Word: coved
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...sound of airgun explosions is 265 decibels at the source, and 110 decibels almost five miles away. The approximate hearing threshold for humans and marine mammals is 180 decibels, so "at [five miles] they're still being harmed," Ford says. (Read TIME's review of eco-documentary The Cove...
...Cove's central points, however, is not as open for cultural interpretation. Dolphin meat - like whale - contains high levels of mercury, and at its highest instances, the concentration of methyl mercury in bottlenose dolphin meat is 32 times the limit set by Japan's Health Ministry. School children in Taiji eat dolphin, like the rest of the town's population. Junichiro Yamashita, who years ago raised national awareness of dolphin meat's health risks as Taiji's local assemblyman, was interviewed for the film along with current assemblyman Hisato Ryono. But Ryono, who was touted as a hero...
...dramatic effect, The Cove casts Taiji's dolphin hunt as one town's dirty secret. The reality, however, is that Japan culls about 20,000 dolphins across the nation every year. To those in Taiji and other areas where dolphin hunting is permitted, the global reaction to The Cove has a whiff of the enduringly contentious whaling debate (Japan has hunted whales in the name of science for decades despite environmentalists' ire). The new wave of criticism of dolphin hunting that has been spurred by the film has many fishermen and local bureaucrats rolling their eyes over what they interpret...
...total of 11,070 dolphins in 2006 and 10,218 in 2007. But even those figures are well below the prefecture's legal limits, and Taiji fishermen also hunted about half their limit in 2006 and 2007, averaging about 1,430 dolphins a year. In response to The Cove, town-council chief Katsutoshi Mihara told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, "I don't understand their way of pushing their own values...
...Japanese public, they will have the chance to make up their own minds about the film - if The Cove is released in theaters after the festival. Whether the acclaim will be as great as it has been at other festivals remains to be seen. But for the filmmakers, a few dolphins freed and a screening at TIFF might just be reward enough...