In 2015 a man drove to a Spanish airport with a ticket to fly to US, but didn't took the plane. Some days later was found dead inside his car.
Jose Luis Barbero worked as dolphin's trainer in Marineland Mallorca until 2015 (two years after blackfish was released). He has an extensive professional experience starting in the 80's, and received the 'Best Trainer' award from the International Marine Trainer's Association IMATA in 1992. He implemented also a swimming with dolphins program as therapy for children autistic and down syndrome.
In 2015 he received an offer for becoming vicepresident to the Georgia's Aquarium in Atlanta and was about to get interviewed for his longtime dream job.
At this moment, an harassment campaign against him started in internet tagging him as animal abuser. A video showing supposedly the proofs was uploaded to internet, and spread like fire for all news, creating a lot of buzz, and surfing in the same wave of outrage that blackfish created.
They video supposedly shows a young Jose Luis kicking and shouting dolphins in a trainer session. Calling it nasty things like "tonto" (dumb) and "vago" (lazy) that could lead to severe depression to any spanish speaker dolphin.
Of course with blackfish spreading rage and justice fire, something like a "swim with dolphins" program was unacceptable and frowned upon by the public: Dolphins could kill people. It seems that the same public don't see any problem with the concept of therapy dogs or horses, even if dogs and horses kill each year thousands of people (and dolphins kill zero). But dolphins are magical mystic non-human humans that came from outer space and appear in all psychodelic posters, and dogs are... just dogs, I suppose.
The association SOS delfines sued Barbero by animal abuse and for violating the law in the therapy dolphins program, and he and his family received the usual package of sadistic death menaces on internet.
The Atlanta's aquarium received a lot of mails threatening with a boycott campaign if they dare to hire him. Afraid of the consequences, they removed the hiring offer, and the rest is known.
Personally I think that the video was clearly fake. Audio and video don't match clearly. The supposed 'kick' to dolphins does not look at all like a kick, and the silhouettes in the video could belong to anybody. As proof of anything would be seen as a highly suspiciously doctored one... but it does not change a bit the fact that it caused real and massive damage in the life of this man without any real possibility of defense.
And if it were real, wow, somebody really hated this man!. Such old video was reserved for decades to be released with surgical precision at the exact time that could do more harm to him?. If the goal was stopping animal abuse, why they waited for decades instead to denounce it ASAP?. This seems a pretty miserable act to me.
Nobody was sued for deliberately destroying the professional reputation of a man, harassing his family and driving him to commit suicide in a parking's airport.
After the "ca-ching" opportunity dissapeared, SOS delfines go 'shalalala' in silent mode. Everybody enjoys a good twitter witch hunt before dinner (It makes you feel morally better than the other guys). The bad man died, hurrah! Isn't marvellous animalism?