South Miami resident Richard O'Barry used to train dolphins. In fact, he trained the most famous dolphins of all -- those who played Flipper -- and says he captured more than 100 dolphins himself in Biscayne Bay while working for Miami Seaquarium.
He has spent the last 40 years of his life campaigning against the practice -- ever since Earth Day in 1970, shortly after a female Flipper actor died in his arms.
Fresh from starring in last year's Oscar-winning anti-Dolphin fishing documentary The Cove -- which makes its cable premier on Animal Planet Sunday night -- O'Barry is chronicaling his continued efforts in his very own Animal Planet mini-series.
Blood Dolphin$ premiered Friday night, though it replays again this Friday before the second episode on September 10.
His mission, O'Barry says, is to put himself out of business by ending the dolphin captivity industry.
"I think the public will think twice about buying a ticket to a dolphin show after they've seen ours."
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It's a tall order, but The Cove gave his cause a serious boost -- it sent one and a half million people from 155 countries to the website of his employer, environmental group Earth Island -- and O'Barry now travels with his son, filmmaker Lincoln O'Barry, who helps him get the word out.
"My day job with Earth Island is about rescuing dolphins and getting them out of harm's way. So I'm just doing my day job," he says. "But it's wonderful working with my son...What he's doing is more effective than what I was doing. I'm walking around with a protest sign and reaching a few people; he's walking around with a camera reaching a few million people.
"Why didn't I think of that?" he asked in an Animal Planet interview, laughing.
Blood Dolphin$ picks up right where The Cove left off: in the small Japanese town of Taiji, where fishermen corral, capture, and slaughter thousands of dolphins each year to send into captivity or sell for pet food, human consumption, and fertilizer.
The pair will travel to the Solomon Islands in later episodes, with three more currently being planned. The elder O'Barry says the exposure helps "create a lot of activists."
"That's the revolutionary thing that's happened. And I think you're going to see more of this when Blood Dolphins airs on Animal Planet. People want to get involved. They want to do something."
So far, people have also wanted to do something for Richard O'Barry. The South Miami commission just awarded him a key to the city for his accomplishments, and recently passed a motion to co-name a four-block stretch of Southwest 74th Street "Richard O'Barry Drive."
