all

running for their lives,

running from this wall of sound.

I think I can actually

hear the banging,

but I hear it all the time.

I hear it in my sleep.

That sound never goes away

once you hear it.

By the time they get to the lagoon,

they're totally freaked out,

stressed out to the max.

They seal it, then they go home.

The next morning,

all of these dolphin trainers

will be lined up

selecting the ones that they want

for the dolphinariums.

They're looking for bottlenose

dolphin, primarily.

They're looking for Flipper,

and so they collect young females,

just like we did for the Flipper show.

And they're flown to different

parts of the world.

I could have my own dolphin facility

somewhere in the Caribbean

and be making 2 or 3

million dollars a year

like these guys, if I wanted to.

But I walked away from that.

The thing that turned me around

was the death of Flipper, of Cathy.

She was really depressed.

I could feel it.

I could see it.

And she committed suicide in my arms.

That's a very strong word, suicide.

But you have to understand

dolphins and other whales

are not automatic air breathers,

like we are.

Every breath they take

is a conscious effort.

And so they can end their life

whenever life becomes too unbearable

by not taking the next breath.

And it's in that context

I use the word suicide.

She did that.

She swam into my arms

and looked me right in the eye

and... took a breath...

and didn't take another one.

I just let her go,

and she sank straight down on her belly

to the bottom of the tank.

The next day, I was in the Bimini jail

for trying to free a dolphin

at the Lerner Marine Laboratory.

That's how I reacted to it.

I was going to free

every captive dolphin I could.

I spent ten years

building that industry up.

And I spent the last 35 years

trying to tear it down.

When I started out,

there were only three dolphinariums.

Today it's become

a multi-billion-dollar industry.

In all of these captures,

we helped create the largest slaughter

of dolphins on the planet.

Anyone can watch the capture process

go on from the road.

But Ric pointed out

where they take the boats

around to the secret cove

that nobody could see

where dolphins that weren't selected

are slaughtered and sold for their meat.

Here in Taiji,

you can go to the Whale Museum

and watch the dolphin show

and eat a dolphin at the same time.

They sell dolphin and whale meat

right in the dolphinarium.

It's the captivity industry

that keeps this slaughter going

by rewarding the fishermen

for their bad behavior.

They only get $600 for a dead dolphin,

but they can get more than $150,000

for a live show dolphin.

I told Ric

that I'd help him out,

that we'll fix this, we'll change this.

And I didn't tell him how

because I really didn't know

how we were going to do it.

There are lots of groups

here in Japan...

World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace,

International Fund

for Animal Welfare.

They all make hundreds

of millions of dollars between them.

This is the largest slaughter

of dolphins in the world.

Where are they?

There is one organization

whose sole purpose is to protect

all cetaceans in the wild.

That's the IWC...

the International Whaling Commission.

But for some reason,

small cetaceans, dolphins

and porpoises, aren't protected.

Dolphins are whales.

Size doesn't matter.

The IWC will go down in history

as a ship of fools.

There's no...

There's no democracy here

by any stretch of the imagination.

They do whatever the hell

they want to do.

Mr. O'Barry, you know I'm here.

Yeah?

I have to ask you to leave the hotel.

You could have waited

till morning, but...

Sir, I asked you very nicely

to turn off your camera.

The reason why small cetaceans

are not popular with the IWC

is because the whaling nations

that set this thing up

clearly has the best interest

in leaving those out,

particularly if they

happen to be eating them.

Joji Marshita is the Deputy

Commissioner for Whaling.

He's a talented guy from Japan

with a real hard job to do.

He has to get up every day.

First he'll look at himself in the mirror,

and then he's got to go out

and explain to the world

Japan's whaling policy.

Very complicated subject to get around.

It's clear the issue of whaling

is becoming more of emotions.

We have never

had a convincing reason

why this species is so special.

The International

Whaling Commission

is the only international body

dealing with whales

that's officially recognized

by the United Nations.

It's basically

a toothless organization,

but it is the only

organization that does exist.

Well, there's a clause

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