Beyond Flipper

There's something special about the relationship between humans and dolphins. Rescue narratives (stories about drowning humans saved by dolphins, or humans endangered by sharks and defended by dolphins) go back to the Greeks, and are still common among swimmers and divers today. And then there is the tantalizing prospect of interspecies communication. Dolphins, like their bigger cousins, whales, are intelligent creatures and have large, complex brains. Are they capable of "talking" to us, or understanding us when we talk to them?

Years ago, my buddy Jim and I decided to go scuba diving off Cozumel, Mexico during spring break. The island was far less developed than it is today, and I remember that the flight there was the most expensive part of the trip. The waters between the island and the mainland were pristine blue-green, and alive with coral formations and marine life of every description -- a scuba diver's paradise.

If you wanted to go diving, you showed up at the dock in the morning and clambered aboard one of a handful of dive boats fueling up in the harbor. You handed a few pesos to the captain and rummaged through the gear bin as he motored out into the channel. After a morning dive, you and your shipmates were treated to lunch on the beach -- fresh fish, cooked by the captain and his mate. And then it was back out to sea for a second dive on the reef.

On our second or third day, we were finishing lunch on the beach when we spotted a school of bottlenose dolphins traversing the channel, just a couple hundred yards offshore. The captain helped us quickly board the dive boat and we made for a spot ahead of the pack. I didn't have time to put on my tank, so I jumped in with only my mask, snorkel and flippers.

I was immediately surrounded by what appeared to be dozens of dolphins, packed close to each other and to me. I kicked as hard as I could to keep up. Adults and juveniles swam up to me and swooped under me, often just an arm's length away. It was ten minutes of pure magic.

Decades have passed and I've never forgotten that experience. If you're ever lucky enough to make eye contact with a dolphin in the wild, you'll know what I mean. When one looks you in the eye, it's one intelligent being to another (though we probably shouldn't overestimate the diver).

All of which is a long preamble to a movie recommendation. National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos has made a documentary about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan that is painful to watch, but important to see. "The Cove" chronicles the efforts of Ric O'Barry and a collection of animal rights activists to force the Japanese to stop capturing and killing dolphins at a national park in Taiji, Japan. Capturing and killing, because some of the more photogenic dolphins are, in fact, captured and then shipped to marine theme parks for water shows. The rest are killed for their meat.

The documentary footage of the slaughter itself, taken surreptitiously with HD cameras hidden in fake rocks, makes for particularly difficult viewing. For seven or eight excruciating minutes, we see dolphins being driven into the killing cove, then stabbed to death with harpoons. One young dolphin, mortally wounded, struggles to take his final breath before disappearing in the bloody surf.

Ric O'Barry, the central character in "The Cove," is passionate about saving dolphins because he once trained them. In fact, he trained the original dolphins who shared star billing on the TV program "Flipper" back in the mid-1960s. When "Kathy," one of his favorite dolphins, died of a broken heart, O'Barry decided that freeing captive dolphins would become his life's mission.

As skeptical media consumers, we're conditioned to expect that issues are never as one-sided as they appear in documentaries like this one. "The Cove" anticipates our skepticism by addressing the primary economic argument for the dolphin slaughter: the contribution of dolphin meat to the Japanese diet. The filmmakers sent samples of dolphin meat served to Japanese school children to a lab for analysis, and every sample contained dangerously high levels of mercury. It turns out that a dinner of dolphin meat is almost as bad for humans as for the dolphins themselves.

"The Cove" doesn't have a happy ending. Cetaceans -- dolphins and whales -- are still being slaughtered en masse, and not just by the Japanese. Norway, Iceland, and a number of smaller countries also allow whaling. But the success of activists to raise human consciousness about the killing of these amazing mammals offers hope that we may one day learn to see these animals in a different light... eyeball to eyeball, one intelligent being to another.

"The Cove" has been nominated for an Academy Award.