NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- A 9-foot, 400-pound dolphin landed in a boat and literally on top of an Ohio couple earlier today in the Intracoastal waterway near the North Causeway, before they were able to push it back into the water.
"I was just trying to get it off my wife," Norman Howard of Mansfield, Ohio, told reporters outside Bert Fish Medical Center where he was treated for cuts and bruises and his wife, Barbara, for an injured right arm in addition to cuts and bruises. "I turned immediately to my wife, took my shirt off, tucked it under her head and there was blood everywhere. I didn't even notice that I was bleeding."
Howard, 64, said he and his wife, Barbara were sitting up front in their daughter's boyfriend's 17-foot boat when the dolphin jumped up from the water and landed on the bow before sliding back literally on top of them -- with him taking the brunt of the mammal's tail while most of it covered his crumpled wife.
"It was slapping me pretty hard -- throwing some good punches," the husband said. "I was just trying to get it off my wife. I knew she was underneath all of it."
The daughter, Laura Hall, 39,said she and her boyfriend, Montie Henderson, 47, both of Edgewater, were navigating the boat after picking up bait for fishing at 10:40 p.m. when the dolphin seemingly came out of nowhere.
Henderson was able to lurch forward and push the dolphin back into the water and then headed toward Edgewater when Hall's mother complained of dizziness and they docked the boat and drove her to Bert Fish.
The daughter, who regularly enjoys boating with her boyfriend said everyone in the boat was looking forward to possibly seeing a dolphin, but not this close and personal.
"We go out on the boat all the time and I love to watch the dolphins, but to have one jump on the boat -- we've just never seen it."
Officials with the the Coast Guard, which fielded several 911 calls regarding the incident, had never heard of such an incident either.
Budd Neviaser, a longtime New Smyrna Beach fisherman who writes a regular outdoors column for NSBNEWS.net, was surprised to hear the news.
"This is purely accidental," Neviaser said. "I guarantee you that."
Neviaser said people think of dolphins as having slimy or baby-smooth skin, but it's actually rough like sandpaper, which would explain for the cuts and bruises the Ohio couple suffered.
Unlike sharks, which will bite moving objects as witnessed by the 24 swimmers in the Atlantic surf this year, dolphins are not aggressive to humans, Neviaser said. "There's the stories during World War II where dolphins have driven sharks away to protect people."
John Krall, a commercial fisherman in New Smyrna Beach for more than 30 years, said he's seen where dolphins have come close to passing boats, but he, too, was not aware of such a mishap as today's.
"They've increase over the years in the intracoastal," Krall said, "and anyone can see them. There's one in Oak Hill that comes up to people and they feed it -- it's an ex-Navy dolphin with a tattoo -- a number on his fin. It is very friendly."
Norman Howard, sporting adhesive bandages on his knees, told reporters he felt bad for the dolphin.
"He didn't want to be there any longer than we wanted it to be there," he said.