Featured Image Credit: Boston 25 News
Topics: Animals
Cameron Frew
A grandmother's dream holiday went haywire when she was savagely attacked by a dolphin.
Dipping into the water to spend some up-close-and-personal time with dolphins is a relatively common holiday pastime. They swim around you, you get a nice photo of it giving you a kiss, and you walk away with a lovely memory.
For Janet Ferreira, she nearly didn't walk away at all from her trip, after her dolphin encounter left her with permanent injuries.
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Janet and her husband Steve were on a cruise to celebrate their 40th anniversary together, alongside their kids and grandchildren.
The couple, from Acushnet, Massachusetts, had planned a number of excursions as their cruise made its way to a number of Caribbean islands and Mexico, including a brief swim with dolphins.
All seemed to be going well until she waited for the two dolphins to swim behind her for the 'dolphin tow'. At this point, one of them rammed her in the lower back, before striking her another two times before she was yanked out by the trainer.
Janet told Boston 25 News: "Maybe two seconds after that hit, here comes another one.
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"It’s like somebody would take a baseball bat, like David Ortiz would take a baseball bat and just swing it at my back.
"You start thinking, ‘If this hits me one more time, I could die,’ die in front of my family and in front of my three young grandchildren."
Janet sustained a broken spine and ribs in the attack, and it took more than a month for her to get back on her feet. She's since filed a lawsuit against Dolphin Discovery Cozumel and her cruise line Royal Caribbean.
Her attorney George Leontire said: "She lied in bed for about a day and a half, without any treatment, until a transport could be arranged."
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Her husband Steve also said: "You feel alone, you’re helpless. Helpless because we felt that they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to handle it."
In a statement to the outlet, The Dolphin Company, the parent company of Dolphin Discovery Cozumel, said: "For more than 27 years The Dolphin Company has operated with the greatest respect and consideration for our guests, our team members and the animals in our care.
"Each year two million visitors come to our parks around the world. Above all, safety and security are our number one priority; any type of unplanned experience is very rare yet something we take very seriously.
"Dolphin Discovery Cozumel has been in our family of parks since 1998 hosting more than 1.8 million visitors since that time.”
LADbible has reached out to Royal Caribbean for comment.