Dolphins Circled Four Swimmers for 40 Minutes to Shield Them From a Great White

On October 30, 2004, lifeguard Rob Howes was leading a training swim with his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper, and Helen Slade off Ocean Beach near Whangarei, New Zealand. They were about 100 metres from shore.

Without warning, a pod of seven bottlenose dolphins appeared and began circling the group. They swam as close as four centimetres from the swimmers' bodies, slapping the water aggressively with their tails.

At first, Howes thought the dolphins were playing. Then the behaviour intensified. The dolphins pushed all four swimmers into a tight cluster and would not let them disperse.

This went on for 40 minutes.

Howes decided to test the boundary. He deliberately drifted away from the group. Two of the largest dolphins broke formation, charged at him, and pushed him back.

That was when he looked down and saw it. A 9-foot great white shark was circling approximately two metres below them.

The dolphins had known the entire time. They had been shielding the swimmers with their own bodies, forming a living barrier between the humans and the predator.

Lifeguard Matt Fleet, patrolling nearby in a rescue boat, saw the dolphins' unusual behaviour and dived in to join the group — where he also spotted the shark. After 40 minutes, the dolphins' circle held long enough for the group to swim back to shore safely.

Scientists have since debated whether the dolphins acted with conscious intent to protect the humans, or were simply responding to the shark as a threat to their own pod, with the swimmers incidentally benefiting. The behaviour is consistent with known dolphin anti-predator responses. Whether they were deliberately saving human lives remains an open question.

Rob Howes has never doubted what happened. "They were definitely protecting us," he told the New Zealand Herald. "I have no question in my mind."