One Man’s Epiphany: THE MISSION OF RIC O’BARRY

BY MARY HOLMES AND PATRICIA DENYS

What was the moment of the epiphany? When Kathy, one of the primary dolphins used in the series, “Flipper,” who O’Barry trained, died in his arms; he considered her death a suicide. His new path began. Ric O’Barry is the founder and director of the Dolphin Project, and former dolphin trainer, of the “Flipper” television series. According to the Dolphin Project website, “Over the past 52 years, Ric O’Barry has rescued and rehabilitated dolphins in many countries around the world, including Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, South Korea, the Bahamas Islands and the United States. He is a leading voice in the fight to end brutal dolphin hunts in Japan, Solomon Islands, Faroe Islands, Indonesia and wherever else they occur.”

First, we discussed his days at Miami Seaquarium and his job training “Flipper,” for the movies and television series. He started working for the Seaquarium, not because of an interest working with dolphins, but because of his diving expertise.

“I’d been diving all over the Mediterranean and Caribbean in the Navy for five years. I wanted to continue diving. I got a job there. My first day on the job, I was assigned as a diver to the capture boat. We were capturing dolphins and supplying other places with dolphins.

“You have to understand, that this was not a multi-billiondollar industry that it is today. Back in the very early 60s before the ‘Flipper’ TV series, there were only two dolphinaria in the world at that time; the Miami Seaquarium opened up on Christmas Day, 1955. I was there. I went there with my family. I was on a 14-day leave from the Navy, I just finished boot camp, and at Christmas we went there with the family. I remember standing in front of the main tank, which had many big windows surrounding it. I looked through the windows and I never saw a sight like that before in my life, I was totally mesmerized. It was just blue under water. We’re underwater and there was a grouper, there were swordfish, there were many dolphins flying around and sharks, different kinds of fish. It was surreal, all of this. It was the first time I could actually see this underwater looking through a glass because these places did not exist. I had my nose pressed up to the glass. Here comes a guy walking across the bottom of the tank with a helmet and the canvas suit, it’s called the Miller-Dunn helmet, and a canvas shallow water diving suit. There were bubbles streaming to the surface and the light was going through the water and music was playing in the background. I said, when I get out of the Navy, I’m going to come back and get that guy’s job. That’s what I want to do.”

O’Barry did indeed get a job at the Seaquarium, and started out working on the capture boat his first day on the job. They went out into Biscayne Bay, and spread a net. O’Barry’s job was to go along the net and untangle any dead dolphins who got tangled in the net. “My first experience with seeing a dolphin up close and personal is retrieving their bodies from the net that we put out.” Many of the dolphins they captured went to other aquariums, including the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Five dolphins from Biscayne Bay became the “Flipper” dolphins.

O’Barry was promoted; he became “the guy with the helmet walking around feeding all the fish, that’s what I enjoyed doing.” His next promotion would be to that of dolphin trainer, working on the “Flipper” television series. MGM and NBC were producing it; the agreement was that Miami Seaquarium would loan them a dolphin trainer and the dolphins. “I was chosen, although I didn’t know how to train dolphins. I was chosen because dolphins up to that point historically were never trained underwater. They were trained to do tricks on the surface of the water. People would come in, they would pay $5, they would sit in the bleachers, and watch dolphins doing all of these silly tricks on the surface of the water. We were going to train them underwater because we were filming underwater; that had never been done before. I was loaned out. And so were the dolphins to MGM and NBC.” He continued, “I went from being a guy who didn’t know anything about training dolphins to the highest paid dolphin trainer in the world.

“I would get a script in the mail from Hollywood, and then nobody would be there except me at Seaquarium representing the film company. My job was to train them to do the things that were in the script. I had to figure that out myself. How did you do that? The script was saying Flipper goes over to the docks, takes the gun off the dock and brings it down to the kids who are by the submarine. I would have to figure out how to do that. I actually got ulcers because I was getting paid a whole lot of money; I was the highest paid animal trader of the world and I didn’t know what I was doing.”

The “home” where “Flipper’s” TV family lived was actually O’Barry’s office. He lived in that house for seven years. When the series wrapped, all the props went into storage, as did the dolphins, back to Seaquarium. “I left. I was at that point rich and famous. I just dropped out. I knew they didn’t belong in captivity. I knew everything I know now, but I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t know what to do. Then one day I got a call from the manager, Burton Clark. He said ‘Kathy, (that’s the one who actually played “Flipper”), is not doing well. You better come out here.’ I rode my bicycle; I lived in Coconut Grove about seven miles from the Seaquarium. I went to the tank where Kathy was, and she was lying on the surface of the water, blisters, big blisters on her back from being in the sun. There was no shade. This was a steel small tank. She swam into my arms. I was standing at the edge of the tank, and I could put my arms in the water. She came over and laid her body in my arms, and looked me straight in the eye, took a breath, looked me in the eye, and I waited and I waited. She never exhaled. I let her go and she sank to the bottom on her stomach. I jumped into the water, my clothes on, and brought her to the surface and put my thumb in her blowhole to open up the passageway, and got my knee against her lungs and tried to get artificial respiration but it was too late. She was gone.”

The annual slaughter of the dolphins in Taiji, Japan, is a direct result of the popularity of the “Flipper” television series. O’Barry maintains that is when dolphinaria around the globe proliferated. Japan is approximately 94% the size of California. According to O’Barry, Japan currently has over fifty dolphinaria. California has two. The promoters/organizers of the Taiji dolphin massacre maintain the practice is cultural; the residents of Taiji eat the dolphin meat.

Japan has a population of approximately 126 million, and few Japanese other than those in Taiji eat dolphin meat. In fact, it appears most Japanese are unaware of the practice. Realistically speaking, the levels of mercury in dolphin meat should be enough to preclude consumption by anyone.

According to an article in The Guardian last month, “Tests conducted by AFD (Action for Dolphins, an Australian group) in 2020 and 2021 revealed mercury levels in dolphin meat between 12 and 25 times the regulatory limit.”

According to O’Barry, “So the economic underpinning of that dolphin slaughter is capture. They get about $5 for a dead dolphin for the meat in a supermarket. For a live show dolphin they will get as much as $200,000.”

What about the effects on the dolphins forced to live and perform in captivity? O’Barry does nothing to minimize the effects. “Well, it destroys their life. That’s what it does to them. Captivity is more stressful for dolphins than any other animal in the zoo, by far.

“If you were to go to the zoo, LA Zoo, any zoo, and take a look at the snake exhibit, reptiles, a coldblooded snake with a very small brain is given more consideration than the best facility holding dolphins in captivity. If you look at the snake exhibit, you’ll notice that the snake has at least something natural in the environment that they’re displayed in at the zoo. For example, they have some trees and grass, and they have rocks they can hide under from the public.

“If you go over to the dolphin exhibit, put your head under water with a face mask on, you’ll see there is nothing inside; it’s just a bare concrete box, round box. The only thing inside of that tank is the drain on the bottom, and sometimes they’ll actually go down and look at the drain, watch the water going down the drain because there’s nothing else to look at. It’s the stress of captivity that kills them; captivity kills. That’s why they have such a high mortality rate.”

He elaborated, “These are free ranging, large brain, larger brain than a human, in a concrete box with nothing to do all day, except that stupid show, repeated over and over and over, the same exact show. It’s actually very boring for even the trainers; trainers are bored to death, doing the same repetitive thing seven days a week, three, four times a day, but it’s worse for the dolphins having to repeat the same stupid tricks. If they don’t do it, they don’t get fed. Every dolphin in captivity is subjected to food deprivation. It’s not like you’re a dog; a dog will do something for you for a pat on the head. Dolphins don’t even look at you when they’re doing this stuff. They’re looking at the bucket of fish, waiting for your hand to go in the bucket and feed them. Everything they do is for food reward. If you couldn’t control them with their food, you would have no show. That’s not true for dogs and other animals. It’s more stressful for them in captivity than other animals; they simply do not belong in captivity. But the problem is the profits from it, that’s why it’s allowed.”

These are not the only issues captive dolphins face. Dolphins are members of the Cetacea order, which includes marine mammals such as themselves, whales, and porpoises. No matter the size, they have very similar behaviors. All are sound-oriented, and navigate by means of echolocation. “When you capture them and put them into a concrete tank, you’re taking away from them the two most important aspects of their life - the world of sound and their family. First thing you do is separate them, take them away from their family and you put them in - these are animals that in the wild they have no walls. It may be the only animal in the world that has no walls. All of a sudden they have walls; they don’t even know what that is. That’s why they don’t jump over a net.

“When you put the net in the water, they’re afraid of it. It’s alien to them. They never saw anything like this before. They huddle together in a circle. You’ll see them when you watch the movie ‘The Cove’; sometimes they commit suicide. That’s what “Flipper” did, committed suicide in my arms. I use that word with some trepidation; that sounds anthropomorphic. I know, but I don’t know of another word in the English language that describes what is indeed self-induced asphyxiation. Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like you and I are. Every breath they take is a conscious effort. May

“ Training Hugo, the first orca in captivity East of the Mississippi River, 1969. Hugo was eating 100 pounds of fish a day, and the bigger he got, the smaller his little whale bowl seemed.”

“ In February, 1968 a young male orca, later named Hugo was caught in Vaughn Bay, near Puget Sound, Washington. A female whale was caught alongside him, and shipped to the New York Aquarium in Coney Island where she died a mere seven months later from a respiratory infection. Hugo, also destined for the East coast, was flown to the Miami Seaquarium, in Miami Florida. Here, he was held in a tiny pool, now utilized for manatee displays. Although plans were made for the construction of a larger tank, he remained in this enclosure for two full years – an unforgivable period of time which must have felt entirely claustrophobic and alien to this mammal who had only ever known a life of freedom in the sea. In August, 1970 in Penn Cove, Whidbey Island, Washington, a particularly violent capture of orcas took place, where five whales drowned, including four babies. Lolita (first called Tokitae) was caught during this capture, and shipped to the Seaquarium, displayed in the newly-constructed “Whale Bowl.” Hugo was eventually moved into the tank alongside Lolita, where they performed their daily routines. For 10 years, the two orcas shared the Seaquarium’s spotlight. Despite mating, no offspring was produced. But unlike Seaquarium’s glossy promotion of the happy duo, it was clear Hugo hadn’t adjusted well to life in captivity. It was commonly reported that Hugo would regularly and intentionally bash his head against the walls of the tank, specifically, against the viewing windows. Once, he broke a nine-inch hole in the plastic, nearly severing the tip of his rostrum. This flap of skin later had to be surgically re-attached. With his dorsal fin flopped over and a significant injury to the sensitive skin of his rostrum, it would have been a hard sell to claim Hugo was adapting well to his confines at the Seaquarium. On March 4, 1980, after 12 years of performances and repeated brutal, self-inflicted damage to his head, Hugo died of a brain aneurysm. After his death, no plaque or memorial of any kind was erected. Instead, any and all references to Hugo ended when a crane dumped his remains into the Miami-Dade landfill. A dolphin doesn’t belong in landfill.”

[previous page, top] “ In 2011 Dolphin Project, in partnership with our local partners, the Central Jakarta Forestry Department and the Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) constructed the world’s first permanent facility dedicated to the rehabilitation and release of dolphins in Kemujan, Karimun Jawa. Named Camp Lumba Lumba Readaptation and Release Center (lumba being the Indonesian word for dolphin), the rehabilitation center addresses the need for effective enforcement mechanisms of a law banning wild dolphin captures in Indonesia. Formerly captive dolphins rehabilitating at the Uma Lumba Rehabilitation, Release and Retirement Center who are deemed releasable will be taken here and prepared and returned into their home range. Camp Lumba Lumba’s location was selected based on its close proximity to the captured dolphins’ original habitat, as most captured dolphins came from the Karimun Jawa region. Resident pods still flourish in this area, making it an ideal location for readaptation.”

[previous page, bottom]“ The Uma Lumba Rehabilitation, Release and Retirement Center in Banyuwedang Bay, West Bali, Indonesia is the first and only permanent dolphin rehabilitation, release and retirement facility for formerly performing dolphins. In September 2019, BKSDA Bali Forestry Department and the Ministry of Forestry initiated the idea. Working with local partners Jakarta Animal Aid Network to supply the manpower and Dolphin Project to provide the financial support and supervision, the Umah Lumba Center was built. (“Umah Lumba” means “dolphin house” in Balinese.) The facility is designed to stabilize recently confiscated dolphins from captive facilities, or stranded or injured dolphins, return them back to health and to assess whether they are candidates for readaptation and release. For dolphins deemed releasable, they will be taken to Camp Lumba Lumba Readaptation and Release Center in Karimun Jawa, the world’s first permanent facility dedicated to the rehabilitation and release of dolphins. The mammals will then be prepared for return into their home range. The location was specifically chosen because the majority of dolphins were captured from the Karimunjawa National Park, and releasing them here would offer a good chance for the mammals to reunite with their family pods. For dolphins deemed unreleasable, they can retire at the Umah Lumba Center in a safe and healing sea pen, and live out the rest of their lives in peace and dignity. Rescued dolphins will receive 24/7 round-the-clock care. We have a full-time staff veterinarian, security guards and caregivers. The center is a true rehabilitation, release and retirement facility, where our team is committed to making the dolphins’ lives as natural and independent as possible. In March 2020, Dolphin Project, in anticipation of the arrival of additional confiscated dolphins (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) tripled the size of our facility. As the world’s first permanent dolphin rehabilitation, release and retirement facility in the world, the Umah Lumba Center must be a model of success. Ideally, it will act as a prototype for others to be built globally, as demand for captive dolphins wane.” be the only animal in the world like that - every breath is a conscious effort. They can end their lives whenever they want to if it becomes too stressful, by simply not taking the next breath. I have seen that over and over again at the cove in Japan, where they’re driven into the killing cove.”

O’Barry has been working with dolphins for the last 52 years. He puts it succinctly, “Well, the first 10 years I captured them and trained them. The last 50 years. I’ve been doing the exact opposite - untraining them and putting the back where we got them from.” His organization has created a dolphin sanctuary in Bali. “In Indonesia, Bali, we’ve created a sanctuary, a forever sanctuary that’s for dolphins that cannot be released back into the wild. And we just released three of them. We’ve talked about the problem. The solution is stop capturing dolphins immediately. Number two, those that can be released back in the wild should be rehabilitated and released. Not all the dolphins can be; a lot of them, especially in Europe, they were born in captivity and we don’t know if they can be released back in the wild. But that’s what we should be doing. That’s what we are doing.”

O’Barry has created a Protocol for Releasing Captive Dolphins. In summary, “Basically, it’s to get them out of the tank and into natural seawater where they can once again experience the natural rhythms of the sea, the tide, the current, the sky.”

In Europe, he’s been working to shut down European dolphinaria. “I mean, when in Europe, most of it’s cold in Europe; I’ve been living in Denmark in the last six years. I’ve been to all the dolphinaria in Europe. In Europe, in the wintertime, it’s cold. Dolphins are in buildings, these are dolphins, the first generation of dolphins to come to Europe. I probably participated in their capture. They either came from Florida or Cuba. So they are used to warm water and in Europe they’re in cold water, and I believe they suffer greatly, but you don’t know that, nobody knows that except me, I’m the only one walking around these places and I’m freezing too. I’m also from the tropics.” He remarked, the dolphins “smile” in spite of the cold. “I know the dolphins are [cold], but their smile, the dolphin smile is nature’s greatest deception. It creates the illusion they’re always happy. They could be freezing to death, and they can still be smiling at you. This entire multi-billiondollar industry is based on that optical illusion that they’re always smiling. They’re always happy.

“A good example of that is one of the places we closed. We closed many of these places in Europe. But the first one we closed was the Hagenbeck Zoo in Germany. We protested every weekend for years until it finally shut down. But the thing that really sealed the deal was —during one of the shows one of the dolphins — his name was Sinbad, he was like the star performer, jumped up on the stage, like they do, on his stomach. You know, they’ll lie there with their mouths open, and he had a heart attack and died during the show, at the end of the show. But the audience; we videotaped this, the audience is applauding. They’re looking at him lying on the stage smiling. They’re applauding a dead dolphin. They think it’s a happy smiling dolphin. It’s a key that entire industry is built around that phony smile. Again, the dolphin smile is nature’s greatest deception. That’s what gets them. That’s why they’re in captivity.”

In O’Barry’s perfect world, there would be no dolphinaria. “I don’t know if you noticed, but the seas are dying and we’re going to have more things. We do need rescue centers. We need to rehabilitate them and put them back in the ocean if they can be. And if they can’t be, we need to put them into a sanctuary like the one we have in Bali. It’s a floating sea pen; it’s 60 feet deep. It’s the biggest sea pen in the world and there’s no gate. They can come and go if they want to. An open-door policy, and if they can’t find food, they can come back. If they want to stay out, they can stay out. So that’s the solution, stop capturing dolphins, those that can be released into the wild should be; those that can’t need to go into a sanctuary, not a tank. We want to empty the tanks.”

Asked if he had anything else to share with our readers, he responded, “Not for your magazine because I’m preaching to the converted. I already know that there’s nobody reading your magazine going to buy a ticket for a dolphin show. Normally I would answer that question if I was talking to CNN or BBC or the like. The most important thing is - don’t buy a ticket for a dolphin show. That’s our message. It’s based on supply and demand like any other product. If we stop buying tickets, the problem will go away. But there’s no point telling your readers that because they’re already there. Your readers can tell their friends and relatives - don’t buy a ticket for a dolphin show, but they’re already there.”

For information, or to support, go to: dolphinproject.com