The Cove is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Louie Psihoyos that analyzes and questions dolphin hunting practices in Japan.

In the 1960s, O'Barry helped capture and train the five wild dolphins who shared the role of "Flipper" in the hit television series of the same name.

Days later, he was arrested off the island of Bimini for attempting to cut a hole in a sea pen in order to set free a captured dolphin.

In an isolated cove surrounded by wire fences and "Keep Out" signs, however, an activity takes place that the townspeople attempt to hide from the public.

Two Taiji city councilors are interviewed who have advocated for the removal of dolphin meat from local school lunches due concerns about mercury.

All activists who attempt to view or film the dolphin killing in the cove are physically prevented from doing so by the fishermen, with the support of the local police and government, and the filmmakers are shadowed and questioned by the authorities.

Faced with this, Psihoyos, O'Barry, and the crew utilize special tactics and technology to covertly film what is taking place in the cove.

[16] Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times called the film "an exceptionally well-made documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller", going on to describe it as "one of the most audacious and perilous operations in the history of the conservation movement".

[17] Other reviewers also played up the espionage angle of the film, including Time magazine's Mary Pols, who said The Cove "puts Hollywood capers like Mission Impossible to shame",[18] and Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor, who called it "a rousing piece of real-world thriller filmmaking".

[20] Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern labeled the film a "quasidocumentary framed as a high-tech thriller" with an "agitprop style" that has "an excess of artifice and a dearth of facts".

[21] David Cox of The Guardian Film Blog called it a "piece of evangelism", and mused rhetorically: "Westerners ... kill and eat cows.

As a piece of propaganda, The Cove is brilliant; as a story of ingenuity and triumph over what seems like senseless brutality, it is exceptionally well-told; but as a conscientious overview of a complex and deeply fraught, layered issue, it invokes the same phrase as even the most well-intentioned, impassioned activist docs: Buyer beware.

[32] Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki has argued that the film and subsequent activism and campaigning by foreigners and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have been poorly received by the population of Taiji, and that backlash has resulted in the practice continuing.

[28] Nationalist protesters vowed to block the release of the film in Japan, and dozens equipped with loudspeakers demonstrated outside the distributor's office in central Tokyo.

[49] The Directors Guild of Japan also asked theaters not to refuse to show the film, arguing that "such moves would limit opportunities to express thoughts and beliefs, which are the core of democracy.

Afterwards, panel member Kunio Suzuki, former head of Issuikai, an Uyoku dantai (rightist) group, condemned the right-winger's threats against theaters and urged that the film be shown, saying that "Not letting people watch the movie is anti-Japanese".

The NHK (not on Close-up Gendai) concluded that the activists did so in order to capture the local fishermen making angry and wild expressions on film and in photos.

[b][59] Tetsuya Endō, an associate professor at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido who is interviewed in the film, complained that the filmmakers approached him under false pretenses.

He also said the sample of meat in the film that contained an anomalously high level of mercury (2000 ppm) was dolphin liver,[c][d] which Taiji's fishermen's union banned from being sold in 2003 at his prompting.

[63] Endo sought to have his scenes removed from the film and, when they were not, sued the Japanese rights-holder, Medallion Media, and the distributor, Unplugged, for ¥11 million for damages to his reputation.

[31][64] At the end of the film, the assistant chief of the whaling division at Japan's Fisheries Agency, Hideki Moronuki, is erroneously said to have been "fired" in 2008.

It argues that dolphin meat consumption in Japan was already in decline, and The Cove and subsequent Western activism has been poorly received by the local population and used by Japanese nationalists to garner support to continue the practice.

As the film received more and more recognition, the Oceanic Preservation Society translated their website into multiple languages to cater to interest from around the world.