“‘Flipper’ committed suicide, stop dolphin capture” ─ O’Barry

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Dolphin activist Richard O’Barry appeared today on the Democracy Now program with Amy Goodman.

To stop Dolphin kills, O’Barry said, “Don’t buy a ticket for a dolphin show.… If we stop buying tickets for silly dolphin shows, the problem will go away real quick.… “

The captured dolphin starring in the 1960s NBC television series “was a wild animal that lived in Biscayne Bay before we … dragged her kicking and screaming to the Miami Sea Aquarium and put her in a tank and gave her a stage name, Flipper. Her name was really [Kathy]. Her real name was [a whistle]. Dolphins have a signature whistle given to them by their mothers.”

Captivity kills. “The killers of dolphins are pollution, fishing nets, and captivity.”

Dolphins “are sonic creatures. They live in a world of sound. Their primary sense is sound. They’re sound-oriented. [Humans] are light-oriented, visually oriented…To place a free-ranging sonic creature in a concrete box for casual amusement is simply wrong. …”

Source and notes
“Filmmakers, Activists Try to Save Dolphins from Slaughter in Oscar-Winning Doc ‘The Cove,’” August 16, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/filmmakers_activists_try_to_save_dolphins


First recognized in the 1960s for capturing and training five dolphins used in the well-known TV series “Flipper,” Richard (Ric) O’Barry (born c. 1941) transitioned “from training dolphins in captivity to assertively combating the captivity industry.” He appears in “‘The Cove,’ a film that uses covert techniques to expose the yearly dolphin-drive hunting that goes on in Taiji, Japan.”


O’Barry says one of the “Flipper” dolphins died while in his arms a couple of days before the first Earth Day commemoration, April 22, 1970.


“Flipper was played at first by a female dolphin named Suzy, though primarily by another female, Kathy; and occasionally by other females named Patty, Scotty and Squirt. Female dolphins were chosen because they are less aggressive than males and their skins (unlike the skin of male dolphins) are usually free from scars and other disfigurations acquired in altercations with other dolphins” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipper_(1964_TV_series)].