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Solomon Star
Wed, 17 Mar 2010
HONIARA, Solomon Islands --- A team from the Oscar winning documentary film 'The Cove' and Animal Planet will arrive here next month to film the dolphin activities in the country.
The 'Cove' won the best Oscars on Sunday for its well documented film on dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan.
Organiser of the trip Christopher Porter told the Solomon Star the team will visit the country to film and produce a TV series on dolphins here.
He said one of the activities to be filmed is the release of the dolphins at Gavutu Island.
Mr Porter said dolphin activitist Ric O'Barry, who was the main character in the award-winning film 'The Cove', will be leading the team.
"This is big team made up of best film makers and Solomon Islands though small is going to host them," he said.
Solomon Islands was also under the spotlight because of the dolphin capture and trading.
Over and over again Mark Berman from Earth Island and Mr O'Barry have been calling for an end to dolphin capture and trade in the country.
"And this time Mr O'Barry is expected to visit Solomon Islands," Mr Porter said.
He said a team from the film producers visited the country late last month and had agreed to return to film in the country. The team is also expected to visit dolphin hunting community in Bita’ama and Lau in Malaita as well as at Gavutu.
Every year on the first of September, at a cove in a small town called Taiji on the southeast coast of Japan's Honshu Island, a new fishing season begins: the dolphin season.
Twenty-six fishermen in 13 boats corral a few dozen dolphins into the small cove, where they kill the animals by stabbing them repeatedly with long harpoons and knives.
The 50-square-foot (4.6-square-meter) inlet turns crimson, as if filled only with blood. In the course of a six-month season, fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about US$500 a dolphin.
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