Woman climbs on dolphin’s back at Zandvoort: ‘Animal could have died’ | animals

Images circulating on the internet show the woman climbing on the back of a dolphin in shallow water. With her arms she grabs the whale and by putting a leg over it, she tries to let herself be carried away with the animal.

“I can’t reach this with my mind,” Van den Berg told NU.nl in a response to the images. “You can compare it with a dog that has been hit on the street, after which someone says: ‘let me lie on it, because it is so fluffy’. It is really very harmful to the dolphin.”

According to the SOS Dolphin director, it must have been very stressful for the dolphin. “These species of whales are known to die from stress. That can happen if you touch the animal incorrectly.”

Not only for the dolphin, but also for the woman, it could have been much worse, she says. According to Van den Berg, the animal has such a powerful tail that the woman could have easily broken an arm or her ribs.

Before the woman climbed on the dolphin, beachgoers had just pushed the animal back into the sea. Bystanders in the video are outraged and urge her to leave the dolphin alone. Then the dolphin tries to find its way back to the deep.

Van den Berg says pushing the dolphin back is the right action in this case. “It was the only way for the animal to survive. Beaked whales don’t normally come here and if they land on the beach they die very quickly – especially with that heat.”

Police are investigating whether the woman’s action is a criminal offence. SOS Dolfijn says it will not file a report against her. “I think the woman cannot have missed that what she did was not right,” said the director.

At least three beaked whales threatened to strand on the coast of Zandvoort on Tuesday afternoon. Since then, the animals have not been seen again. According to SOS Dolfijn, that is a good sign, but it does not mean that the animals are out of the danger zone.