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20 or more, these fast swimmers are ubiquitous in the islands, bow riding speedboats and executing aerial acrobatics wherever they congregate. But this full-grown female lay in the shallows close to death, listless and barely moving. The tourists who had found her on the beach that morning, and had kept her hydrated and shaded all day, were distraught.
    A veterinarian named Alan Bater had arrived from Grand Bahama just ahead of Claridge. Bater was in charge of keeping the captive dolphins alive at “the Dolphin Experience” tourist attraction in the capital city of Freeport. He’ d brought a stomach pump with him in hopes of giving the dolphin some nourishment. But after 20 minutes of feeding, she wasn’t showing any signs of revival. They decided to ferry her by boat to Bater’s clinic and treat her there.
    On the ride back, Claridge cradled the animal in her arms. The dolphin was five feet long and almost as large as her caregiver. Halfway back across the channel, the dolphin began to convulse, and moments later she died. Her body grew cold, but Claridge kept rocking her in her arms.
    Claridge didn’t cry. It wasn’t her style. But she felt overwhelmed by helplessness and confusion. She’ d grown up in these waters, and dolphins were her first love. They were so wild and free. Their beauty took her breath away. She often felt they were too charming for their own good. Since the early 1990s, the tourist trade had turned these fabulous creatures into circus performers. Worse, they’ d been prostituted to tourists who could purchase dolphin “experiences” by the hour. Throughout the Bahamas, “dolphin swim” offerings in captive settings had become a must-have attraction for cruise ships and fly-in tourists.
    Dolphin tourism had become big business. The going price for a wild-caught dolphin had risen to $40,000, and worth it at the price. At $100 an “experience,” dolphins could earn back their investor’s money in two years. After that, they were pure profit machines. No one asked where the animals were captured, or how. Since the Bahamas banned dolphin capture in 1995, a black market pipeline had emerged from both the Solomon Islands and Taiji, Japan. As long as the tourists were happy and kept swiping their credit cards, local authorities turned a blind eye. Back in 1994, when dolphins began dying at various dolphin swim venues, local activists made as much noise as they could in the press. Eventually dolphin tourism was debated in Parliament, and the government briefly shut down a facility on Abaco, but not in Freeport or Nassau.
    So now one more dolphin had died—for what? The dolphins and beaked whales of the Bahamas had been Claridge’s life and her work for the past ten years. Then overnight, everything had been turned upside down.
    They were still traveling back with the dead dolphin when Bater’s cell phone rang. Two whales had stranded and died on the beach outside Freeport in Grand Bahama. Bater decided to call a veterinarian he knew at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, in Miami. Shouting over the outboard motor noise, he briefed her on the mass stranding and suggested she get some folks over to the Bahamas to help sort it out.
    When they came ashore, Claridge declined Bater’s assistance and tried to fireman-carry the dolphin across the parking lot. But it was too heavy, and she finally let him help her hoist the body onto a bed of sponge pads in the back of the red pickup truck. Then she bought three 50-pound bags of ice from the fish store at the dock, and one by one gently poured them over the corpse.
    Balcomb was waiting for her at the house, eager to learn how things had gone. “We need to find a place to store the body,” was all she could manage, gesturing to the back of the truck.
    He could see that she was hurting, but they both understood what they had to do. “Maybe Les can help us out,” he said. “Let’s drive down to Nancy’s.”
    Nancy’s Restaurant was a