What was supposed to be an exciting time on jet skis turned into an unexpected experience for two men in Florida, after they helped rescue a dolphin who got its tail caught in a rope attached to a fishing net.
Nicholas Tuduri caught the entire rescue on camera, which started about 20 minutes into his trip with his friend Craig on Nov. 21 in Biscayne Bay, off the coast of Florida near Miami.
In the video, a dolphin can be seen swimming up near Nicholas Tuduri’s jet ski before he notices what appears to be a cage attached to its tail.
“Oh, yo, hey, she’s caught,” Tuduri shouted.
He warns his friend not to move his jet ski so as to avoid the dolphin, before driving his own closer to the dolphin which was swimming near Craig.
The video shows Tuduri proceeding to get out a knife and jump in the water to try and cut the rope attached to the cage.
After a bit of time, he gets back onto his personal watercraft while keeping a handle on the rope, then begins to pull the rope above water.
“Come here, girl, I got you,” he is heard saying on camera. “I know, I know. No, no, no, I got you.”
Tuduri and Craig proceed to work together, though at one point Craig appears to be pulled into the water.
In the end, Tuduri eventually gets a good enough grip to use his knife to cut the rope from the dolphin’s tail, letting it go.
“I think once the dolphin realized that we had the cage up to the surface and (it) didn’t have to fight us so much to try to breathe, (it) just floated and stayed there with us,” Tuduri told Fox News-affiliate 7 News Miami.
“It was watching us, observing us do what we were doing.”
He said that there was a reward of sorts for the pair after freeing the dolphin.
“It must have been maybe seven or eight of them came right up to my jet ski and started swimming with my jet ski,” he said. “I think they were thanking me.”
When he initially saw the dolphin, Tuduri told NBC News-affiliate WPTV 5 he was concerned the dolphin might have drowned if he didn’t act.
“If we wouldn’t have intervened, I don’t think the dolphin would have survived a couple of hours,” he said.
Despite having been on the water many times before, he said he’d never experienced a situation like this, but added if other jet skiers saw the story of what happened they’d do the same thing if put in this situation.
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