18 attacks near the town of Mihama are thought to have been carried out by bottlenose dolphins so far this year; one of the victims required at least 20 stitches to heal the damage to their finger.
One swimmer had a broken rib last year, one of at least six victims of attacks. An incident in 2022 harmed another individual.
Owing to this, authorities have issued a warning that the mammals have the ability to “drag you into the sea, which could be life-threatening,” in addition to “bite you with their sharp teeth and cause you to bleed”.
Although dolphins are thought to be amiable creatures, attacks by them can be deadly.
When two male swimmers attempted to ride a dolphin in Brazil in 1994, the dolphin attacked and killed one of them while wounding the other. Before then, it was thought that the dolphin, known by the nickname Tião, had hurt at least 22 humans.
The dorsal fin of a dolphin that was seen biting a man’s fingers at a beach in Tsuruga, a port city close to Mihama, resembled that of a 2.5-meter-long dolphin that was seen off the coast of Fukui province last year, according to Tadamichi Morisaka, a cetology professor at Mie University in Japan.
Because each dorsal fin has unique ridges, coloration, and notches, it resembles a dolphin’s fingerprint.
