The Cove is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Louie Psihoyos that analyzes and questions dolphin hunting practices in Japan. It was awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2010. The film is a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills and captures, change Japanese fishing practices, and inform and educate the public about captivity and the increasing hazard of mercury poisoning from consuming dolphin meat.
The film's poster, which features a photograph of Canadian freediving world champion Mandy-Rae Cruickshank swimming with dolphins.
Ric O'Barry at the Cove in Taiji, Japan, in 2014
Dolphin drive hunting, also called dolphin drive fishing, is a method of hunting dolphins and occasionally other small cetaceans by driving them together with boats, usually into a bay or onto a beach. Their escape is prevented by closing off the route to the open sea or ocean with boats and nets. Dolphins are hunted this way in several places around the world including the Solomon Islands, the Faroe Islands, Peru, and Japan, which is the most well-known practitioner of the method. In large numbers dolphins are mostly hunted for their meat; some end up in dolphinariums.
Atlantic white-sided dolphin caught in a drive hunt in Hvalba on the Faroe Islands being taken away with a forklift
Killed pilot whales on the beach in the village Hvalba on the southernmost Faroese island Suðuroy, August 2002
The fishing village of Taiji
Dusky dolphin being skinned on a boat in Peru