"He knew the regulations protecting dolphins, yet he killed them anyway—once in front of children," federal prosecutor Adam Gustafson says of Florida fisherman Zackery Barfield. The 31-year-old charter and fishing captain has been sentenced to 30 days in prison and a year of supervised release for shooting and poisoning bottlenose dolphins, NBC News reports. Prosecutors say Barfield shot dolphins with a 12-gauge shotgun during outings from Panama City, killing at least one of them. One of the shootings happened in front of two elementary school-age children and another happened in front of multiple witnesses on a charter boat, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors say Barfield also poisoned dolphins in 2022 and 2023, probably killing many of them, the New York Times reports. He was "frustrated with dolphins eating red snapper from the lines of his charter fishing clients," the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Florida said in a news release. "He began placing methomyl inside baitfish to poison the dolphins that surfaced near his boat. Methomyl is a highly toxic pesticide that acts on the nervous system of humans, mammals, and other animals."
NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, which led the investigation after receiving a tip, said Barfield poisoned up to 70 dolphins, which "resulted in harmful impacts to the local population of bottlenose dolphins, and likely resulted in multiple dolphin deaths." Barfield, who pleaded guilty to violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, was also fined $51,000. (More dolphins stories.)
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