More Dolphins Bite Tourists
Two people from Sweden were on their honeymoon at the Isla Mujeres resort, off the coast of Cancun, when they decided to buy a “swim with the dolphins” activity. Not a good idea.
“We heard that dolphin park animals are treated well,” Sabina Stenstrom Cadbrand told Swedish Public TV. “At first, it all went well but then it was time for ‘play with the dolphins.'”
Eight tourists in the dolphin pool were instructed to stand in a line and splash with two dolphins, who would splash back. But then one of the dolphins, Picasso, became aggressive and bit Sabina on her leg.
“I felt the dolphin had my whole thigh in his mouth and then I realized I had been bitten, and it was very painful.” Sabina said.
There was instant panic in the pool as everyone started screaming.
“It was like the scene from the movie Jaws,” her husband Christofer Stenstrom said.
Two other people were also bitten, including a middle-aged woman who was bleeding heavily with a wound that went right down to the bone. According to the other people who watched her escaping from the pool, she couldn’t walk and had to be taken to hospital.
While everyone got their money back, they got no explanation from the dolphin “park” on why the dolphins had attacked. Just the usual kind of PR formula about how “it’s never happened before and we’ve had the dolphins for 20 years.”
(We would only respond that it’s a testimony to dolphin patience that it took them 20 years in captivity at a miserable tourist attraction before one of them finally lost it and bit one of the inane humans who bought a ticket to “play” with them.)
Sabina and her husband are now back home in Växjö. “The wound on the leg has healed up nicely and become a smaller scar,” she said. “But we will probably never swim with dolphins.”
Only “probably”?