'Dolphin Tale' fans mourn death of film's star Winter at 16

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Amy Carmichael lives more than 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) from the Florida aquarium that housed Winter, the “Dolphin Tale” movie star with a prosthetic tail that died this week at 16. But Carmichael, who has successfully fought leukemia much of her life, felt a strong bond.

“It's not just a dolphin, it's a special dolphin,” Carmichael, 17, said by phone from her home in Stonehouse, Scotland on Friday. “She was rescued and had to battle through. I think that made me feel like I can do that. I was battling through, too.”

Like many people with illnesses and disabilities, Carmichael got to meet Winter a few years ago at the bottlenose dolphin's home in the Clearwater Marine Aquarium on Florida's Gulf Coast. Those trips inspired people from autistic children to soldiers with missing limbs before Winter died Thursday of a gastrointestinal ailment, saddening fans around the world.

“Winter was an extraordinary creature. She inspired millions of people all over the world with her courage, her fortitude and her joy,” said Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, producers of the 2011 film “Dolphin Tale” that told the story of Winter's recovery from an amputated tail — it had been entangled in a crab trap rope, cutting circulation — through unprecedented use of a prosthetic one.

“She may no longer be with us in body, but her indominable spirit will continue on throgh the lives of all those that she touched,” said a statement from the two producers, who run Alcon Entertaintment.

The film, starring Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd, Kris Kristofferson, Morgan Freeman and Nathan Gamble, was largely shot at the Clearwater aquarium and surrounding Tampa Bay locations.

The film put the non-profit aquarium, first opened in 1972 on the site of a former water...