Flipper to the rescue

last updated 8 January 2015

Whangerei, New Zealand

Dolphins surrounded four swimmers to save them from a great white shark, New Zealand newspapers reported this week. Lifeguard Rob Howes was leading three young lifeguards, including his teenage daughter, on a training swim 300 feet from shore when they were suddenly surrounded by an agitated pod of dolphins. “They started to herd us up. They pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us,” Howes said. Howes was trying to break away from the pod, he said, when he saw a 9-foot great white approaching. “They had corralled us up to protect us,” he said. It was the second rescue by dolphin in the region in two years.