Photojournalist Louis Psihoyos has been capturing images of man's interaction with nature for almost three decades. After a 17-year stint at National Geographic, Psihoyos struck out as a freelancer before co-founding the Oceanic Preservation Society, a non-profit visual media organization. The Cove, OPS's first film and Psihoyos' directorial debut, was intended as a traditional documentary about the people of Taiji, a town in the Wakayama Prefecture of Japan, and their love affair with the dolphins that populate their coastal waters.

"When I got there, a new story emerged," reveals Psihoyos. "I met with the mayor and he told me the people of Taiji considered themselves the ancestors to dolphins, and they held them in the highest respect, but then they started telling me about all these places where we weren't allowed to go and questions we couldn't ask. I started thinking that maybe they were hiding something."

Then Psihoyos met Richard O'Barry, the famous marine activist and, ironically, the man who popularized the captivity and exhibition of marine mammals with his work as a trainer for the classic TV show Flipper. Through Barry, Psihoyos learned of a natural park in Taiji that even the citizens aren't allowed into during the late months of the year, known as "the killing season," when hundreds of dolphins are herded daily into a hidden cove and either sold to amusement parks or butchered in a horrific display of brutality. Barry had come to Taiji to uncover its secrets and Psihoyos wanted to help, knowing that others have tried and found themselves repelled, threatened and stalked at every turn by angry fishermen and local officials.

"We were under 24-hour surveillance. We didn't need filmmakers to make this film; we needed a team of Navy SEALs," Psihoyos remarks. He didn't have access to SEALs, but he did know a couple of world-champion free divers, a professional daredevil, an ex-military logistics expert, a special effects wizard, and a billionaire who was willing to fund the operation.

Access to the cove is barred by steel gates, barbed wire, motion detectors and guard dogs. Most of the traditional documentary footage was shot by cinematographer Brook Aitken using a Sony PDW-F350 XDCAM HD, but these were big cameras that tended to draw attention to themselves and the operator. Covert ops would have to be executed first, under the cloak of night.

To get close enough to the fishermen without arousing suspicion, several hidden cameras were positioned in the brush just beyond the cove's rocky shores. Psihoyos called in a favor to ILM's practical effects spin-off Kerner Optical to fabricate five fake rock housings for five modified Sony HDR-SR1s that had been hot-rodded at GW Hannaway and Associates in Boulder, Colo., with 100GB hard drives and Automated Media Systems Li-77 expedition batteries for an extended 10 hours and 55 minutes of run time (over the standard 30GB, four-hour run time).

Beneath the surface water, a custom-built log-shaped housing became the home for a stock SR1, while ex-Canadian Air Force technician Simon Hutchins rigged a customized Sony HVR-A1U, known as the "bird's nest," in a nearby tree. The nest-cam was operated by a custom remote, with a joystick to pan, tilt, zoom and power down the camera.

Psihoyos and Aitken took advantage of the A1U's portable form factor and Night Shot capabilities to document their recon, but the filmmakers' major coup was the acquisition of a FLIR P640, which allowed them to scope their environment from long distances in total darkness. The FLIR wasn't set up to record video, so Psihoyos had it hot-wired for the job. As can be seen in the finished film, the high-intensity black-and-white imagery not only looks cool, it saved their skin on more than one occasion.

In the air, RC pilot and engineer James Mack piloted a remote-controlled helicopter armed with a remote-controlled gyro-stabilized A1U operated by Miles Hubley. A rather conspicuous dirigible was designed for similar aerial work. Not surprisingly, the massive whale-shaped balloon was confiscated almost the moment it arrived at the location in Taiji.

With a little ingenuity and a lot of guts, Psihoyos and his team managed to achieve a three-dimensional perspective of the slaughter, capturing the grisly event from land, sea and air. In the end, he had to cut much of the footage in order to achieve a PG-13 rating. The result is arguably more effective. "It was a technique that Hitchcock used; You only need to see the effects of the slaughter," he remarks. "The Cove is meant to leave indelible images on your retinas."