An Amazing Human

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Ric O'Barry (Richard Barry O'Feldman)

This guy is the brain behind the most notorious dolphin ever trained, Flipper. He was known as the best dolphin trainer in existence  until his dolphin committed suicide right before his eyes. O'Barry had gone out to train the captive dolphin (Kathy- one of Flipper's actors) one day and found her in his pool with near black skin from sunburn. The dolphin looked her trainer in the eyes, took a breath and sunk to the bottom of the pool. O'Barry jumped in trying to save her but didn't succeed.

He'd felt so bad about it that he went around releasing any captive dolphins he could and was arrested the next day for doing so.

Ric O'Barry's co-written three books and released captive dolphins in Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, The Bahamas and around the U.S.

He puts his life at risk most days to save the dolphin population, as shown in "The Cove", and doesn't think twice about it. Now that he's got the word out about cruel captivity, celebrities are starting to get involved as well. This is a wee clip a guy called David Phillips made to promote the Dolphin campaign-http://vimeo.com/17129452#

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After releasing "The Cove", Ric O'Barry carried on with his movement and is still filming the little bay in Taiji, Japan for his tv series, Blood Dolphin$. His son Lincoln O'Barry is now involved and they work as a dedicated team in the series to stop the Taiji dry fisheries and to convince marine parks that dolphin captivity isn't very cool and they should probably get a real job about now.