'The Cove' Director Gives Free DVD to Whole Town of Taiji

Environmental activists protest the annual slaugher of Japanese dolphins. (Photo: Ted Aljibe/Getty Images)

The 3,500 residents of Taiji, Japan, the tiny fishing village featured in the 2010 Academy Award-winning film, The Cove, received a surprise gift this past weekend—a free copy of The Cove on DVD, compliments of Louie Psihoyos, the film’s director.

Concerned that many townspeople had yet to see the film, Psihoyos told the Associated Press: "The people in Taiji deserve to know what millions of others around the world have learned about their town.”

As depicted in the film, Taiji’s annual dolphin drive kills between 1,500 to 2,000 dolphins each year. In “oikomi,” the Japanese word for “drive hunt,” fishermen lure dolphins into the shallows of the cove and separate out the animals deemed worthy of selling to an aquarium. The rest of the highly social marine mammals are harpooned and slaughtered, their meat sold in supermarkets.

A local group, People Concerned for the Ocean, helped deliver the free DVDs, said Psihoyos.

The film was shown last year in some Japanese theaters, but the distributor was targeted by protestors, who objected to the film as being disrespectful to Japanese culture.

“If the country does not protect the life, spirit, and pride of its people, we will have to protect them by ourselves,” said protester Shuhei Nishimura.

"I hope the people of Taiji feel a sense of relief when they see The Cove because they'll realize that it is just a handful of local environmental thugs giving a whole nation a black eye, not them," Psihoyos told the Associated Press. "To me the film is a love letter to the people of Taiji."

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Related Stories: Japanese Protestors Target 'The Cove' | Protestors Demonstrate to Block the Release of 'The Cove' in Japan

Participant Media—the parent company of TakePart.com—was responsible for the Social Action campaign for "The Cove."