Saving the Dolphins - Making Progress

All around the world, if you were to ask people what their favorite animal was, plenty of them would say that they like the dolphin the best. And they have perfectly good reason to; the way the beautiful animals are able to learn so many tricks and how they always seem to be smiling makes you want to smile too. But many don’t know what a hard life many of these creatures face.

Recently, there has been a documentary, “The Cove”, made that reveals these problems. The main subject that the documentary focuses on is the slaughtering of thousands of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. The film follows an ex-dolphin trainer on his expedition to uncover the truth of this phenomenon. It also highlights the fact that the Japanese government allows mercury-filled dolphin meat to be mislabeled and even sold to the public. The documentary has become a huge success. It has nabbed an Academy Award and various other nominations and awards. But the biggest success is that it’s brought the secret of the immoral slaughtering out of the dark to everyone. Not only the hardcore environmentalists can watch this film but also the general public. It is taking the cause from the science labs and government and bringing it to the rest of the world. I know that I didn’t know how serious this problem was until I heard about what the documentary was about. It has started the ball moving for saving these dolphins and soon for saving all marine life. The triumph of the documentary shows that we can save the animals and that it is possible, not just a cause that’s only being handled by painted “Save the Whales!” signs that people march in circles.

There are also websites and blogs that are helpful for the public to use to learn about saving marine life. This blog ( http://animal-world.com/newsfeed/ ) gives animals a voice. It takes information to the people; it shows them headlines and stories that wouldn’t normally be seen in newspapers or magazines. It’s important for people to not only hear about what people are doing in the current day, but also what’s happening in the animal world. People need to hear about the new findings, the new crises, and even the old stories and their outcomes. There’s also a website ( http://www.thecovemovie.com/home.htm ) that is all about “The Cove”. There are so many resources connected to this site. You can find information, you can learn about the problem that the movie addressed, and you can even find ways to do your part for the dolphins. The site shows how pivotal the movie was to the type of community service people want to help with. Sure, there are disasters happening in the human world that are very important, but we can’t forget that part of our community is also the oceans and the inhabitants, even though they can’t speak the same language that we do. The world is our community and we need to step up and help every part of it, and this site helps us do that.