Photo Of A Dolphin

Prosthetics designer who is visiting Duluth has helped many humans and one dolphin

As a certified prosthetist, Kevin Carroll has designed prosthetic arms and limbs for countless victims of war, accidents and disease.

But it was the dolphin that got Hollywood’s attention.

Carroll’s focus will be on people today when he appears from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics, 1901 South St., to provide free prosthetic evaluations to local amputees.

A native of County Tipperary, Ireland, who still carries the lilting accent of his homeland, Carroll has been a prosthetist for more than

30 years. He travels daily treating challenging amputations and has been featured on “Dateline,” “20/20,” “CBS Early Show,” “NBC Nightly News,” “ABC’s Good Morning America” and the Discovery Channel.

His aquatic challenge came in the form of a bottlenose dolphin stranded and caught in a crab trap near Cape Canaveral in December 2005 at 18 months old. The dolphin, given the name Winter, survived, but her damaged tail fluke came off at age 4. Without the tail fluke, the dolphin used an inefficient side-to-side swimming style.

“My biggest role in it was determining that we could build a tail for a dolphin,” Carroll said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Hibbing, where he spent the day at another Hanger facility. “When I first started looking at this, people were looking at me saying, ‘Not going to work, not going to happen.’ ”

Carroll and his colleague Dan Strzempka proved the skeptics wrong, developing the first prosthetic tail fluke for a dolphin. Actor Morgan Freeman portrays a composite of Carroll and Strzempka in a movie scheduled to be released Sept. 23.

“We actually did go on set and work with Mr. Freeman and give him ideas of how we came up with this whole thing and how it worked,” said Carroll, who is chief clinician for Hanger. “And we’re very honored that he took the role. As you know he’s an incredible actor, and he’s played the role of some very distinguished people over the years.”

Carroll, 52, began his career in Ireland during a time of violent conflict. “At an early part of my career I was already working with people who had limbs blown off,” he said. “So I have a lot of experience, unfortunately.”

That experience has come into play as Carroll works with amputees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Among other clients was Cameron Clapp, an athlete and triple amputee who presented talks in the Northland last week.

Water like glass, amazing photo of spotted dolphin: ODYSSEY Gulf ...

Every once in a while in the Gulf, you get such calm water it is like a mirror. It is absolutely amazing. It is then that the men of the sea, like Captain Bob and First Mate Ian, get intrigued by dolphins on the bow. They call it “mirror water.” While the science team is dolphin-jaded, save perhaps for Cathy, who can never seem to get enough of the dolphins, this morning was the time to look. Poor Cathy had to look from above as she was on watch when the spotted dolphins arrived.

Johnny would, of course, insist that much of the science team was missing because they were processing fish as he and Ian caught 6 bar jack fish in the morning, and indeed some were doing that. It had been a busy morning, as what appears to have been a 12 foot great white shark swam by. So Ian and Johnny were catching fish to attract the shark. They swear they had no intention of actually trying to catch the shark and only wanted it near the boat for pictures. But with those two, you never know. Anyway, I digress; back to the dolphins on the bow (the shark was long gone then).

I headed to the bow and found Sandy, camera in hand, Ian and Bob. The water was like glass. You could see every nuance of the dolphin’s movements. There were initially two then four spotted dolphins bow riding with the boat. There were even these small fish bow riding above them. It was stunning.

They say a picture says 1,000 words. I think the attached picture taken by Ian is one of those. I have called it “dolphin reflection.” It is remarkable. You can see how clearly we could see the spotted dolphins under the water. You can see the surface of the water looking like glass. You can even see a reflection of Ian, Bob and me as we look down on the dolphin. Ian is on the left with the camera, Bob is in the middle and I am on the right. Truly an amazing illustration of the incredible water.

At lunchtime it was bottlenose dolphins bow riding in the glassy water. One was remarkably large and this time, much of the science team, including Cathy, enjoyed their antics. This time I tried a photo with my iPhone. A bit nerve wracking to hold it out over the water in large hands like mine (you may remember I lost my iPhone over the side last year), but it worked and yielded a really nice photo. I called it dolphins under glass, because again you can see the amazing water.

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