The Rescue of Menique, a captive dolphin

In September of 1995, I was asked by the German animal Rights group "Vier Pfoten" to travel to Chile to assess a dolphin being held in captivity there for rehabilitation and release back to the wild. The dolphin was one of four that had been purchased by a con man and sideshow artist from a supplier in Cuba. He believed that by buying these four dolphins and conning the local municipality (of Iquique) to allow him to house them in a commercial swimming pool, that he would get rich by running a swim-with-the-dolphins type program. Problem was he had no one on his staff that had any idea how to care of a dolphin.
His many failures caused the deaths of three of the four animals leaving only the youngest and smallest that locals came to call Menique. Menique himself was so badly malnourished that he looked like a skeleotn on a dolphin and his skin was covered with open sores because of the horribly nasty water he was living in. The national authorities confiscated him, but they quickly realized that they didn't have anybody that knew how to care for dolphins either. So, they called out around the world for assistance. That is how I came to be involved.
Within days of arriving in Iquique the judge overseeing the case awarded me custody of the dolphin for day-to-day care while the legal case questioning his legal possession was being decided. I immediately started rebuilding the antiquated and inadequate pool filtration system, repairing the pool itself and improving his diet from the garbage they had been feeding him. With these changes his health rebounded immediately.
The case dragged out for six months. During that time, I had to fight off the local disorganized crime scene while they attempted to kill the dolphin and me. I also had to battle local politics which was a challenge all on its own. But, in March of 1996, I was finally granted permission to rehab the animal and release it by Chilean authorities. International law demanded that the animal must be returned to its country of origin, so, I had to return it to Cuba and surrender it to the Acuario Nacional in Havana. While I was not happy about this deal, I was convinced that he would at least be in the possession of people who knew how care for dolphins.
Because this operation was paid for by a German group, a German TV crew came in to film the last two weeks of preparation to leave, the trip from Iquique to Cuba and our one week in Cuba. The language of the audio is currently all in German.
I am sorry about the quality of the video. We will try to improve it as we get a chance to do so. The company who made the video no longer exists and we do not own the copyrights to this video.
The video starts off with couples dancing in front of a large window, behind which are several dolphins. This was filmed at Connyland disco in Switzerland. It then cuts to the mountains of the Atacama desert near Iquique in Northern Chile. Then to Piscinal Alcalde Godoy (Mayor Godoy Swimming pool) in Iquique, on the Pacific Coast of northern Chile. This is where I worked for six months to improve His health and eventually fly him away from there. we depart the pool and drive to an Air Force base where we load menique onto a Chilean transport aircraft and fly him to Santiago where we transfer him onto a Cubana Tupolev passenger plane to fly him to Havana. Once there, he is handed over to the Cuban authorities and he gets used to his new pool while being held in quarantine. That is where my participation in the story and the video ends and I then return to the US.
You will see that for much of the last few weeks, in Iquque, and the drive from the pool to the Airfirce base, we had constant police overwatch. This was because the local hoodlums and wannabe terrorists had threatened the operation and threatened to kill Menique and myself. Fortunately, they were not any better at killing me than they were at keeping dolphins alive. They did try.
Lloyd Brown
Wildlife Rescue of Dade County