RICHARD O’BARRY has worked both sides of the dolphin street—the first ten years with the dolphin-captivity industry, the past forty against it.
O’Barry graduated from the Diver’s Training Academy in 1960 as a commercial deep-sea diver and scuba instructor. He served in the U.S. Navy for five years, where he received a commendation for his underwater work. While working in the 1960s as a diver and trainer for Miami Seaquarium, O’Barry captured and trained dolphins, including Hugo, the first orca in captivity east of the Mississippi, and the five dolphins that played the role of Flipper in the popular American television show of the same name. When Kathy, the dolphin that played Flipper most often, died in O’Barry’s arms, he realized that capturing dolphins and training them to perform silly tricks was simply wrong.
From that moment, O’Barry knew what he needed to do with his life. On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, he founded the Dolphin Project, an organization dedicated to educating the public about the plight of dolphins in captivity and freeing captive dolphins without jeopardizing their well-being when the owners allow them to be released. O’Barry launched a searing campaign against the multibillion-dollar dolphin-captivity industry, informing the public about what really goes on at dolphin shows and urging people not to buy tickets to watch dolphins play the fool.
O’Barry has since rescued and released more than twenty-five captive dolphins in Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, the Bahamas, and the United States. With more than fifty years of experience with dolphins, he has shared his firsthand knowledge of the dangers of dolphin capture and training methods at lectures and conferences around the world.
In 1991, in recognition of his contribution to the protection of dolphins, O’Barry received an Environmental Achievement Award, presented by the United States Committee for the United Nations Environmental Program. In January 2007, he became a marine-mammal specialist for Earth Island Institute and director of the Save Japan Dolphins Campaign. On behalf of Earth Island Institute, O’Barry leads the international effort to stop the killing of dolphins in Japan, end the trafficking in live dolphins to theme parks and swim-with-dolphins programs, and speak out against the captivity industry.
O’Barry is featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which brought to the world’s attention the tragedy of dolphin-slaughtering practices in Taiji, Japan. He has been involved in an international effort to publicize the film and, through it, to educate people everywhere about the largest mass killing of dolphins in the world, and the efforts to stop it. In 2010, O’Barry and his son, Lincoln, made Blood Dolphin$, a television series on Animal Planet and Planet Green, about O’Barry’s efforts to protect dolphins from harm. Also in 2010, O’Barry was voted the Huffington Post’s Green Game Changer and included in O Magazine’s Power List. In 2011, he received Europe’s prestigious BAMBI Award.
The original edition of Behind the Dolphin Smile was published in 1988; a second book, To Free a Dolphin, also coauthored with Keith Coulbourn, was published in 2000. Both books are about O’Barry’s work and his dedication. O’Barry and author Hans Peter Roth’s new book, Die Bucht, about the actual cove in Japan and the making of The Cove, was published in Germany in 2010.
O’Barry is a Fellow National in the Explorers Club, a multidisciplinary society that links together scientists and explorers from all over the world. Each member is an accomplished individual with at least one fascinating story to tell.
O’Barry lives with his wife, Helene, and their daughter, Mai Li, in South Miami, Florida, and in Ribe, Denmark.
KEITH COULBOURNE is a graduate of the University of Miami at Coral Gables. He has worked as a newspaperman with the Orlando Sentinel-Star, Shreveport Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine, Tampa Tribune, and Lakeland Ledger. He resides in Miami, Florida.
SUSAN CASEY is the author of the The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean and The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks, both of which are New York Times best sellers, with The Wave named one of 2010’s Most Notable Books.
Casey won a National Magazine Award in 2008 for her Esquire feature “75,” an investigation of what aging really means, as examined through the life of one exceptional man. In 2006, she received a National Magazine Award nomination for her story “Our Oceans Are Turning to Plastic. . .Are You?” an environmental exposé on the dire impact plastic pollution in the oceans is having on planetary and human health. Her writing has appeared in Esquire, National Geographic, Fortune, Time, and Sports Illustrated, as well as the anthologies The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Sportswriting, and The Best American Magazine Writing. After spending three years reporting The Wave from Hawaii, Casey returned to Manhattan in 2009, becoming the editor in chief of O, The Oprah Magazine. Previously, she served as the development editor of Time, Inc., the publishing division of Time Warner; the editor in chief of Sports Illustrated Women; and an editor at large for magazine titles at Time, Inc. From 1994 to 1999 she was the creative director of Outside magazine, where she was part of the editorial team that developed the stories behind the best-selling books Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, as well as the movie Blue Crush. During her tenure, Outside won three consecutive, history-making National Magazine Awards for General Excellence.