Posted on 09/22/2020 3:14:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Eddie Lynch couldn’t believe it. He’s lived off of Clearwater Beach for more than 35-years and has never had an issue in the water, until Saturday.
It was shortly before noon when he went out for a swim when he noticed a large dolphin swimming next to him and then he stopped. So did the dolphin. For a moment the two were face to face.
Eddie Lynch speaks from the balcony of his residence. “And, uh, I said I gotta get out of here,” said Lynch. “And I started turning my body this way and he caught my hand and he had the whole hand in his mouth.”
Lynch was able to make it to shore. His hand was bloodied from the bite. A good samaritan told him to take off his shirt, and used that to stop the bleeding. Lynch’s wife is a physician and took him to the emergency room for treatment.
Lynch and his wife sent pictures of his injuries to experts at Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Robin Curry is one of their managers who spends a lot of hands-on time with dolphins.
She says it’s hard to say from the pictures if the bite marks are from a dolphin.
Robin Curry feeds two of the dolphins at Clearwater Marine Aquarium “It could be a case of mistaken identity where it was a different species, not neccessarily a dolphin,” said Curry. “Or a mistaken identity on the fact that if a dolphin was hunting or another animal was hunting like a shark they could accidentally take something that wasn’t a fish.”
Lynch says there is no doubt in his mind that the bite did in fact come from a dolphin. He’s sharing his story as a warning to others who enjoy time in the warm gulf waters.
“Dolphins are not little play things,” said Lynch. “People come up to them because they see them being fed and see them doing this…and people will go out and try to touch them and play with them. These are wild dolphins.”
What a lot of people don’t understand is that killer whales are also part of the dolphin family.
Scientists, following a trail of bloody clues, are discovering that dolphins are far from the happy, peaceful creatures that humans think they know.
Growing evidence shows that the big animals, up to 12 feet long, are killing fellow mammals in droves, wielding their beaks as clubs and slashing away with rows of sharp teeth. Dolphins have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds. Unlike most animal killers, which eat their prey, dolphins seem to have murderous urges unrelated to the need for food.
The animals you see at sea world are portrayed correctly: They are trained, not tame. So it isn’t surprising a person is attacked by a dolphin in the wild. I’m curious why the dolphin turned him loose and didn’t try to take him down and drown him. They will do that on occasion.
I was stationed at MacDill in the mid 70’s, and was warned about ocean swimming in that area because there are numerous species of sharks from hammerheads to bulls swimming around. And the bulls are especially aggressive and swim into the home docking areas attached to the bay. He must have some type of death wish. The hammerheads are there for the stingrays. The biggest of the sightings was in 2019 when a Clearwater rental guy spotted one he estimates at possibly 14 feet.
rwood
What a lot of people don’t understand is that killer whales are also part of the dolphin family.
Scientists, following a trail of bloody clues, are discovering that dolphins are far from the happy, peaceful creatures that humans think they know.
Growing evidence shows that the big animals, up to 12 feet long, are killing fellow mammals in droves, wielding their beaks as clubs and slashing away with rows of sharp teeth. Dolphins have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds. Unlike most animal killers, which eat their prey, dolphins seem to have murderous urges unrelated to the need for food.
The animals you see at sea world are portrayed correctly: They are trained, not tame. So it isn’t surprising a person is attacked by a dolphin in the wild. I’m curious why the dolphin turned him loose and didn’t try to take him down and drown him. They will do that on occasion.
I was stationed at MacDill in the mid 70’s, and was warned about ocean swimming in that area because there are numerous species of sharks from hammerheads to bulls swimming around. And the bulls are especially aggressive and even swim into the home docking areas attached to the bay. He must have some type of death wish. The hammerheads are there for the stingrays. The biggest of the sightings was in 2019 when a Clearwater rental guy spotted one he estimates at possibly 14 feet.
rwood
There's just a special kind of stupid that the big parks seem to bring out; people think they're taking pictures of over-sized dogs.
In surfing days, many years ago- we were always happy to see the porpoises swimming around us just out beyond the breakers, the swells. The porpoises kept the sharks away— and there were lots of those (as there always is just beyond the waves coming ashore— to get bait fish and... surfers, hah!).
Porpoises are documented as having organized attacks on sharks who hunt their small baby porpoises. The very hard nose on porpoise is cleverly used to ram into a shark, and cause it to be gutted/ or bleeding and ... voila! The sharks come into a feeding frenzy on the their bleeding fellow sharks, and then there are created more chewed sharks, etc. This is on film some documentary— amazing smart mammals are porpoises. They are far more trainable than a dog and smarter than a pig. Very cool creatures.
That’s not The Busted Flush!
“Candy-gram!”
Orca’s attacking boats in the Med and now dolphins attacking people odd the coast of America. How will it end?
The pic show what seems an awfully small wound if a rogue dolphin was trying to do some damage...maybe he swatted at it if they were that close...and it gave him a gentle warning not to screw with that which could kill him.
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