At the rehabilitation pen, Pont da Barra , Brazil, O’Barry uses bolt croppers to open the pen to release Flipper to the wild after six weeks’ rehabilitation.

In a ‘classic’ story of poacher turned gamekeeper, O’Barry, once the world’s highest paid dolphin trainer, has dedicated the last 50 years of his life to campaigning, rehabilitating and releasing captive dolphins back to the wild.

"She swam over to me. I put my arms around her and she took a breath, looked me in the eye and never took another." With tears in his eyes American dolphin freedom campaigner Ric O'Barry today still describes the death of Kathy as if it only happened yesterday. At the time O’Barry was the world's highest paid animal trainer. But, his outrage at Kathy's death at the end of the hit 60’s ‘Flipper’ TV series led to his "conversion" and determination to end the trade and exhibition of performing dolphins for ever. “That was the turning point for me,” he says. “I realised then that dolphins don’t belong in captivity.”

For his conservation work O’Barry has been included in the UN’s prestigious Global 500 Roll of Honour.

In his most famous dolphin rehabilitation project, O’Barry directed the recovery and release of Brazil’s last captive dolphin, aptly named Flipper. For more than a decade Flipper had been kept in a tiny, filthy, seaside ‘abusement’ park in Santos, south of São Paulo. Controversially it was decided that Flipper should be airlifted back to where she had been originally captured.

Extraordinarily, Flipper came from a small Brazilian fishing village where, for more than a century, the dolphin population had helped the men to fish in a close, harmonious relationship. The fishermen knew all the dolphins by name and amazingly they told O’Barry that Flipper’s mother, Riscadeira,  was still alive and where she could be found. So, they built Flipper’s rehab’ pen in her territory.

But, would mother and son ever be reunited … ?

Flipper and O’Barry pictured towards the end of the dolphin’s rehabilitation back to the wild.

Ric O’Barry during the extremely controversial rehabilitation and release of two US Navy dolphins, Buck and Luther, classified as ‘Advanced Biological Weapon Systems’, back to the Gulf of Mexico, from where they had been captured 9 years earlier.

Buck and Luther’s new ‘passports’.

Buck and Luther enjoying their first taste of freedom during rehabilitation at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary in the Florida quays, then the largest open water facility for captive dolphins in the USA.

O’Barry and Flipper towards the end of his rehabilitation at Ponta da Barra, Brazil.