Purchases of sea creatures could have violated the embargo

                      BY CHARLES D. SHERMAN

                      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.