A metal cage attached to a thick rope was tangled around the tail of the dolphin. (Source: Nicholas Tuduri/ Facebook) A dolphin was saved in the nick of time by a man riding his jet ski in Florida, and the man’s prompt action caught on camera is now viral.
The footage shows Nick Tuduri, identified by the Florida Highway Patrol, jet skiing with a friend in the open waters of Biscayne Bay when he noticed a flailing dolphin. Without much hesitation, Tuduri is seen jumping into action to try and set free the animal, which is tangled in rope attached to a cage.
The video captured on his GoPro camera showed him using a knife to cut through the rope wrapped around the dolphin’s tail as it struggled to swim. He posted a series of videos on Facebook showing how he and his friend Craig helped the animal.
The video shows Tuduri using a knife to cut the rope. After sometime, he is seen getting back onto his watercraft while holding the rope. “Come here, girl, I got you,” he is heard saying on camera. “I know, I know. No, no, no, I got you.”
“This animal was in trouble, and it was in trouble due to humans,” Tuduri told WPTV. “It was a very thick, tough, tough nylon rope. It took me almost three minutes of straight cutting.” The young man told the local news channel had he not intervened at the time, he didn’t think “the dolphin would have survived a couple of hours”.
Despite having been on the water many times before, he said he had never experienced a situation like this. As his story went viral, he also urged other jet skiers to do help animals in distress if they faced a similar situation.
“It was amazing. The dolphin was looking at us with his eyes, he was watching us, observing us, seeing what we were doing. He just let us do our thing, and we were able to cut it free,” Tuduri was quoted by CBS Miami. He added that said that after the rescue operation a pod of seven dolphins swam alongside the watercraft.
