20 jul 2022 om 16:24 | Update: 14 minuten geleden
The police launched an investigation on Wednesday into a woman who climbed on the back of a beaked beaked dolphin off the coast of Zandvoort on Tuesday. The action could have led to the death of the animal, says Annemarie van den Berg of SOS Dolfijn. In addition, the woman could have been seriously injured. The woman turned himself in to police on Wednesday afternoon.
By: Lennart ‘t HartImages circulating on the internet show the woman climbing on the back of a dolphin in shallow water. With her arms she grabs the dolphin 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. “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. The animal has such a powerful tail that the woman could easily have broken an arm or her ribs.
Pushing dolphin back to sea was the right thing to do
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 are not normally found here. If they come to lie 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 it cannot have escaped the attention of the woman 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.
