Dolphin jumping into fishermen's boat was ‘like lightning striking'
Three fishermen in New Zealand were enjoying a peaceful outing when a 900-pound dolphin suddenly dropped in on them—literally.
The juvenile male dolphin leaped out of the water and into their 16-foot boat, creating a chaotic scene Friday in the Bay of Islands near the Hole in the Rock.
'This one decided to jump on board and say hello,' boat owner Dean Harrison told Associated Press. 'One minute everything was fine and then, just like lightning striking, there's a big dolphin in our boat thrashing around and breaking everything…[including] every single fishing rod we had in the boat.'
The bow of the boat was 'severely damaged,' and one man had minor injuries to his arm where the dolphin grazed his back and shoulder, the AP reported.
'We looked at the dolphin still alive and breathing and we thought, we've got to start looking after him and figure out what to do,' Harrison told AP. 'Because he's stuck in the boat for now, so he's coming along for the ride.'
The fishermen first contacted a maritime radio service, Russell Radio, whose operator put them in contact with a ranger for the New Zealand Department of Conservation, according to The New Zealand Herald.
They were told to keep the dolphin cool and shaded, so they hosed it down and covered it with towels. They were directed to a dock at Waitangi jetty an hour away. There, DoC officials were waiting to give the dolphin a health check.
Getting cleared to be returned to the water, the dolphin was winched onto a pontoon and taken back out to sea by DoC. Members of a local Maori tribe prayed for the dolphin and gave it the name of Tohu, meaning 'sign' in the Maori language.
Harrison then named his boat Tohu.
'The dolphin got to swim away and we got to walk away, and we've all got a story to tell,' Harrison told AP. 'It's a good ending in a situation that could have been very different.'
Feature photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
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