The Cove documents a the hunting of dolphins in one Japanese fishing village.Early on in The Cove, director Louie Psihoyos describes how he assembled an "Ocean's Eleven"-like team of specialists to infiltrate and expose a secret, brutal, for-profit dolphin-killing operation in Japan.

The description fits the film, which is structured more like an action thriller than a documentary. And the team, which includes a pair of world-class free divers, a "clandestine operations" specialist who's discovered Caribbean shipwrecks, a rock concert organizer, and a spiritual surfer dude who co-founded Surfers for Cetaceans. (Cetacea, for marine-illiterate folk, is the order of marine mammals that includes dolphins, whales, and porpoises.)

The Cove documents the work of Ric O'Barry, who in a previous life spent 10 years as a dolphin trainer, most famously for the 1960s TV series Flipper, only to renounce that work and dedicate himself to fighting the dolphin captivity industry. O'Barry's heartbreaking devotion to these highly intelligent mammals, and his deep guilt over Flipper's popularization of trained dolphin shows, form the emotional backbone of film.

O'Barry has been a fly in the ointment to the Japanese coastal town of Taiji for some time now, attracting hostility from the locals for his determination to stop its industry of dolphin capture and slaughter. A classic example of an inspiring breed of activist -- i.e. someone who started on the other side before a crisis of conscience turned him -- O'Barry is unafraid to cross the line in pursuit of his goals. When asked "How many times have you been arrested?" he responded, "This year?"

The movie's unique storytelling style -- a far cry from the academic talking heads and dire government statistics that suffocate most enviro docs -- has earned The Cove much well-deserved critical acclaim already. Night-vision footage of Psihoyos' badass team of eco-guerrillas sneaking into an isolated cove to plant high-def cameras, not to mention the literal bloodbath those cameras recorded, is compelling enough to keep mainstream audiences engaged. For that reason, The Cove serves as a model of how documentaries can stay relevant in today's fast-paced media culture.

Louie Psihoyos directed The Cove.Despite its nail-biting action, effortless pacing, and gruesomely engaging subject matter, The Cove ultimately commits one of the greatest enviro-activist sins: it is, in essence, just another save-the-cute-animals plea. Killing dolphins and then serving the mercury-tainted meat to Japanese schoolchildren is disgusting and immoral. Capturing dolphins and teaching them silly tricks does a great disservice to both them and the human race, which probably has a lot to learn from these skilled communicators. And Japan's continued shirking of international whaling regulations should not be tolerated.

But The Cove gets so caught up in the thrilling suspense of its own story that it neglects to hammer these points home hard enough, allowing O'Barry to toss most of them off without backup from other sources. And when the film ended, in my most cynical heart of hearts, I still had not been convinced of why this atrocity should matter to me personally. The Cove relies on its own shock value and misses an opportunity for a deeper exploration of why this baffling practice occurs, and of what other communities have to learn from it.

What I found more resonant than Taiji's dolphin cruelties was the film's footage from an International Whaling Commission meeting, which revealed the twisted political alliances and back-door dealings that often define international summits. Japan buys off tiny, impoverished nations like Dominica, St. Kitts, and the Marshall Islands, plying them with expensive building projects in exchange for backing for Japan's continued violation of IWC regulations. The sense that this official bribery is a practice not unique to Japan calls into question whether international policymaking bodies can be forces for positive change in the world.

This depressing realization casts a cloud over the The Cove, and, for that matter, the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. After all, what does the work of people like O'Barry matter if, in the end, everyone's fate is decided by cold-hearted, suit-wearing bureaucrats, who, behind the closed doors of conference rooms, trade our futures for a few bucks?

Go See It: Where you can see The Cove

Other Reviews: N.Y. Times | L.A. Times | The Washington Post

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Let's take a look at a few studies that have come out recently and see if we can find a common thread.

These are disparate areas of study and disparate conclusions. One thing they all have in common: an environment-degrading practice often defended as necessary to economic health is revealed, upon closer inspection, to be uneconomic. I wonder how many other allegedly economic environment-degrading practices would also be revealed uneconomic if examined with a fresh eye?

It's almost like the economy is embedded in an environment, and degrading the latter ultimately degrades the former.

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WASHINGTON—The United States on Friday denounced Iceland’s decision to go ahead with a sharply higher whaling quota, voicing concern there were not whales to sustain the hunt.

Iceland’s new left-wing government said last week it will maintain an earlier decision for a quota of 150 fin and 150 minke whales this year—a sixfold increase—despite international calls for it to reconsider.

The U.S. State Department said it “strongly opposes” the decision.

“We are deeply concerned that stocks of fin and minke whales are not adequate to support this harvest,” it said in a statement.

“We call upon the government of Iceland to rescind this decision and to focus on the long-term conservation of whale stocks, rather than on the short-term interests of its whaling industry,” it said.

The United States also said the decision would undermine ongoing talks on the future of the International Whaling Commission.

The IWC reform talks are part of a U.S.-led drive to reduce tensions around close ally Japan, which infuriates Australia and New Zealand by killing hundreds of whales each year in the Antarctic Ocean.

Japan says it abides by a 1986 IWC moratorium on commercial whaling as it uses a loophole that allows “lethal research” on the ocean giants, with the meat then heading to restaurants and supermarkets.

Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium altogether.

Iceland’s new government came to office after the global financial crisis ravaged the economy of the island, which became the first Western European nation in three decades to need a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

The new government includes parties opposed to whaling, but it said it was maintaining the new whaling quota because it concluded it was legally bound to it.

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Whale activists wind up Japan showdown

TOKYO—Animal rights activists said Monday they were ending their harassment of Japanese whalers in the Antarctic for the season, warning that a person could get killed if the confrontation escalated.

Japan has been stepping up international pressure to try to rein in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has vowed to physically stop the slaughter of the ocean giants.

Sea Shepherd said its ship, the Steve Irwin, which collided last week with a whaling vessel, was heading back to Australia with only four days of fuel reserves left.

“Another four days is simply not worth getting someone killed,” said Paul Watson, the Canadian captain of the ship.

“We have done everything we could with the resources available to us this year,” he said in a statement. “We have cost them money and we have saved the lives of a good many whales.”

He vowed to return next season—and said he hoped to come with a faster ship to hassle the whaling fleet.

“I intend to be their on-going nightmare every year until they stop their horrific and unlawful slaughter of the great whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.”

Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, hunts up to 850 whales each year in the Antarctic Ocean despite strong objections from political allies Australia and New Zealand.

But for the previous two seasons Japan’s catch was curbed largely because of harassment by environmentalists.

Japan kills whales using a loophole in a 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling that allows “lethal research” on the mammals, and makes no secret of the fact that the animals’ meat is then served as food.

Only Norway and Iceland defy the whaling moratorium altogether.

Japan last week summoned the ambassador of The Netherlands, where the Steve Irwin is registered, to demand it take action against the environmentalists.

Asked if the diplomatic protest led to Sea Shepherd’s decision, Toshinori Uoya of the Fisheries Agency told AFP: “As we have repeatedly said, their activity is illegal and unforgivable.”

“They have to be punished based on international law and The Netherlands, as its nationality is on the ship, bears primary responsibility for the crackdown,” Uoya said.

He added that the whalers would maintain security precautions despite Sea Shepherd’s withdrawal.   “We don’t know why they are stopping their attacks against us this season, but we don’t trust anything they say. They may return to attack us again,” he said.

Japan has complained after activists hurled bottles of rancid butter at the whalers and tried to board the ship.

Sea Shepherd in turn accused Japan of crossing the line by deploying acoustic weapons, which send out high-frequency sound waves to disorient the activists.

The environmentalists said that use of the sonic weapons left three of their crew with injuries, with one man requiring five stitches above his left eye.

Unlike Sea Shepherd, the more mainstream environmental group Greenpeace this season held off from chasing the whalers.

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There's bad news and good news from the world of marine megafauna. The bad: Almost a quarter of the 80 types of whales, dolphins, and porpoises are in trouble, with nine listed as "endangered" or "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Entanglement in fishing gear poses the main threat. The good: Thanks to a global hunting moratorium, humpback, common minke, and southern right whales have thrived enough to be downlisted to "least concern" by the IUCN. "The large whales, the commercially important ones, have for the most part responded well under protection," says IUCN's Randall Reeves. Norway, which along with Japan and Iceland has defied the whaling moratorium, called the IUCN report evidence that the ban should be lifted. Conservationists don't see it that way. "This strengthens our opposition to whaling," said Greenpeace's Frode Pleym. "While some species have started to recover, none of them are back to the levels they had before industrial whaling started."

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The five members of the Makah tribe who participated in an unsanctioned hunt of a gray whale last year were sentenced earlier this week. The Makah tribe, whose reservation is located in northwestern Washington state, is the only tribe in the country with treaty rights to hunt whales. However, the long, arduous process of obtaining a waiver to actually conduct a legal hunt has fueled the profound frustration of some tribe members; the Makah's last legal hunt was in 1999. The five whalers who conducted their own whale hunt last September said it was anger over the long waiver process that drove them to do it. In March, three of the whalers pleaded guilty to illegal whaling and this week received lighter sentences than the two tribe members who went to trial. The whalers who pleaded guilty were sentenced to two years of probation and over 100 hours of community service each. As for the two who went to trial, one of the whalers was sentenced to 90 days in prison and the other, who the judge saw as remorseless, received the harshest sentence of five months in federal prison.

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Wrapping up its annual meeting this week, the International Whaling Commission decided to defer decision-making on various controversial issues. The IWC took only one vote at the meeting, deciding to disallow Greenland's request to take a higher quota of humpback whales. It also agreed to research the impact of climate change on cetaceans. But with the commission polarized by fierce disagreement between pro- and anti-whaling countries, no decisions were made on whether to end a 22-year-old ban on commercial whaling, whether to continue letting Japan kill whales for alleged scientific purposes, whether to create a whale sanctuary in the south Atlantic, or whether to issue permits for coastal whaling. A 24-nation committee of the 81-member commission will try to come up with compromises on contentious issues, and will bring a report to next year's conference.

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Japanese whalers had a quota of 850 minke whales for the just-ended hunting season but are heading home having caught only 551, which the country's Fisheries Agency blames on "sabotage by activists." The militant Sea Shepherd Society had been all up in whalers' biz throughout the season. Anti-whalers were quick to point out that hunters admitted to catching zero fin whales, instead of 50, because they didn't spot very many. A hard time finding whales, says Greenpeace's Junichi Sato, "is a good reason why they should not conduct lethal research."

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Photo: bbum

Three members of the Washington state Makah tribe who were charged with killing a gray whale in the fall have pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In return, prosecutors will recommend probation instead of jail time. The men had originally declined the plea deal because it could have prevented them from participating in legal whale hunting while on probation, but the three pled guilty after that stipulation was dropped. Two other Makah members involved in the whale hunt declined the plea deal and will go to trial as soon as next week.

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The captain of the radical anti-whaling Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says he was shot in a clash with Japanese whalers on Friday. Paul Watson says he found a bullet in his Kevlar vest; Japan's fisheries agency disputed the accusation, saying those onboard the whaling ship retaliated with non-lethal flash grenades after activists threw stink bombs of eye-stinging butyric acid onto their boat.

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Eating whale meat is better for the planet than eating beef, pork, or chicken, according to a comparative carbon-emissions calculation by Norwegian lobbying group the High North Alliance. Says the alliance's Rune Froevik, in what may be a bit of an exaggeration, "Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat." Points out Greepeace's Truls Gulowsen, "The survival of a species is more important than lower greenhouse-gas emissions from eating it." Meanwhile, Australian activists clashed yet again with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.

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There's a new twist in the twisty tale of Japan's off-then-back-on-again whale hunt: the Australian government has released gut-wrenching footage of what it says is a mother and baby minke whale being harpooned and hauled aboard a Japanese ship. An unamused official at Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research denied that the large and small whales were a mother and calf, and warned that the Australian photographs and subsequent media coverage "have created a dangerous emotional propaganda that could cause serious damage to the relationship between our two countries." The bright side, according to Aussie Environment Minister Peter Garrett: "Images like this ... have been very powerful forces in building up global and world opinion on [the whaling issue]."

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It's been high drama on the high seas the past few days as the unpopular Japanese whaling fleet has been at the heart of legal action and a target of direct-action protest. Earlier this week, Greenpeace successfully tracked down Japan's whaling fleet in Antarctic waters and has been chasing them around, disrupting the hunt. Today, a federal court in Australia ruled that Japan's whaling was illegal and ordered the fleet not to hunt anywhere near its waters nor in its Antarctic territory. Just hours after the ruling, two protesters from the militant anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society boarded one of the whaling vessels to deliver a letter of protest; the two were then taken into custody by the crew. Sea Shepherd has accused the crew of kidnapping and abuse of the activists. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more interesting, a ship that Australia sent to monitor the whaling fleet is set to arrive in the area soon to gather evidence against the whalers to present to an international court. Japan has said it aims to land up to 900 whales this season; no word yet on its captured-activist quota.

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