The Dolphin Dealer

Monday April 12, 2010 at 1 pm on CBC-TV

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The Dolphin Dealer

Watch the full program.

43:39 min

 

Five years in the making and featuring unprecedented footage of the shadowy world of the wild dolphin trade, The Dolphin Dealer is a haunting new documentary about the man who perpetrated the largest dolphin capture and export in history. This rare story revolves around Canadian Christopher Porter, a former dolphin trainer at the Vancouver aquarium, and his lead adversary, animal rights activist and former Flipper trainer, Ric O'Barry. Set in the Solomon Islands, the most beautiful yet most brutal nation in the South Pacific, The Dolphin Dealer examines the issues and ethics of the billion dollar swim-with-dolphins industry.

Christopher Porter receives a tattoo from villagers in the Solomon Islands.
Credit: Eric Harwood Davies

Selling wild dolphins for about $100,000 a head can earn Christopher Porter and his American partners a tidy profit. Although he's been called a hostile pig and a white poacher, Porter is convinced there's nothing wrong with what he does and is a firm believer that aquariums and marine parks give people the opportunity to encounter animals in an affordable setting and in a way they can relate to.

For O'Barry and other activists trying to shut Porter down, the trafficking of wild dolphins is simply an inhuman, money-making scam. Although tourists enjoy the experience of swimming with dolphins, many animals die during the export from the wild or spend the rest of their lives performing tricks in pens. According to O'Barry, for an intelligent animal like the dolphin, this amounts to prostitution.

Feeding time at Porter's pens on Gavutu Island.
Credit: Eric Harwood Davies

Porter counters with the fact that by selling dolphins to marine parks, not only does he help humans and animals bond, he's also transforming attitudes in the Solomon Islands where dolphins are slaughtered by the thousands in traditional dolphin hunts, their teeth used to buy a bride. Now many islanders no longer kill them, preferring instead to capture dolphins live and sell them to foreigners.

Through exclusive access to Christopher Porter, The Dolphin Dealer gives viewers an inside look at Porter's biggest dolphin deal ever. With footage from Canada, Mexico, Dubai and the Solomon Islands - a country whose history has been marked by cannibalism, years of tribal conflict and beheadings in the market square - this story shocks, entertains and poses important questions about how humans treat dolphins, one of nature's most intelligent and charismatic animals.

The Dolphin Dealer was produced by Omni Film Productions Limited in co-production with CBC-TV.