Europe’s most prestigious Media Award goes to Richard O’Barry!

By Hans Peter Roth
Freelance Journalist and Volunteer Cove Monitor
Save Japan Dolphins
Earth Island Institute

“Don’t buy tickets to dolphin shows!”  Ric O’Barry’s message was simple and clear, when the dolphin activist spoke to a live television audience of more than 5 million people in three countries – Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.  “If we don’t go to dolphinaria, they will close, and all dolphins can go free at last,” he said while receiving a Bambi, Europe’s most important Media Award. 

He would continue to work hard to become dispensable, he announced in his live speech in Wiesbaden, Germany on Thursday night, November 10th. “If I won’t be needed anymore, I’ll be the happiest man. It will be the moment when there are no more captivity facilities for dolphins.” A long way to get there, though, the former Flipper trainer is well aware.

The Bambi Award statue weighs about seven pounds (2.5 kg). Laughing, Ric held the massive golden deer statue in the air before the applauding audience and remarked its weight. “I will auction it on EBay the next morning, so I can raise some more funding for my activities," he announced jokingly.

The worlds’ best known dolphin activist radically turned from the captivity industry and from training the Flipper television dolphins to dolphin protection in 1970. Ric received the Bambi in the category “Our Earth,” for his devotion and lifetime achievement for the dolphins and the environment. 

Other celebrities receiving Bambi Awards on the same evening were Justin Bieber, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Lady Gaga.

“I could not sleep after I had seen what happens to dolphins in Japan,” the German news-anchorwoman Judith Rakers said, when she presented the award to Ric. There was a brief broadcast, with some graphic footage taken from the Oscar-winning movie The Cove. The documentary with O’Barry as protagonist exposes the dolphin hunt in a coastal Japanese village, which leaves a small cove red with blood. 

And it left more than a few people in the audience in tears. Yet, Ric’s message to the millions on live TV was a positive, hopeful and a powerful one. “Germany’s number of dolphinaria is down to three now. And one more will close next year. And there is one dolphin park left in Switzerland. They will all close sooner or later. The sooner the better. Just don’t buy tickets to dolphin shows!”

 

Photo by Hans Peter Roth.