ClarabelleCow
Where did my tag go? Oh fairy, can you help me?
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2002
- Messages
- 2,437
I know I won't make any friends stating this, but on some of the islands, there are several groups trying to ban these places. I personally did the dolphin encounter while in Nassau or Freeport several years ago, I really didn't think much of it, because they could come and go, or that's how I understood it!!! Here is some interesting information regarding what's been going on. I'm not trying to make anyone feel funny about these Dolphin Encounters, just a heads up as to what is going on behind the scenes to stop it.
The Daily Observer,Wednesday February 25,2004
ANTIGUA WEST INDIES
Page 9
ABITPC Scores Victory In Dolphin Salvo; Pressing On For More
By Joanne C.Hillhouse
The decision to rescind permission given for the capture of 12 dolphins a year in Antigua & Barbuda s waters,previously
reported in The DailyOBSERVER,has been confirmed.The Antigua & Barbuda Independent Tourism Promotion Corporation
(ABITPC)is in receipt of said decision.It reads:"Cabinet at a meeting held on Wednesday 11th February 2004 reconsidered
its decision of 20th December 2000 and decided as follows: That the permission granted to Mr.John Mezzanotte to capture
twelve (12)dolphins annually from Antigua waters is hereby revoked;That any importation or exportation of dolphins into or
from Antigua and Barbuda be in strict compliance with all international obligations of Antigua and Barbuda." This
communication is dated February 23, 2004 and is signed by the Cabinet Secretary Lounel Stevens and copied to the
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries Winston Burleigh. Though the environmental
lobby has hailed this as a victory for dolphins,they ve indicated
Continued on page 10
ABITPC is contending that the dolphins in captivity for the swim with
programme at Dolphin Fantaseas in Antigua should be free like this
duo pictured here. (photo of free dolphins)
From page 9
that it does not necessarily mean that the case brought by ABITPC against govern-
ment and Dolphin Fantaseas will simply go away.They argue that there is still the matter of the dolphins already in captivity,
as part of Dolphin Fantaseas Swim with the Dolphins programme,,to consider. News of the groundbreaking case broke
late last year,after a letter sent by ABITPC to Prime Minister Lester Bird failed to provoke any action.
They argued,at that time,that Antigua was in violation of several treaties and believe that their action forced the
government s hand.
"Before we actually took legal action,we wrote a letter to the prime minister demanding that the permission be rescinded," said
ABITPC spokesperson Martha Watkins-Gilkes, speaking to this publication on Tuesday,February 24, "not even an
acknowledgement.So,when that was not forthcoming,we then pursued legal action.And I think that now that we have
pointed out so clearly in the press all the international treaties that Antigua is in violation of with this protect,that they
obviously know that they re going to lose the case."
That said though, Watkins-Gilkes said she is surprised at this early victory. "I thought that we
would have to go to court, and,in fact,we may still go with some legal action," she said."I m waiting to hear
from our lawyer on that. "The importation of the dolphins currently in captivity is,she indicated,a violation of the
Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES)."We do wish to pursue the fact that they
were brought in illegally in violation with that CITES agreement," Watkins--Gilkes said."(That issue)is not in
here (the Cabinet decision) at all,the issue of the dolphins that have been imported in violation of
CITES."
But,with that battle still to be fought,ABITPC is still in a celebratory mood
from all indications. Apress release quoted Watkins-Gilkes as saying,"ABITPC is delighted that this long,drawn-out
debate,which has been very time consuming,mentally and financially draining,has come to a close and that justice has
trumpeted. We are pleased that the environment of Antigua & Barbuda will not be compromised by the removal of
our wild dolphins.We feel, and I have stated from the start of this saga,that the government was sold a dirty and misleading
"bill of goods " from foreigners who came to our island and want to exploit our marine resources for their own per-
sonal financial gain with very little in it for Antigua & Barbuda. "In a public debate held with the managing
director Arthur Bud Krames,before the project opened,he stated they would employ over 20
Antiguans.I would like to ask how many Antiguans are employed some two years later."
The release concluded:"It is hoped that this case will have a positive impact throughout the
Caribbean islands,in that the governments of these islands will be forced to act responsibly to the citizens
of their respective country in the upholding of any international environmental treaty they are party to."
More on the topic
.S. probes Cuban dolphin deals
Purchases of sea creatures could have violated the embargo
By Charles D. Sherman/ csherman@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2002 in The Miami Herald
MEADS BAY, Anguilla -- The U.S. Treasury office that enforces the trade embargo on Cuba is investigating whether Americans have bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dolphins from the Cuban government, a main supplier of the animals for proliferating tourist attractions in the Caribbean.
''There is an open investigation,'' said Robert Fernández, special agent in charge at U.S. Customs in Puerto Rico. "If there's a U.S. citizen, U.S. resident or U.S. entity involved, it would be a violation.''
Animal rights activists who closely follow the investigation say U.S. agents are tightly focused on two dolphin parks set up by Americans on Anguilla and Antigua, high-end resorts in the Leeward Islands east of Puerto Rico.
From Anguilla with its lavish $1,000-a-night hotel rooms to the bargain resorts on the Gulf coast of Mexico, the Caribbean now has more than 30 dolphin parks, opened mostly since 1990. Customers who pay between $100 and $150 for a 30-minute session can swim with, touch and feed the creatures.
The probe, launched by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, has inserted U.S. agents into a raging animal rights battle involving a colorful cast that includes Robin Leach, host of television's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; Che Guevara's 38-year-old daughter, Celia, the chief marine mammal veterinarian at Cuba's National Aquarium; Ric O'Barry, a Miami resident and former Flipper trainer at Miami's Seaquarium who has turned savior; and Gwen McKenna, a mild-sounding Toronto housewife, who with vast archives on dolphin exploitation ranks as one of the world's fiercest dolphin defenders.
While U.S law permits the capture of dolphins, a voluntary moratorium has taken hold in American waters since 1990, chiefly as a result of pressure brought by rights activists. When applications are made for the federal permits required to catch the animals, dolphin defenders rush to create negative publicity.
In the meantime, Cuba's Ministry of Science and Technology and its National Aquarium in Havana, where Guevara's daughter works, have captured a lucrative market for the animals, not only in the Caribbean but also in Europe. The Science Ministry licenses dolphin exports and voluntarily submits data to a U.N. agency responsible for compiling information on world trade in animals.
The official figures reported by Havana show steady dolphin sales -- 82 in the last five years -- making Cuba the world's leading exporter. Worldwide, there are 1,000 dolphins in captivity.
On the international market, dolphins cost between $40,000 and $70,000 for ''green,'' or newly captured, animals.
Animal rights activists say federal investigators have targeted a South African-born physician, Graham Simpson, who has dual U.S. and British citizenship. He and his wife, Pam Pike, also an American, started the Anguilla and Antigua operations, run now by Dolphin Fantaseas Ltd., a company based in Bermuda. Corporate filings on Anguilla suggest that other Americans may have invested to help Simpson in initial stages.
'THEY ARE THE ENEMY'
Robin Leach, who has had a home on Antigua since 1990, is lending his media heft to the activists' cause. From Las Vegas, where he lives part time, the television personality is bald in his description of the Simpsons: "They are the enemy.''
Railing against the couple, Leach says: "It's totally immoral. Dolphins don't perform unless they are starved.''
When Dolphin Fantaseas, originally called Dolphin Lagoon, was preparing to open its first site on Anguilla last spring, local news reports described the arrival from Cuba of six dolphins, packed in ice, on a Russian charter flight. Out of water, dolphins will overheat.
The animals were installed in a large tank on a stunning promontory at Meads Bay on the northwest coast of Anguilla. Looking much like an oversize swimming pool, the tank is a few steps from a comfortable beige-colored bungalow where the Simpsons live along with an elderly black Labrador, a pure white macaw and a large library of books on spirituality.
Offering customers what are called educational swim encounters, Dolphin Fantaseas charges $105 for a half-hour session. Tourists in life vests enter the 17-foot-deep pool to touch and feed the powerful animals, and to listen underwater to their ethereal creaking noises. The feel of a dolphin is akin to stroking a shelled hard-boiled egg.
DOMINICAN BROKER INVOLVED
To obtain the animals, Simpson says, he signed a contract with a broker in the Dominican Republic. He says the broker never told him Cuba was the supplier until just before delivery, adding that even then he gave no thought to possible violations of U.S. law.
''I thought of myself as a British citizen living for the last three years in Anguilla, which has no law against buying from Cuba. It really didn't occur to me this might be a problem.'' Simpson says he has traveled to Cuba on his British passport.
A boyish-looking man of 51 with long, floppy gray hair, Simpson is an imposing figure, six feet three inches tall and more than 200 pounds, looking much like the rugby player he was when growing up in South Africa in the 1960s.
Before coming to Anguilla, he practiced medicine in Reno, Nev., where for years he combined mainstream and alternative therapies to promote a holistic approach to physical and spiritual well-being.
Dolphin Fantaseas' slogan is ''Experience the dream.'' But the Simpsons recount nightmares in dealing with animal rights groups, which they say have hounded them with mass letter-writing campaigns to the governments on Anguilla and Antigua, with threats of a tourism boycott against Anguilla, and with vicious attacks on their personal lives.
Simpson wrote a long, anguished letter to the local press, decrying his critics. Summing up, he said: "The usual activist procedure is to try to scare people . . . by threatening a tourism boycott. I am very upset that the dolphin activists don't focus on the issues, but rather try to personally smear people in the hope of discrediting a fine dolphin swim project.''
ANIMAL RIGHTS ISSUES
McKenna and O'Barry, who is a consultant for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, have led the charge against the Simpsons. They say the issues are the violent capture methods used on highly intelligent, free-ranging creatures that should not be taken from their pods, or families, to live out lives in barren tanks or confined sea enclosures. ''Dolphins have a brain a third larger than ours,'' O'Barry says.
McKenna, who fights on behalf of no other animal, admits that when it comes to dolphins, ''I am ruthless.'' In trying to stop the Simpsons, she appealed for an international tourism boycott of Anguilla, and she raised money to send O'Barry there in December 2000 to speak publicly on the issue.
It backfired. O'Barry was shouted down by islanders enraged that activists might try to damage a main source of their livelihood. O'Barry says he never supports boycotts, and McKenna now regards the effort as a tactical mistake.
At his South Miami home, O'Barry calls Dolphin Fantaseas ''the most dangerous operation I have ever seen around the world.'' He fears that Simpson and his partners eventually intend to sell dolphins, pointing to a recent agreement between Dolphin Fantaseas and the Antigua government of Prime Minister Lester Bird, which gives the company the right to capture 12 dolphins a year.
Indeed, Simpson and his partners have recently created another company, Dolphin Leasing Inc. But Simpson and other company executives reject the notion, saying that no captures have taken place in Antigua so far, and that if they do, the animals would be used only in Dolphin Fantaseas attractions.
In trying to cut down sales, O'Barry says, he went to Cuba in 1997 to seek the aid of Celia Guevara, thinking she could help slow Cuba's capture program.
''Vets have the most influence in the captivity industry, but she didn't show for our meeting,'' O'Barry says. "Here's a woman who has a lot of power. She stands out. That was my hope.''
In meetings with other officials at the National Aquarium, O'Barry says, he failed to persuade the Cubans to end their dolphin exports. His effort at the aquarium was probably futile because commercial sales are handled by another science ministry office.
Last December, after Simpson opened his second site on Antigua, Leach invited O'Barry to the island to speak publicly. But before boarding a flight at Miami International Airport, O'Barry was told he would be arrested and returned to the United States if he tried to enter Antigua. He learned later that the island government considered him a national security threat.
ACTIVISTS CRITICIZED
Simpson, meanwhile, expresses only derision for the activists. It is O'Barry, McKenna, Leach and their followers, he says, who have unrelentingly harassed him and his family, going so far as to meddle in his finances. To cause him embarrassment in the islands, the activists have delved into and publicized a costly bankruptcy proceeding Simpson was forced into over his development of a Reno golf resort.
The activists also bandied gossip about his recent divorce and remarriage to Pike. ''These people have no moral grounds,'' Simpson says.
As for the trade embargo, O'Barry says: ''I don't agree with the law, but we are using it.'' Clarifying, he adds that "the embargo should be lifted for humanitarian reasons. However -- and this is very important -- the part of the embargo that prohibits Americans from purchasing dolphins from Cuba should forever remain.''
In recent weeks, the Treasury Department has issued stiff fines against Americans who have spent money in Cuba after traveling to the island without seeking U.S. permission. Technically, it is not illegal to go to Cuba, but it is illegal to spend money there.
So for Simpson, the continuing attacks from animal rights militants will seem minor travails if U.S. officials find a link between Cuba and the Americans behind Dolphin Fantaseas. ''Do you think I'll be able to go to United States again?'' he asked.
Penalties for violating the embargo range up to $1 million in corporate fines and tens of thousands in individual fines, and, in a criminal case, may bring as much as 10 years in prison.
The Daily Observer,Wednesday February 25,2004
ANTIGUA WEST INDIES
Page 9
ABITPC Scores Victory In Dolphin Salvo; Pressing On For More
By Joanne C.Hillhouse
The decision to rescind permission given for the capture of 12 dolphins a year in Antigua & Barbuda s waters,previously
reported in The DailyOBSERVER,has been confirmed.The Antigua & Barbuda Independent Tourism Promotion Corporation
(ABITPC)is in receipt of said decision.It reads:"Cabinet at a meeting held on Wednesday 11th February 2004 reconsidered
its decision of 20th December 2000 and decided as follows: That the permission granted to Mr.John Mezzanotte to capture
twelve (12)dolphins annually from Antigua waters is hereby revoked;That any importation or exportation of dolphins into or
from Antigua and Barbuda be in strict compliance with all international obligations of Antigua and Barbuda." This
communication is dated February 23, 2004 and is signed by the Cabinet Secretary Lounel Stevens and copied to the
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries Winston Burleigh. Though the environmental
lobby has hailed this as a victory for dolphins,they ve indicated
Continued on page 10
ABITPC is contending that the dolphins in captivity for the swim with
programme at Dolphin Fantaseas in Antigua should be free like this
duo pictured here. (photo of free dolphins)
From page 9
that it does not necessarily mean that the case brought by ABITPC against govern-
ment and Dolphin Fantaseas will simply go away.They argue that there is still the matter of the dolphins already in captivity,
as part of Dolphin Fantaseas Swim with the Dolphins programme,,to consider. News of the groundbreaking case broke
late last year,after a letter sent by ABITPC to Prime Minister Lester Bird failed to provoke any action.
They argued,at that time,that Antigua was in violation of several treaties and believe that their action forced the
government s hand.
"Before we actually took legal action,we wrote a letter to the prime minister demanding that the permission be rescinded," said
ABITPC spokesperson Martha Watkins-Gilkes, speaking to this publication on Tuesday,February 24, "not even an
acknowledgement.So,when that was not forthcoming,we then pursued legal action.And I think that now that we have
pointed out so clearly in the press all the international treaties that Antigua is in violation of with this protect,that they
obviously know that they re going to lose the case."
That said though, Watkins-Gilkes said she is surprised at this early victory. "I thought that we
would have to go to court, and,in fact,we may still go with some legal action," she said."I m waiting to hear
from our lawyer on that. "The importation of the dolphins currently in captivity is,she indicated,a violation of the
Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES)."We do wish to pursue the fact that they
were brought in illegally in violation with that CITES agreement," Watkins--Gilkes said."(That issue)is not in
here (the Cabinet decision) at all,the issue of the dolphins that have been imported in violation of
CITES."
But,with that battle still to be fought,ABITPC is still in a celebratory mood
from all indications. Apress release quoted Watkins-Gilkes as saying,"ABITPC is delighted that this long,drawn-out
debate,which has been very time consuming,mentally and financially draining,has come to a close and that justice has
trumpeted. We are pleased that the environment of Antigua & Barbuda will not be compromised by the removal of
our wild dolphins.We feel, and I have stated from the start of this saga,that the government was sold a dirty and misleading
"bill of goods " from foreigners who came to our island and want to exploit our marine resources for their own per-
sonal financial gain with very little in it for Antigua & Barbuda. "In a public debate held with the managing
director Arthur Bud Krames,before the project opened,he stated they would employ over 20
Antiguans.I would like to ask how many Antiguans are employed some two years later."
The release concluded:"It is hoped that this case will have a positive impact throughout the
Caribbean islands,in that the governments of these islands will be forced to act responsibly to the citizens
of their respective country in the upholding of any international environmental treaty they are party to."
More on the topic
.S. probes Cuban dolphin deals
Purchases of sea creatures could have violated the embargo
By Charles D. Sherman/ csherman@herald.com. Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2002 in The Miami Herald
MEADS BAY, Anguilla -- The U.S. Treasury office that enforces the trade embargo on Cuba is investigating whether Americans have bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dolphins from the Cuban government, a main supplier of the animals for proliferating tourist attractions in the Caribbean.
''There is an open investigation,'' said Robert Fernández, special agent in charge at U.S. Customs in Puerto Rico. "If there's a U.S. citizen, U.S. resident or U.S. entity involved, it would be a violation.''
Animal rights activists who closely follow the investigation say U.S. agents are tightly focused on two dolphin parks set up by Americans on Anguilla and Antigua, high-end resorts in the Leeward Islands east of Puerto Rico.
From Anguilla with its lavish $1,000-a-night hotel rooms to the bargain resorts on the Gulf coast of Mexico, the Caribbean now has more than 30 dolphin parks, opened mostly since 1990. Customers who pay between $100 and $150 for a 30-minute session can swim with, touch and feed the creatures.
The probe, launched by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, has inserted U.S. agents into a raging animal rights battle involving a colorful cast that includes Robin Leach, host of television's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; Che Guevara's 38-year-old daughter, Celia, the chief marine mammal veterinarian at Cuba's National Aquarium; Ric O'Barry, a Miami resident and former Flipper trainer at Miami's Seaquarium who has turned savior; and Gwen McKenna, a mild-sounding Toronto housewife, who with vast archives on dolphin exploitation ranks as one of the world's fiercest dolphin defenders.
While U.S law permits the capture of dolphins, a voluntary moratorium has taken hold in American waters since 1990, chiefly as a result of pressure brought by rights activists. When applications are made for the federal permits required to catch the animals, dolphin defenders rush to create negative publicity.
In the meantime, Cuba's Ministry of Science and Technology and its National Aquarium in Havana, where Guevara's daughter works, have captured a lucrative market for the animals, not only in the Caribbean but also in Europe. The Science Ministry licenses dolphin exports and voluntarily submits data to a U.N. agency responsible for compiling information on world trade in animals.
The official figures reported by Havana show steady dolphin sales -- 82 in the last five years -- making Cuba the world's leading exporter. Worldwide, there are 1,000 dolphins in captivity.
On the international market, dolphins cost between $40,000 and $70,000 for ''green,'' or newly captured, animals.
Animal rights activists say federal investigators have targeted a South African-born physician, Graham Simpson, who has dual U.S. and British citizenship. He and his wife, Pam Pike, also an American, started the Anguilla and Antigua operations, run now by Dolphin Fantaseas Ltd., a company based in Bermuda. Corporate filings on Anguilla suggest that other Americans may have invested to help Simpson in initial stages.
'THEY ARE THE ENEMY'
Robin Leach, who has had a home on Antigua since 1990, is lending his media heft to the activists' cause. From Las Vegas, where he lives part time, the television personality is bald in his description of the Simpsons: "They are the enemy.''
Railing against the couple, Leach says: "It's totally immoral. Dolphins don't perform unless they are starved.''
When Dolphin Fantaseas, originally called Dolphin Lagoon, was preparing to open its first site on Anguilla last spring, local news reports described the arrival from Cuba of six dolphins, packed in ice, on a Russian charter flight. Out of water, dolphins will overheat.
The animals were installed in a large tank on a stunning promontory at Meads Bay on the northwest coast of Anguilla. Looking much like an oversize swimming pool, the tank is a few steps from a comfortable beige-colored bungalow where the Simpsons live along with an elderly black Labrador, a pure white macaw and a large library of books on spirituality.
Offering customers what are called educational swim encounters, Dolphin Fantaseas charges $105 for a half-hour session. Tourists in life vests enter the 17-foot-deep pool to touch and feed the powerful animals, and to listen underwater to their ethereal creaking noises. The feel of a dolphin is akin to stroking a shelled hard-boiled egg.
DOMINICAN BROKER INVOLVED
To obtain the animals, Simpson says, he signed a contract with a broker in the Dominican Republic. He says the broker never told him Cuba was the supplier until just before delivery, adding that even then he gave no thought to possible violations of U.S. law.
''I thought of myself as a British citizen living for the last three years in Anguilla, which has no law against buying from Cuba. It really didn't occur to me this might be a problem.'' Simpson says he has traveled to Cuba on his British passport.
A boyish-looking man of 51 with long, floppy gray hair, Simpson is an imposing figure, six feet three inches tall and more than 200 pounds, looking much like the rugby player he was when growing up in South Africa in the 1960s.
Before coming to Anguilla, he practiced medicine in Reno, Nev., where for years he combined mainstream and alternative therapies to promote a holistic approach to physical and spiritual well-being.
Dolphin Fantaseas' slogan is ''Experience the dream.'' But the Simpsons recount nightmares in dealing with animal rights groups, which they say have hounded them with mass letter-writing campaigns to the governments on Anguilla and Antigua, with threats of a tourism boycott against Anguilla, and with vicious attacks on their personal lives.
Simpson wrote a long, anguished letter to the local press, decrying his critics. Summing up, he said: "The usual activist procedure is to try to scare people . . . by threatening a tourism boycott. I am very upset that the dolphin activists don't focus on the issues, but rather try to personally smear people in the hope of discrediting a fine dolphin swim project.''
ANIMAL RIGHTS ISSUES
McKenna and O'Barry, who is a consultant for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, have led the charge against the Simpsons. They say the issues are the violent capture methods used on highly intelligent, free-ranging creatures that should not be taken from their pods, or families, to live out lives in barren tanks or confined sea enclosures. ''Dolphins have a brain a third larger than ours,'' O'Barry says.
McKenna, who fights on behalf of no other animal, admits that when it comes to dolphins, ''I am ruthless.'' In trying to stop the Simpsons, she appealed for an international tourism boycott of Anguilla, and she raised money to send O'Barry there in December 2000 to speak publicly on the issue.
It backfired. O'Barry was shouted down by islanders enraged that activists might try to damage a main source of their livelihood. O'Barry says he never supports boycotts, and McKenna now regards the effort as a tactical mistake.
At his South Miami home, O'Barry calls Dolphin Fantaseas ''the most dangerous operation I have ever seen around the world.'' He fears that Simpson and his partners eventually intend to sell dolphins, pointing to a recent agreement between Dolphin Fantaseas and the Antigua government of Prime Minister Lester Bird, which gives the company the right to capture 12 dolphins a year.
Indeed, Simpson and his partners have recently created another company, Dolphin Leasing Inc. But Simpson and other company executives reject the notion, saying that no captures have taken place in Antigua so far, and that if they do, the animals would be used only in Dolphin Fantaseas attractions.
In trying to cut down sales, O'Barry says, he went to Cuba in 1997 to seek the aid of Celia Guevara, thinking she could help slow Cuba's capture program.
''Vets have the most influence in the captivity industry, but she didn't show for our meeting,'' O'Barry says. "Here's a woman who has a lot of power. She stands out. That was my hope.''
In meetings with other officials at the National Aquarium, O'Barry says, he failed to persuade the Cubans to end their dolphin exports. His effort at the aquarium was probably futile because commercial sales are handled by another science ministry office.
Last December, after Simpson opened his second site on Antigua, Leach invited O'Barry to the island to speak publicly. But before boarding a flight at Miami International Airport, O'Barry was told he would be arrested and returned to the United States if he tried to enter Antigua. He learned later that the island government considered him a national security threat.
ACTIVISTS CRITICIZED
Simpson, meanwhile, expresses only derision for the activists. It is O'Barry, McKenna, Leach and their followers, he says, who have unrelentingly harassed him and his family, going so far as to meddle in his finances. To cause him embarrassment in the islands, the activists have delved into and publicized a costly bankruptcy proceeding Simpson was forced into over his development of a Reno golf resort.
The activists also bandied gossip about his recent divorce and remarriage to Pike. ''These people have no moral grounds,'' Simpson says.
As for the trade embargo, O'Barry says: ''I don't agree with the law, but we are using it.'' Clarifying, he adds that "the embargo should be lifted for humanitarian reasons. However -- and this is very important -- the part of the embargo that prohibits Americans from purchasing dolphins from Cuba should forever remain.''
In recent weeks, the Treasury Department has issued stiff fines against Americans who have spent money in Cuba after traveling to the island without seeking U.S. permission. Technically, it is not illegal to go to Cuba, but it is illegal to spend money there.
So for Simpson, the continuing attacks from animal rights militants will seem minor travails if U.S. officials find a link between Cuba and the Americans behind Dolphin Fantaseas. ''Do you think I'll be able to go to United States again?'' he asked.
Penalties for violating the embargo range up to $1 million in corporate fines and tens of thousands in individual fines, and, in a criminal case, may bring as much as 10 years in prison.
) I can assure you that what the "cat man" does in Key West is not natural. Cats don't behave like that. It really frightens me to think of what was done to these animals in order to "train" them to perform. Is that entertainment that you really want to condone? I'm sorry if this grates anyone the wrong way but I am firm in my convictions that animals are not "for our enjoyment." They are living beings, just as we are, and should be treated with respect, conviction, and kindness. Cats are not ment to perform and they shouldn't be expected to.
