Taiji, Japan was a “little town with a big secret”. This small town on the coast of Japan seems tranquil and quiet, but in reality, it is a place of brutality and covert, horrific actions involving the exploitation, abuse and murder of bottlenose dolphins. The development of the organization in Taiji was run around the implementation of little rules, with the exception of secrecy. The shores off of Tailji were filled with hundreds and hundreds of dolphins – some alive, but most dead. The Japanese began harvesting dolphins for the use in entertainment after observing the grand success of the movie Flipper. The narrator of the documentary was the trainer of Cathy, the flipper dolphin. As he was training her, he had no idea what ideas were brewing based upon his success.
Cathy was so intelligent that she could watch herself on television and could recognize herself from other dolphins. Because Cathy was trained so well, the movie Flipper earned an astonishing profit, launching the dolphin-entertainment industry. Twice a year, the bottlenose dolphin migrate along the Japan shores. Dolphins as a species lead auditory driven lives. The Japanese took advantage of this dependence that dolphins have on sound in order to capture and harvest the dolphins as they pleased. The harvesters would line up in boats right outside of the migration line with thick metal poles placed into the surrounding water. As soon as the dolphins began migrating, the hunters would bang the submerged poles with hammers and the loud, vibrating sound would drive the dolphins towards shore, directly into the nets.
Once in the nets, the dolphins were captured for good, no escaping. Dolphin trainers from around the world gather once the dolphins are caught and they choose which dolphin they want to train. The hundreds of dolphins left without a trainer are left to die, rather than released. Once the dolphins are chosen by a trainer, they are shipped off to their perspective new homes and kept in small tanks only to be exploited for their tricks and stunts. “A dolphin’s smile is their most deceptive feature”. To be honest, I knew nothing about dolphins living in captivity, nor did I ever bother to wonder where they came from or how they came to be captive rather than living in their natural environments. It was horrifyingly upsetting to see the way that they were treated. The documentary was made not only to expose the torturous means of capturing dolphins but also to show how they were exposed. The Japanese people of Taiji did everything in their physical power to prevent outsiders from coming to their small town and seeing the work that they were doing underwater. The narrator of the documentary prodded without ease until the workers of this business was exposed and shut down. He was successful!
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