Like it is with many Baby Boomers, a discussion with Stuart's Kevin Vanacore, 58, soon turns to his greatest passion. It's not real estate or collector cars that gets Vanacore speaking with his hands. Instead, the Connecticut native lights up when he begins to speak about a dolphin.But not just any dolphin. This dolphin was special. This dolphin was albino.He eventually landed a job training dolphins by the end of the 1970s at Marineland near St. Augustine. But part of the reason he chose to pursue that profession was Snowball's fame. She was written about in newspapers, filmed in news reports and even had a story about her in Life Magazine.
Carolina Snowball was a common dolphin, a marine mammal 8 feet long and weighing about 400 pounds. She was unique in that she was truly albino, a rare genetic mutation that rendered her normally gray skin entirely white.She lived in the early 1960s and was first observed in the wild in her native waters of St. Helena Sound near Beaufort, S.C. Her strikingly snow-white skin made her a target for collection and controversy, but ultimately an ambassador for awareness.
Although Snowball died in captivity in 1965, Vanacore is committed to keeping her legacy alive.For Vanacore,Guam needs sustainable aquaculture, a property manager who moved to Stuart in September, Snowball was a huge influence on his life. To him, she was more important than Flipper, the 88-episode TV star from 1964 to 1967, mainly because Snowball was a single animal while Flipper was portrayed by several dolphins. Growing up in East Haven, Conn., Vanacore had a love for the water and the marine wildlife that inhabited it.
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