A placid fishing trip turned “berserk” for three New Zealand men when a dolphin weighing more than 400 kilograms (900 pounds) appeared to fall out of the sky before crash-landing in their small boat.
No one was badly hurt when the 3.4-meter (11-foot) bottlenose dolphin jumped aboard the open-top boat Friday, said Dean Harrison, the owner of the nearly 16-foot vessel.
Harrison and two companions were fishing near the Hole in the Rock, a picturesque spot off the far north coast of New Zealand’s North Island, while dolphins frolicked ahead. The men saw a shadow across the bright summer sun and heard an almighty boom — before chaos unfolded.
“This one decided to jump on board and say hello,” Harrison said. “One minute everything was fine and then just like lightning striking, there’s a big dolphin in our boat, thrashing around and breaking everything.”
The creature’s flailing snapped “every single fishing rod we had in the boat” and severely damaged the bow as the trio clung to the sides of the vessel, said Harrison. One man had minor injuries to his arm where the juvenile male dolphin grazed his back and shoulder, but all three fishermen and the dolphin were otherwise uninjured.
But returning the majestic creature to the sea was not an option for the trio due to its size. “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 said. “Because he’s stuck in the boat for now, so he’s coming along for the ride.”
The men alerted New Zealand’s conservation agency and were directed to a boat ramp an hour away, where workers waited to help the dolphin. On the way, the trio used a hose to keep the creature wet and protected it from the sun using a damp towel depicting players from the All Blacks rugby team.
On shore, members of a local Māori tribe prayed for the dolphin before it was returned to the ocean using a tractor. Helpers gave the 2- 3-year-old creature a name: Tohu, which means “sign” in the Māori language.
Tohu is now also the name of Dean Harrison’s boat. “The dolphin got to swim away and we got to walk away and we’ve all got a story to tell,” he said. “It’s a good ending in a situation that could have been very different.”
