ASLE Conference 2021

 

Dolphins and Sentience in The Cove

 

The Cove demonstrates dolphins’ connections with humans first through Ric O’Barry’s recollections of interactions with the dolphins he captured and trained for the television series, Flipper (1964-1968). According to O’Barry, he captured and trained the five female dolphins that played Flipper in the television series, translating the script into dolphin action each day. The dolphins’ skills and intellect surprised and impressed even O’Barry. They even recognized themselves in the show, when they saw themselves on O’Barry’s television. O’Barry lived in the house at the end of a dock featured in the series, so he came in contact with the dolphins almost every waking hour. When the show ended, however, the dolphins were sold to an aquarium where they entertained crowds, seemingly smiling throughout the show, “nature’s greatest deception,” according to O’Barry. 

This connection with humans unfortunately leads to their harm or even death. According to O’Barry, the aquarium life is so stressful for dolphins, they must take Maalox and Tagamet every day. They travel forty miles a day in the wild. Captivity not only confines them, but also interferes with their sonar. O’Barry explains, “When they are captured and put in a concrete tank surrounded by screaming people, the noise causes stress.” The sound of the filtration system was found to kill dolphins and had to be modified. O’Barry’s commentary demonstrates both their sentience—ability both to feel pleasure and pain—and their self-awareness—ability to recognize themselves on television, arguing effectively that dolphins should be preserved because destroying them means destroying persons of equal value to humans. 

The Cove also valorizes dolphin’s intelligence as a connection to humans through information provided by Dr. John Potter, who measures intelligence in dolphins. Dolphins respond to signals in American Sign Language, but they also connect with humans on an emotional level. According to Mandy-Rae Cruikshank, one of the divers in the film, a dolphin swam with her and invited her to rub its belly. Surfers recount stories of dolphins saving them from shark attacks. According to the film, then, dolphins have worth, so they deserve to live. They also deserve the freedom all persons of equal worth deserve.

The Cove Documentary and Animals Rights

 

The Cove and Animals Rights 

The Cove has received nearly universal acclaim, earning a 2009 Academy Award for best Documentary Feature film, perhaps because it is, according to Andrew O’Hehir, “a grim tale of murdered dolphins and poisoned school kids” that spins into “an amazing, real-life spy story video.” O’Hehir asserts, for example, that the film “raises troubling questions about how badly we have befouled the 70 percent of our planet that’s covered with water, and about why we have treated the species closest to us in intelligence with such cruelty and contempt.” Justin Chang declares, “Eco-activist documentaries don’t get much more compelling than The Cove, an impassioned piece of advocacy filmmaking that follows Flipper trainer-turned-marine crusader Richard O’Barry in his efforts to end dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan.” According to Chang, “it’s hard not to feel that there’s something uniquely barbaric about the destruction of this exceptionally intelligent, human-friendly species. Even Noel Murray, who calls the film “muddled” suggests that “The Cove offers a lot to think about in terms of the future of fishing, and Psihoyos’ gift for fiction-feature conventions does make a seemingly unpalatable subject entertaining.” 

Murray’s critique of the film, however, like other reviewers’ accolades, rests on its reliance on the point of view of dolphin advocate, Ric O’Barry, who, as Murray suggests, sides with “anyone who wants to protect dolphins, whether they want to shutter Sea World or not.” The Cove, then, is both praised and condemned because it valorizes an animal rights ethic. Animal rights ethicists like Peter Singer first argue that dolphins as a species deserve the same liberation movements as do human groups. As Singer argues, the film suggests that speciesism should be eradicated, just as racism and sexism should be abolished, primarily because animals are so much like humans. 

To support his claim, Singer asserts that humans are only considered morally superior because they belong to the species Homo sapiens. Singer also suggests that using this membership to define superiority is completely arbitrary. Instead, then, we should consider sentience—the capacity of a being to experience pleasure and pain—as a plausible criterion of moral importance. If we use sentience as a criterion, we extend to other sentient creatures the same basic moral consideration, the basic principle of equality. Therefore, we ought to extend to animals the same equality of consideration that we extend to human beings. Singer, like O’Barry, also connects selected animals more closely with humans, defining them as persons, a category that includes both sentience and self-awareness over time. In The Cove, O’Barry defines dolphins as both sentient and self-aware, offering these characteristics of persons as reasons for ensuring their safety and freedom.

Darwin's Nightmare and Lake Victoria's Struggle

 

Despite the European Union’s claim that Nile Perch from Lake Victoria have not been allowed in EU market countries since 1999, the exporting continues, according to Darwin's Nightmare, leaving a Syrian factory owner free to play with a mechanical dancing fish while the UN discusses a food shortage in Tanzania on a television news program and starving children fight for food. As Noel Murray suggests, “only a movie could catch the irony and horror of an office manager proudly showing off his Billy Bass while local children beat each other senseless over handfuls of rancid rice.” 

At the end of the film, Tanzanians rally and pray for food while watching a film about Jesus as a fisherman. Factory workers pack fish in boxes and onto cargo planes, leaving only bones and fish heads for the locals. Eliza is killed, leaving her friends to mourn, and a one legged-boy walks down empty railroad tracks while a man reads a BBC Focus on Africa magazine claiming there are no supplies for Tanzania. It would be a good idea for his son to be a pilot, he explains, so he can bring back supplies from Europe. Boys in the street smoke glue from empty soda bottles and sleep, and another plane takes off in a storm with thunder in the background. A Tanzanian woman watches from the ground. 

Director Hubert Sauper used a minimalist unit to shoot Darwin’s Nightmare, relying only on himself, his camera, and his companion, Sandor to document the figures he followed throughout the film. Although Sauper and Sandor faced obstacles when shooting the film, including multiple arrests that required bribes to earn their freedom, Sauper found effective footage to make his point. According to Sauper, “When you look out for contrasts and contradictions, reality can become ‘bigger than life.’ So in a way it was easy to find striking images because I was filming a striking reality,” a reality that demonstrates the need for an interdependent biotic community. 

Even though Sauper argues that Tanzania’s dilemma is a product of evolution, we assert that Darwin’s Nightmare shows us what happens when the biotic communities of and between nonhuman and human nature are disturbed. Here, unlike The Cove, the film argues that a single species—either the Nile perch or the European colonizer—can destroy its environment and even itself. Instead of arguing for animal liberation, the film upholds the need for interdependent community. 

The consequences of such destruction are monumental and ultimately end in both lake and land turning into barren sinkholes. But the film stands only as a warning against disrupting other biospheres. It is too late for Lake Victoria and, perhaps, for Tanzania, the film suggests. Both Darwin’s Nightmare and The End of the Line, then, demonstrate that arguments against over fishing that are based in organismic ecology may or may not change behaviors. Documentaries with animal rights-driven arguments, however, may produce real change.