This film is probably for those unaccustomed with fishing cultures. And it is made to shock those who are clueless that the same tactics used for trapping the dolphins are no more different from those fishing aggregating devices used for luring and trapping pelagic fish sold in our own markets, such as marlins, tuna, mahi-mahi, lobsters and crabs. It happens that in Taiji, the aggregating device happens to be set up in a cove.
Polespearing is merely a more advanced form of harpooning as a form of fishing that goes back to Paleolithic times. Like harpooning, polespearing has been taught from generation to generation, for centuries, in small fishing towns/villages throughout the world. Some use tridents, and richer and more advanced fishing communities may use spear-guns, or other forms of net-fishing. At least, we should be grateful that these Taiji fishermen aren't using dynamite or blast fishing, the bottom trawling method, cyanide fishing, bottom trawling, or cyanide fishing, or use fish toxins and muroa to lure and kill the dolphins. Polespearing, as we see in this film, is also no stranger than what this film would want to suggest. A visit to the Cosquer cave in Southern France - to see its 16,000 years old cave art - would be a reminder that even seals had been harpooned for food to allow some of our forefathers to survive.
This film makes no mention that dolphin-eating has, for centuries, been a Japanese traditional culture. Should Americans' hunting and killing bear, elk, moose, antelope, bison, rabbits, quail, turkey, squirrel, wild hogs, ducks and geese, sand hill cranes, woodcock, snipe, crow, black birds, coyotes and bobcats, and feeding on some of their kills, be just as disgusting?
The cinematography is indeed lovely to look at, but I've seen better cinematography of coves, cliffs, and oceans, and in many, the dangers encountered by species in the oceans are even more intense and frightening. The documentary provides blur and cartoonish treatments of instances and landscapes of scenes of their 'spy' team on the 'witnessing' lookout, offering questionable proof of their actual participation at the actual scenes.
Overall, this film hardly moves me just like in the same way I watch those anti-fur activists staging nude performances in front of the Seoul Trade and Exhibition Center recently. If these activists can't stop Americans from killing moose, bison, elk, cranes, rabbits, squirrels, etc. it'd be foolhardy to think they'd succeed in bullying other nations to their terms.
I can see quite see Richard O'Barry's attachment to his "Flipper" days and treating Flipper's death like that of a daughter or wife. However, in reality, dolphins aren't always the cute, lovely and hapless victims that Louie Psihoyos' film intends us to believe. Mounting reports have revealed that even friendly dolphins can have shark-like, violent and indiscriminate killing behaviors, slaughtering their young, their mates and porpoises.
Polespearing is merely a more advanced form of harpooning as a form of fishing that goes back to Paleolithic times. Like harpooning, polespearing has been taught from generation to generation, for centuries, in small fishing towns/villages throughout the world. Some use tridents, and richer and more advanced fishing communities may use spear-guns, or other forms of net-fishing. At least, we should be grateful that these Taiji fishermen aren't using dynamite or blast fishing, the bottom trawling method, cyanide fishing, bottom trawling, or cyanide fishing, or use fish toxins and muroa to lure and kill the dolphins. Polespearing, as we see in this film, is also no stranger than what this film would want to suggest. A visit to the Cosquer cave in Southern France - to see its 16,000 years old cave art - would be a reminder that even seals had been harpooned for food to allow some of our forefathers to survive.
This film makes no mention that dolphin-eating has, for centuries, been a Japanese traditional culture. Should Americans' hunting and killing bear, elk, moose, antelope, bison, rabbits, quail, turkey, squirrel, wild hogs, ducks and geese, sand hill cranes, woodcock, snipe, crow, black birds, coyotes and bobcats, and feeding on some of their kills, be just as disgusting?
The cinematography is indeed lovely to look at, but I've seen better cinematography of coves, cliffs, and oceans, and in many, the dangers encountered by species in the oceans are even more intense and frightening. The documentary provides blur and cartoonish treatments of instances and landscapes of scenes of their 'spy' team on the 'witnessing' lookout, offering questionable proof of their actual participation at the actual scenes.
Overall, this film hardly moves me just like in the same way I watch those anti-fur activists staging nude performances in front of the Seoul Trade and Exhibition Center recently. If these activists can't stop Americans from killing moose, bison, elk, cranes, rabbits, squirrels, etc. it'd be foolhardy to think they'd succeed in bullying other nations to their terms.
I can see quite see Richard O'Barry's attachment to his "Flipper" days and treating Flipper's death like that of a daughter or wife. However, in reality, dolphins aren't always the cute, lovely and hapless victims that Louie Psihoyos' film intends us to believe. Mounting reports have revealed that even friendly dolphins can have shark-like, violent and indiscriminate killing behaviors, slaughtering their young, their mates and porpoises.