‘Lonely’ dolphin blamed for leaving bathers bloodied in Japan

Eighteen people have so far been injured in apparently unprovoked attacks by the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin off beaches in the town of Tsuruga.

One of the most shocking attacks was caught in a video clip broadcast by the Fuji News Network channel. Filmed on the morning of August 20 at Mizushima beach, the dolphin’s dorsal fin can be seen cutting through the water towards a child in a yellow life jacket who is trying to get out of the way.

The life jacket makes a series of jerky movements as onlookers on the beach shout and a man in the water starts to go to the child’s rescue. Other swimmers leave the water or take refuge on a floating pontoon.

The man who went to help the child sustained minor injuries, FNN reported, but the boy’s hands were bleeding profusely by the time he reached the beach. The child required 30 stitches and his injuries are expected to take a month to fully heal.

Local coastguard officials immediately ordered bathers to leave the water and the beach was closed for the rest of the day.

One day previously, a woman was bitten on her right hand and sustained minor injuries, while a man sustained minor injuries to his left foot and right thumb as he swam off nearby Shiraki beach.

“It appears that the multiple incidents have been committed by the same individual dolphin,” said Mari Kobayashi, head of the marine biology laboratory at the Hokkaido-Okhotsk campus of Tokyo University of Agriculture.

“It is believed to be a male Indo-Pacific bottlenose and we know that males sometimes communicate by biting each other, so it may be that it is trying to do this with humans,” she told This Week in Asia. “Also, this is a species that usually lives in groups, so it is possible it is lonely.”

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