I was shocked by the amount of violence against creatures that do nothing apart from living a happy life. Moreover, the amount of Dolphin slaughters (23,000 every year) + violence there are per year is unbelievable and it's lamentable that people keep on doing it. Something that moved me as I saw the documentary was the initiative Ric O'Barry had to help dolphins in Japan. Yet, it's the truth behind this story that actually amazed me.
Long ago, Ric O'Barry was the protagonist of the series Flipper. Dolphins were kept in captivity in order to work out the series, but in that time he didn't notice the harm he was doing to the precious animal. As time went on, capturing dolphins for entertainment became an extremely popular market, and all due to Flipper. Over time, Ric O'Barry had an incentive to take action over this world-wide industry, Before, when he worked in Flipper, he did everything for the money, until one day, the dolphin died in his hands and his life made a complete switch. That extrinsic motivator, converted into guilt, and that guilt, motivated him to begin with this movement. Now, he states a really important point:
Throughout the film I focused on every aspect related to ECONOMICS. At first I didn't understand what the relation was going to be, but as the film went on there were some really important points that stood out.
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- Half the population doesn’t even know what is happening, they are not aware. In fact, when they buy fish meat in supermarkets, they are actually buying dolphin meat but the labels have been modified.
- Putting the health of children at risk because they want to see economic growth in the country. They give dolphin meat in schools which is contaminated with mercury.
- Flipper created an industry that is worth millions of dollars nowadays
- Since whaling was banned, Japanese still wanted to make money and tripled their capture of dolphins, again, just because of money
- Japanese control worlds market (fish). If they have the incentive of such a large demand, people are going to continue consuming the fish, therefore the slaughtering will continue as well.
- Became a multibillion dollar industry in just 35 years.
- How do they get funded to buy everything? The camera’s? (money comes from himself, Ric O'Barry, friends, funds, contacts)
- Dolphin meat is based on supply and demand. Taiji is the largest suppliers of dolphins for sea aquariums
- Japanese lies to their own country to keep increasing there economy and wealth. They say that dolphin slaughtering is not about the money, it's about pest control. Supposedly dolphins are eating too much fish in the ocean so they need to kill them.
- By making people aware of this issue, they are probably decreasing the amount of dolphin meat costumers eat, as well as people visiting every dolphinarium where dolphins are under captivity. This decrease the revenue of the industry itself, and each individual company.
- Companies like Sea World pay $150,000 for dolphins, but they are clearly not aware of the truth behind the process of capturing