"The Cove" Wins Best Documentary

Dolphins get a guerrilla-style shout-out at the Oscars

While onstage during the Academy Awards last night, Ric O'Barry, the dolphin advocate behind the Best Documentary film "The Cove," did something upon which the Academy frowns: He inserted a political message during the proceedings.

Before getting off the stage, he held up a sign that said "TEXT DOLPHIN to 44144."

The movie, filmed in guerrilla style, exposes the horrific annual mass slaughter of approximately 20,000 dolphins in the coastal village of Taiji, Japan. Their meat is then mislabeled as whale meat and fed to Japanese schoolchildren.

Dolphins have long been considered to be among the smartest animals. Recent studies suggest that dolphins' cognitive capacity is second only to humans.

Yet we have treated them badly, with approximately 300,000 cetaceans killed by hunting and other human activity each year.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition to end the Taiji dolphin slaughter
  
• Sign up to receive updates from "The Cove" dolphin campaign
  
• Watch the trailer for "The Cove" and support the Save the Dolphins campaign
• Sign an Ocean Project petition to end Japan's dolphin slaughter
• Adopt a dolphin from the World Wildlife Fund
• Take the Food & Water Watch Anti-Triclosan Pledge to stop the exposure of the chemical to dolphins
  
• Download a BeyondPesticides.org factsheet listing products containing triclosan to stop buying products that contain this chemical harmful to dolphins
  

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• First Case of Dolphin Tool Use Documented (December 22, 2008)
• New Film Exposes Japan's Dolphin Slaughter (January 18, 2009)
• Singapore's Dolphin Deal with the Solomons (December 8, 2008)
• Bloody Waters in the Faroe Islands (February 19, 2009)
• Massive Dolphin Slaughter in Japan (June 23, 2008)
• From Dirty Hands to Dolphin Blood (July 28, 2009)