One man’s mission to stop the killing and capture of dolphins.
A dolphin is one of the most beautiful creatures on this planet.
I was going to write a very long Post setting out the reasons why everyone who cares for these creatures needs to get involved. But, in the end, a few links and extracts achieve that much more effectively than several hundred words from me.
The trigger to publish this Post came from a recent article in The Independent, a British Newspaper. The article is called, Dying to make us happy, and is a tough read. But read it you must.
It speaks of the work being done by Ric O’Barry who has spent nearly 40 years in trying to combat the extreme cruelty metered out to dolphins. Here’s an extract about O’Barry from Wikipedia:
After leaving the Navy, O’Barry began training dolphins in the 1960s with the Miami Seaquarium.[1] It was
while working with the Miami Seaquarium that O’Barry was hired to work on the television series Flipper. Though O’Barry admits he readily noticed the remarkable intelligence of the mammals he was working with, he also attests to ignoring this factor when weighing it against the large profit he was making from the show. In his own words,”I was young, I had a glamorous job, I was driving a Porsche and it was easy to do.”
When one of the five Flipper(s), a female Bottlenose Dolphin named Kathy died, O’Barry could no longer deny the severity and potentially fatal consequences of the captivity industry he had helped to establish. O’Barry maintains that Kathy died from a form of suicide. He supports this claim with the widely acknowledged fact that all cetaceans are voluntary air-breathers and all dolphins are of the order Cetacea. Unlike humans, and many other land-dwelling mammals, dolphins have the ability to choose when they take a breath, or consequently when they do not. According to O’Barry, after weeks of showing signs of depression Kathy swam into his arms, opened her blowhole to take a breath and then never took another.
Anyway, if you are motivated to learn more then go to the Dolphin Project and Save Japan Dolphins websites. Or sign the Petition hosted on Facebook. Or watch the film, The Cove. And spread the word. But do something, please.
By Paul Handover
Learning from Dogs 
I was once lucky enough to swim with dolphins in the wild. They were playing in the wake of our boat. We stopped and hopped into the water with snorkels. The older dolphins took the youngest ones out of our ranch, but the young dolphins stayed to play. They “spoke” as they do, swam toward and away and over again, they ran their bodies under the tip of my fins — either as a game or to get a good back scratch, or both! The intelligence in their eyes was apparent, their social organization was evident, their thinking and decision-making was palpable.
Count me in, Paul.
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