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An Interview with Ric O’Barry of THE COVE

Published on September 19, 2010

by Sarah Sherman

His face is haunting. Dark, heavy bags hang under his watery eyes, and his voice is at once exhausted and defiant. In interviews he appears distracted and impatient, as if every moment in a studio or conference room could be spent in a wetsuit freeing another captive, neglected and mistreated dolphin; doing what he has been doing for the past forty years of his life.

O’Barry in his element

Ric O’Barry, the central character in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, brings incredible passion and love to his work as an activist, as well as an overwhelming and heartbreaking guilt. O’Barry has worked desperately and ceaselessly, in and out of the water, to undo what he blames himself for starting.

In the 1960s, O’Barry worked as the trainer for the dolphins that collectively played Flipper in the popular television show. At the time, he said, his understanding of dolphins was radically different. While he recognized them to be special, intelligent creatures—so much so that he brought his TV set out to the dock to show the dolphins Flipper when it aired—he was not able to fully understand the implications of his work. He enjoyed his job and used his salary to buy flashy sports cars.

One day, while in the water with Kathy (one of the dolphins), everything changed. As he recounts in the film, she swam into his arms, took her last breath, and—O’Barry is certain—ended her own life. Dolphins, he explains, are conscious breathers, and are capable of choosing not to draw more air. He had noticed her depressed behavior, despite the deceptive dolphin smile that inspired the title for his book, “Behind the Dolphin Smile.” However, it was not until this moment of connection and loss with Kathy that his vantage point shifted permanently.

“Dolphins are free-ranging, intelligent, and complex wild animals and they belong in the oceans, not playing the clown in our human schemes,” O’Barry states on the film’s website. But before coming to this realization, he played a central role in igniting the rampant obsession with dolphin entertainment and captivity.

The Cove begins and ends with O’Barry. Louie Psihoyos, director of the film, travels to Taiji, Japan to meet him. At first Psihoyos is wary of O’Barry’s excessive paranoia. As he hunches over in his seat to avoid being recognized by police, Psihoyos questions his sanity. But slowly, O’Barry’s behavior and the tragedy behind it reveal themselves as overwhelmingly worthy of attention and credence.

The film revolves around the story of an annual dolphin slaughter that takes place in a small cove after those that will be captured and kept in captivity are selected. Interlaced with interviews and stock footage, The Cove presents a thrilling account of the covert operation to film and expose what happens in this cove, complete with violent local encounters and night-vision footage.

Listen to Sarah Sherman’s interview with Ric O’Barry

“What goes on is over the top…it’s extreme cruelty,” O’Barry said, responding to a question about the dedication of animal rights activists. The statement is simple, and simply true. But the story, the issues, and the film as a whole are far more complex.

The Cove touches on many different issues. “It’s not just about dolphins being killed. That’s part of the story. Mercury, the oceans and what we’re doing to them. The dolphin captivity issue,” O’Barry said. The approaches to the activism itself are also multifaceted for strategic reasons, he said. The issue is “really animal rights, but that won’t work. They [the Japanese opposition] love that argument. They can win that argument…cruelty arguments, they can win that. ‘Look, you kill cows and pigs and chickens…don’t you dare come over here and tell us what to do.’” They use the excuse that it’s part of their culture, said O’Barry. Because of this simple response—this easy trump card that has proven arduous to overturn in the context of international law—the approach has had to change.

Thus, O’Barry and his fellow activists turned to hard science. As is exhaustively explained in the film, dolphin meat contains levels of mercury toxic to humans, and can lead to serious health complications.

“The only one [argument] they can’t win is mercury poisoning. And so that’s why we play that card, because you can’t sweep that under the rug. The bottom line is the meat is poison,” O’Barry explained.

Finding dolphin meat in a Japanese market

The Cove shows two government officials succeeding in their efforts to at least remove dolphin meat from the school lunch program. Nonetheless, O’Barry explained, people continue to sell the meat outside the schools to the “unsuspecting public.” This “takes it out the arena of animal rights and puts it squarely in the arena of human rights,” he said. Forget the cruelty of confining dolphins in cramped tanks, capturing them with a clanging assault on their highly sensitive sonar, or spearing them repeatedly in prolonged slaughter. The only thing with conceivable sway has been the issue of human safety.

Even the human rights argument has been met with overwhelming opposition, which seems to disregard the scientific analysis of the dolphin meat. The anger and resistance comes from different places.

“There’s 3,444 people in Taiji, many many of them. Most of them are fisherman,” said O’Barry. “There’s only 13 boats that kill dolphins, only two men in each boat. We’re talking about 26 guys. Not an entire town. The whole town gets blamed for it.” Because of this reputation, he said, all of Taiji is angry.

The fisherman slaughtering the dolphins refuse to accept the criticism and, according to O’Barry, “they’re just angry because we’ve exposed the fact that the dolphin meat contains dangerous levels of mercury” regardless of whether or not it is true.

The militant right-wing opposition is also fierce, he said. “They are very nationalistic. They wanna go back to the way things were before the Second World War,” said O’Barry. His Save Japan Dolphins coalition website previously contained links to videos in which some of these individuals come to the “homes of the owners of the theaters and terrorize them.” He said the videos have since been taken down.

“I wouldn’t get out of my car alone anymore, it’s too dangerous,” said O’Barry. “Last time I was there at the cove we had a bus full of journalists and the police were there. There were seven police there waiting for us. It’s pretty safe to get out of the car then. But, I mean, for me to get out of my car alone there? No, that’s suicide.”

Luckily, this backlash has brought the “kind of publicity you couldn’t buy”: publicity for the cause and for the film, which opened in Japan last month showing in six small theaters around the country.

The documentary has been powerful in educating people about the issue and garnering support.

“[The Cove] set a world record for awards,” said O’Barry. “It won more awards than any documentary ever.” Though he said he thinks these awards are given for sheer entertainment value, he seemed glad it was out there.

O’Barry said he has never seen the film in its entirety. For him “it’s a series of interviews…somebody asks me a question and I give them an honest answer.” He saw most of the The Cove when it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. He said that for him “it’s just too personal” to watch the rest.

“I don’t see the same thing you see,” he said. “I see between the lines, ya know, my life is out there…I’m very uncomfortable at people knowing my story. I’m a very private person…so when I’m looking at that movie I see in between the scenes. Ya know, it’s forty years…I see life and death and birth…I see jail cells and court rooms and marriages and divorces, and things that people don’t see and I just don’t wanna go there.” Not only is the film too personal, he said, for it him it is just another chapter in his long struggle to reveal to the world the cruelty that is taking place. “The filmmakers have moved on to their next movie. I’m still at the cove.”

Still from The Cove

The dolphins are front-and-center for O’Barry. In the film, however, it’s not so straightforward. The dolphins’ plight and the indifference of the Taiji community are gut-wrenching but are not necessarily what makes The Cove so compelling. It is ultimately human nature, the quest and the struggle that draw us to the narrative.

The excitement is contagious as we watch the film crew moving swiftly, scanning for passing cars and stetting up their hidden cameras as quickly as possible. But it is O’Barry’s story, his guilt and his sunken face, appearing and reappearing on the screen, that moves us most deeply. Frustrated, O’Barry explains that in order to engage with the Japanese opposition about the campaign against dolphin killings, the issues must be turned from animal rights to human rights. Perhaps this idea applies to the film as well. We are compelled by the story of the dolphins in and of itself, but it is the palpable human emotion and context that really moves us.

The final scene in the films shows O’Barry with a television strapped to his chest, standing in the middle of a crowded intersection. The screen is playing the gruesome footage the stalwart crew obtained for the film. For him, it seems, this is an effective way to bring the issue aggressively into peoples’ consciousness; to literally shove it right in their faces.

The movie is rife with metaphor. O’Barry carries the bloody footage and the heavy equipment as his burden, strapped firmly over his heart.

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.

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Great interview and article, i was so happy to see this great documentary, it’s so important that the whole world get to see this film and i hope that many people give their support towards stopping these dolphins from being tortured to death.
I also heard about this event in Germany and also something in Denmark where the whole town come out every year for a festival type event where they gather to trap and kill dolphins, families come to watch with their kids, it’s disgusting! the more we can publicise these crimes the better….BIG RESPECT to Ric O’Barry…

Posted on 2010 09 21 by Pete