Watch The Cove, and help us end the dolphin drive hunts in Japan!
The dolphin drive hunts in Japan are a devastatingly cruel and inhumane practice that involves the corralling of dolphins at sea and driving them into the confines of small coves in Taiji and Futo, Japan. Here, they are slaughtered for meat or kept alive for sale to marine parks and aquaria across the globe. This is not a subsistence kill but a small industry regulated by the Japanese government. Yearly quotas for both villages reaches in the thousands based on Japan fisheries records. The hunts run from September through April where small cetaceans of several species including bottlenose dolphins, striped dolphins, spotted dolphins, false killer whales and short-finned pilot whales, are taken. A new movie, produced by The Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), has exposed these hunts in a dramatic action film that has received numerous accolades and commendations from film festivals across the globe over the past year since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
WDCS has been active in confronting the dolphin drive hunts in Japan on a number of levels, from raising awareness of the hunts, taking part in peaceful protests and visiting Japan to document them. We have worked with the marine mammal scientific community to garner a statement against these hunts, and helped secure a congressional resolution condemning the practice. WDCS has also worked to procure the growing acknowledgement from the public display industry of its complicity in fueling the dolphin drive hunts through the demand generated by marine parks and aquaria that either directly, or indirectly, source live dolphins from these hunts. See our report, Driven by Demand and www.drivenbydemand.org.
Please help us put an end to the dolphin killings in Japan by attending and supporting The Cove. Below is a listing of theaters that will be showing the movie in July and August across the U.S. The movie opens on July 31st at select theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Please follow the link to find the location and theater nearest you! www.thecovemovie.com