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For the past few months, six dolphins and six sea turtles have been held in a small pen off Haiti's coast. Capturing dolphins in Haiti is illegal unless one has a special permit. But in the last days of the Jean-Bertrand Aristide regime, a secretive Haitian-Spanish company got permission to round up ten for "touristic and educational" purposes. Because the lawyer for the company was the man responsible dumping tons of toxic trash from Philadelphia, PA, onto Haiti's shores two decades ago, and because two of eight dolphins soon
died, animal protection activists grew concerned and alerted international experts. Among them was Ric O'Barry, former trainer for the dolphins on the famous "Flipper" television series and a member of the French animal protection organization One Voice who responded to the crisis immediatly.
O'Barry visited the shallow pen and, calling the capture "war profiteering" because business people took advantage of Haiti's chaos to get their permit, said the dolphins' lives were in danger and that he believed the dolphins were captured not to create an educational park, as local businessmen claimed, but so they could be sold. A trained dolphin is worth $35,000 to $100,000, he said. O'Barry urged Secretary of State Yves-Andre Wainwright to order the dolphins and turtles released and on June 3, with help from the US and Haitian Coast Guard, they were set free by the One Voice Dolphin Rescue Team.
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