Should Taiji be targeted?
To capture their footage, The Cove filmmakers used divers with sophisticated underwater equipment, aerial drones, as well as surveillance and military-style thermal cameras, John M. Glionna reports for the Los Angeles Times. Dolphin hunter Shuichi Matsumoto spoke with Gilonna, defending the town’s right to block outsiders from seeing the cove, where generations of fishermen have hunted dolphins. In the West, the places where you kill the cows and pigs are always off limits, Matsumoto said. The film’s focus is Taiji, but 20,000 dolphins are hunted across Japan each year, leaving Taiji residents feeling unfairly targeted, according to Coco Masters of Time Magazine. The Cove also leaves out the Japanese tradition of reverence for animals that are killed for human use. As a result, some see the film as another bout of foreign outrage at a practice that is legal, regulated and culturally acceptable in Japan, Masters writes. But the method of slaughter known as oikomi, in which dolphins are
