Dolphin’s Project Annual Global Beach Cleanup
On the 20th of August, we are organizing a Cleanup in support of the Dolphin Project to raise awareness about the need to end barbarian activities such as the Taiji annual slaughter of dolphins, dolphin’s captivity and the chances to rehabilitate/release dolphins from dolphinariums, marine parks and aquariums.
Get your friends and family together and devote 2 hours to a positive action that will benefit the Maltese community and the ocean environment.
DOLPHIN PROJECT is a non-profit charitable organization, dedicated to the welfare and protection of dolphins worldwide. Founded by Richard (Ric) O’Barry on Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the organization aims to educate the public about captivity and, where feasible, retire and/or release captive dolphins.
The mission of Dolphin Project is to end dolphin exploitation and slaughter, as dolphins are routinely captured, harassed, slaughtered and sold into captivity around the world – all in the name of profit. Dolphin Project works not only to halt these slaughters, but also to rehabilitate captive dolphins for retirement and/or release, investigate and advocate for economic alternatives to dolphin slaughter, and to put a permanent end to dolphin captivity.
RIC O’BARRY, A LIFE DEDICATED TO THE RESCUE OF DOLPHINS FROM CAPTIVITY
“There’s an exact moment for leaping into the lives of wild animals. You have to feel their lives first, how they fit the world around them. It’s like the beat of music. Their eyes, the sounds they make, their head, movements, their feet and their whole body, the closeness of things around them – all this and more make up the way they perceive and adjust to their world.”
― Richard O’Barry
The story of Ric O’Berry began half a century ago, he was then 30 years old. At that time he was not a “savior”, but a dolphin trainer, at the Miami Seaquarium.
Thanks to his professional skills, he was chosen to train the four dolphins who played Flipper, in the popular American television series of the 1960s. Since then, Flipper has been synonymous with dolphins, but Ric’s memories are less sympathetic, and they are linked to the death of Cathy, one of these animals, who would have committed suicide, as she “swam to the bottom of the tank and did not come back up to breathe”.
Ric had no doubts about that, and his life changed in that moment. Since that tragedy, Ric O’Barry has tirelessly fought against hunting and captivity, including, the day after the tragedy, Ric was on Bimini Island trying to free captive dolphins, an act for which he was arrested for the first time.
Thus, “on Earth Day 1970”, he founded the Dolphin Project a non-profit charitable organization, dedicated to the welfare and protection of dolphins worldwide and launched the Empty the Tanks campaign.
Over these 50 years, Ric and his team have released more than two dozen animals, and all his efforts has materialized, in the 2010 Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos.
The Cove follows Ric on a campaign to stop the killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan. A terrifying spectacle, as the dolphins are beheaded, leaving the sea red with blood. Hunting takes place every year in this fishing village, under the approval of the Japanese Government, and it is here that many of the dolphins are also captured that end up in “supposed water parks”, most of them in Asia.
“Around the world, about a thousand dolphins are held in captivity, while millions have been killed in purse seine tuna nets and drift nets. Tens of thousands of others have been “sacrificed” in the name of scientific research, some marine mammals merely to find out what they’ve been eating.”― Richard O’Barry
O’Barry estimates that there are still around 3,000 dolphins in captivity around the world, but at least he now has a Dolphin Sanctuary, built in the Bali Sea, in conjunction with Indonesian authorities, where he can take them after they are rescued.
