Dolphin and Whales save fisherman

[ianw2]

my layman's understanding is that crustaceans stay pretty much to the sea floor and on land? I mean the fish that hunt them (i.e. trigger fish) tend to do things that get them up off the sandy bottom where they can easily be hunted.

Being tiny, a crustacean, and at the surface in open water is not a good thing. Perhaps someone else knows what these things are?

Uhmmm...Krill?

And, yes, I'm a skeptic, too.

 

[Dadvocate]

Wow!! How about just enjoying the story as I did!!!

Well, I guess the only response I can give to that is that there are probably plenty of opinions and preferences that I have which differ significantly from those of others in the world. For instance, I love Mexican food but hate mayonnaise with a passion. Some people I know can’t stand Mexican food yet love to eat mayonnaise. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to say “How about just enjoying Mexican food as I do?” or for them to tell me to enjoy mayonnaise simply because they do.

It is the same with the things people read, the music they listen to, and how they choose to live their lives. This comes as a necessary consequence of having 6.5 billion people on the planet. The odds are that people somewhere down the line are not going to view things as you do. I admit that I am critical of newspapers that peddle these types of yarns. It isn’t reminiscent of real journalism, and in this case it has the potential to turn people away from an otherwise worthy campaign for ocean safety (of course this is merely my opinion).

Uhmmm...Krill?

And, yes, I'm a skeptic, too.

Okay, I definitely had that coming. I overlooked these tiny crustaceans, so the "Uhmmm" is well deserved in this case. In my defense, I’d like to say that I overlooked them in large part due to fact that Krill feed on even smaller phytoplankton and thus don’t tend to feed on people floating in the water. I have never heard of Krill drawing blood from larger animals in the water in the way that our hapless fisherman described.

Am I wrong here as well?

If so, at least I learned something new from this otherwise ineffectual narrative.

Cheers!

 

[NudeDiver]

Maybe they were really big Krill...you know....as..um...a result of those bomb tests in Bikini Atoll? Radioactivity and all that.

 

[james croft]

Maybe they were really big Krill...you know....as..um...a result of those bomb tests in Bikini Atoll? Radioactivity and all that.

I know that can happen because I once saw a movie Attack of the Giant Leeches. They got really big from radiation exposure from Cape Canaveral and it caused them to drag pretty women into their underwater lair. Sadly for the victims, the lair was in fresh water so no dolphins or whales could save them. Had it not been for the courage of a Florida Game Warden diver armed with a speargun, the women would still be in the lair.

 

[Dadvocate]

And when you really think about it, the women praying for salvation in this case not only got saved from those over-eager bloodsuckers, but they also got a chance to hook up with the heroic hunk who braved an anticoagulation nightmare to save them from their plight.

Probably a better story than the one that started this thread at any rate, and with just as much journalistic integrity.

Cheers!

 

[jepuskar]

Forget that...it must be true...gawd is soo awesome! I love my baby jeebus

 

[dpbishop]

Isn't it a bit odd that these crustaceans apparently swam to him in the open ocean and started chomping on him? I admit that I am not a marine biologist. Nonetheless, my layman's understanding is that crustaceans stay pretty much to the sea floor and on land? I mean the fish that hunt them (i.e. trigger fish) tend to do things that get them up off the sandy bottom where they can easily be hunted.

Being tiny, a crustacean, and at the surface in open water is not a good thing. Perhaps someone else knows what these things are? Sounds to me like he may have conjured up this tall tale after lying on the beach where these little critters got hold of him. Happy to be alive, he embellished other creatures of the vertebrate variety for future job security.The details involved here are remarkable to say the least, especially for a guy "blanketed in darkness"?

I've pulled Japanese fishing floats out of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, half way between Hawaii & the US, that had little crabs hanging onto them.

As far as the rescue by dolphins goes, there have been many reports of this over the years, dating back to ancient Greece. Back in the 60's some girlfriends of my sisters, who had drifted off shore on surfboards in Florida, where protected from a school of sharks by dolphins who surrounded them and pushed them back up on the boards. This was observed by the Coast Guard rescue team in the Helicopter.

Due to the sensitivity of cetacean "sonar", they are aware of our mammalian nature, and in situations like this seem to treat us the same as they do juvenile or injured members of their pod.

 

[Dadvocate]

I've pulled Japanese fishing floats out of the middle of the Pacific Ocean, half way between Hawaii & the US, that had little crabs hanging onto them.

Okay, that is interesting. But this occurrence raises more questions. Why were they *hanging* onto the floats and not merely *swimming* near them? Is it possible that the crabs got to the floats in some other way and then hung out there for lack of any other option? Given that fishing floats tend to be connected to some type of securing line (and a cage or net of some type), is it feasible that they got there by climbing up from the bottom to the float? This occurrence of open water crabs would be more supportive of the fisherman’s account if they were doing a synchronized swimming routine as opposed to hanging around a float that has a direct connection to the bottom of the sea.

But let’s go ahead and assume that these crabs you reference were of this free swimming variety anyway. Were they also of the type that take to gathering in *swarms* in water and biting off large chunks of flesh from human beings and other mammals, say a snorkeler trying to clean barnacles off of the float? If so, what species might they be? The only “swarms” of crustaceans referenced so far are krill, and I still don’t think these little critters could do that much damage.

I have heard of crabs on land being aggressive and snappy. It seems to me that the detail in ominous monster crabs is an embellishment to go right along with the other flights of fancy in this yarn.

As far as the rescue by dolphins goes, there have been many reports of this over the years, dating back to ancient Greece. Back in the 60's some girlfriends of my sisters, who had drifted off shore on surfboards in Florida, where protected from a school of sharks by dolphins who surrounded them and pushed them back up on the boards. This was observed by the Coast Guard rescue team in the Helicopter.

Due to the sensitivity of cetacean "sonar", they are aware of our mammalian nature, and in situations like this seem to treat us the same as they do juvenile or injured members of their pod.

Before getting into anything else, the key phrase above is “observed by the Coast Guard rescue team”.

I’m not saying that dolphins are not capable of this kind of behavior in interacting with human beings. There is no requirement I have in pointing to oddities in this account that also requires me to discount every single case where this type of story has been reported. I am reasonably sure that the accounts and the explanation you provide are probably accurate, particularly the parts that have corroboration as the aforementioned phrase suggests. The problem is that all cases such as this need to be judged based on their own merits, regardless of the number of cases previously reported. I even allow for this contingency for topics as far reaching and ridiculous as ghost sightings and UFO encounters, both of which have long standing traditions in documented cases that go back pretty far as well. Here in China, the belief in ghosts goes back even farther down the timeline than ancient Greece.

Given the ridiculous nature of the ambiguous evidence in UFO sightings and in meaningful interactions with lost souls, I am far more likely to accept a dolphin rescue story on the face than one of these. Nonetheless, the account of any occurrence still has to at least ring as plausible and consistent with other accounts. Someone should be able to corroborate the account with something in the way of common sense. The fisherman should have some explanation for his account, and frankly speaking the person writing about it in a newspaper ought to at least display some level of critical thinking skills in asking a few probing questions. How was he able to provide a description of the number of the animals and the type if he was in complete darkness for instance? This remains a mystery.

And though it is feasible in that dolphins and whales do in fact interact with people, the jury is still out on these ravaging hordes of blood thirsty *bugto*. Two whales on either side of this man, coupled with a pod of thirty dolphins swimming along in this rescue tale are also a bit farfetched. It reads like a resurrection account, replete with organ sheet music, trumpets playing, and winged angels ushering the protagonist by the forearms to the kingdom of god. Given the belief culture in the Philippines, this makes a lot of sense actually.

Cheers!

 

[james croft]

Can we just get back to the Giant Leeches ?

 

[Dadvocate]

Stop pretending it is the leeches you want to talk about. You are thinking of the pretty girls. Admit it.

Cheers!