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Photo: Courtesy of Diamond Docs

The Cove’s Richard O’Barry on Secret Dolphin Slaughter — and Flipper’s Suicide

Sure to be one of the most talked-about documentaries at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Louie Psihoyos’s The Cove is part heist movie, part environmental exposé. The cove in question is a secluded and naturally fortified lagoon in the small Japanese town of Taiji, where every year for six months thousands of dolphins are brutally slaughtered.

The film is in part about the efforts of a group of activists to infiltrate the cove and to actually film what goes on there. Leading the charge is Richard O’Barry, a longtime activist who was responsible for training the dolphins on the sixties TV show Flipper. Indeed, The Cove is also the story of O’Barry’s journey, documenting how he came to be a self-described “abolitionist” for dolphins. He spoke to Vulture about his new film, watching TV with Flipper, and the increasingly elaborate disguises he has to wear when he goes to Taiji.

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