Man was lucky to be alive after a ‘sexually frustrated’ dolphin attacked him while swimming

A man claims he was “lucky to be alive” after a vocal dolphin roaming off the coast of Tsuruga in central Japan launched another attack on a swimmer.

Takuma Goto claims he was in the water with a friend earlier this summer when they were attacked by a lone dolphin.

New footage shows the dolphin chasing Goto before colliding with him. The man tries to swim away while bystanders can be heard screaming. Another swimmer nearby pushes a paddleboard toward Goto to help him.

Experts believe it is the same “sexually frustrated” mammal behind about 15 other attacks on swimmers in Fukui this summer The Telegraph, up from five incidents last summer and one in 2022.

Goto was swimming at Crystal Beach when he claimed the mammal first attacked his friend. The man then claims the dolphin lifted its head out of the water before attacking him.

“I knew it wasn’t a shark, but it was coming right at me,” the 23-year-old told the publication.

“It attacked me and bit me…it kept attacking me and I really believed I was going to die. My biggest fear was that I would be pulled underwater and further out to sea.”

When Goto came ashore and was helped by a nearby surfer, he said he suffered some gruesome injuries.

“The inside of my finger popped out,” he said, adding that the injury resulted in five stitches and a bite to his left wrist and forearm, as well as his right hand and upper arm.

Last month, experts weighed in on why they believe dolphins were involved in the attacks.

In an interview with the BBC, biologist Dr. Simon Allen said the culprit of such attacks would likely be a single male bottlenose dolphin – who has probably been kicked out of his school and is “looking for other company”.

“Bottlenose dolphins are very social animals and this sociality can be expressed in very physical ways,” said Dr. Allen, who is also a principal investigator on the Shark Bay Dolphin Research project, said in the release.

“Just as with humans and other social animals, hormonal fluctuations, sexual frustration or the desire for dominance can lead the dolphin to hurt the people with whom it interacts. Because they are such powerful animals, this can cause serious injury to humans.”

Mari Kobayashi, head of the marine biology laboratory at Tokyo Agricultural University, said the attacks likely came from the same lone dolphin, which probably bites to communicate.

“It is believed to be a male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin and we know that males sometimes communicate by biting each other. So it could be that they’re trying to do this with people,” she said.

“In addition, it is a species that usually lives in groups, so it is possible that it is solitary.”

Last year, a series of incidents involving a dolphin occurred in the city of Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, Japan.

Four swimmers were injured by a dolphin, including a man in his 60s who suffered broken ribs and bites to his hands. Another man in his 40s suffered arm bites in a separate incident on the same popular beach the same morning. Two other people were believed to have been injured by the same dolphin later in the day.