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Heart attacks follow dolphin hit
Topic Started: Dec 28 2006, 11:39 AM (294 Views)
Kahu
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Heart attacks follow dolphin hit
By MATTHEW TORBIT and MICHAEL FIELD - The Dominion Post | Thursday, 28 December 2006

A woman who suffered face, chest and neck injuries after being crushed when a dolphin leapt out of the water on to a boat, suffered two heart attacks as rescuers battled to get her to safety.

Pukekohe woman, Kelly James, 27, was still listed as critical but stable in Auckland Hospital after a water drama at Slipper Island off the Coromandel Peninsula on Boxing Day.
Medical staff who tended to Ms James said her heart stopped beating twice before she arrived at hospital.

She was sitting on the bow of a 5.5-metre runabout near Slipper Island off the Coromandel Peninsula on Tuesday when a bottlenose dolphin leapt out of the water and hit her.

A second woman on the boat was flung through the windscreen and canopy. She suffered minor cuts and bruises. The dolphin rolled off the boat and swam away.

Coastguard staff gave the woman medical treatment before Westpac Rescue Helicopter paramedics arrived.

Pauanui coastguard jet rescue member Steve Taylor said Ms James was slipping in and out of consciousness when he got to the Slipper Island beach where she had been taken. She suffered a heart attack shortly after paramedics arrived but was revived, he said. Her heart stopped beating for a second time while she was in the air on the way to Auckland.

Rest of story here
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elkouri
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kahu
how terriblY scarey that must have been.
what a freak accident.
I HOPE they are ok

ELK
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Kahu
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This is the first time ever that this sort of accident has occurred, anywhere in the world. There was no indication that they (the people) were harrassing the dolphins. They were in an area which has a high population of dolphins used to tourists. Apparently the woman was sitting right in the bow of the boat, and the dolphin landed on her like a ton of bricks.........! Maybe the dolphin just got fed up with being stared at?
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elkouri
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do you have a followup on this kahu
elk

i thought dolphins are usually gentle.
maybe something frightened it.
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Kahu
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This occurrence seems to have been a freak accident. The wrong place and the wrong time, so to speak. There was some concern for the dolphin involved, but it seems it was unhurt. Here's the rest of the story.....as far as we know it.

Quote:
 
Her partner Dion Lawson said the dolphin hit her on the chest, a male friend was thrown out of the boat and he and a female friend were knocked backwards, the New Zealand Herald reported today.

He said they were "just cruising along" when the dolphins started to jump.

"They were just playing and jumping."

The couple had been in Pauanui for the Christmas break, catching up with friends and "just doing the normal Coromandel thing".

He said Ms James was sitting on the bow of the boat when one of the dolphins leaped into the air about five metres away.

The dolphin "pretty much had nowhere to go" and landed on the boat, striking Ms James in the chest.

"Kelly just fell back, basically" and the "mad panic" ensued, he said.

Ms James parents arrived in Auckland yesterday from their home in Noosa, on Australia's Sunshine Coast.

Slipper Island Resort manager Barbara Needham said there were usually about eight dolphins off the island, but this year as many as 20 had been seen, attracted by fish in the area.

Boaties were generally well-behaved around the dolphins and she did not believe any rules were necessary to protect the mammals.

"We are concerned about the dolphin. It must have got a nasty shock."

Conservation Department marine mammal ranger Kirsty Russell said bottlenose dolphins could weigh up to 600 kilograms.

- With NZPA


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elkouri
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thank you kahu,
were the man and two women ok.

LOVE
elk
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Kahu
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Injured dolphin fan on the improve
By IRENE CHAPPLE - Sunday Star Times
Sunday, 31 December 2006

The woman critically injured when a dolphin leapt on to a boat and crushed her on Boxing Day is fighting back from the accident which could have killed her.
Kelly James, 27, is so besotted with dolphins that she has a dolphin tattoo and toy dolphins in her car.
She was watching dolphins swim alongside a friend's boat when the accident happened last week.

James has been in intensive care since then and her boyfriend Dion Lawson yesterday thanked all those involved in her rescue as she fought for her life.

Lawson, on behalf of James's family, said he wanted to thank Westpac Rescue Helicopter paramedic Chris Deacon, who tended to her on Slipper Island beach, where she suffered a heart attack. She had another heart attack in the rescue helicopter.

Lawson also wanted to thank all of James's friends, who had rallied around her, and the Tairua and Pauanui rescue centres, "and basically everybody on the beach that day".

Deacon praised the surgeons at Auckland Hospital and said the accident was "one of those jobs where everything has to go perfectly, otherwise she would have died at the scene".

"You look skywards sometimes and say a little prayer and hope things are going to go well," he said.

"You feel you are in the hands of the gods sometimes, but you can sort of guide the hand, if you do things right, you can loosen the grip off the throat so they can take another gasp."

James, from Pukekohe, south of Auckland, had her chest crushed when the dolphin leapt on to a boat while it was cruising near Slipper Island, on the Coromandel Peninsula. Her condition yesterday improved from critical to stable, but a hospital spokeswoman said there were no plans to move her into a ward yet.

Lawson, a former Counties Manukau rugby player, has been by James's bedside since the accident and told the Sunday Star-Times she had been improving over the week.

James's parents have also flown in from Australia's Sunshine Coast to support their daughter.

A friend and workmate of Lawson, Geoff Andrew, said James was "very athletic" and that probably helped her recovery. She had skydived at Lawson's company Christmas party, plays netball and played squash with her former boss Greg Roberts, who said she was "a lovely lady".

Andrew was in his boat, metres away from James, when the accident happened. He said James had been waterskiing before the accident and "she's a mad dolphin lover, she's got a dolphin tattoo, dolphins hanging off her mirror in her car, she was in seventh heaven sitting on the front of the boat".

Andrew said the dolphin was "as big as a horse... it was like a horse falling from three metres' height".

Lawson's friend David McRobbie, who owns the 5.5m boat which was struck, would not talk about the incident until James was out of hospital. But he said the boat was being repaired in Auckland and "we are still trying to piece together what happened, it happened that quick".

Conservation Department Hauraki area manager John Gaukrodger said it sounded as though the dolphin was not seriously injured in the incident.

"They are incredibly solid animals."

He said the boat was doing nothing wrong when the accident happened and was moving slowly when the pod of dolphins came into the bay.

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elkouri
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i searched all over for more INFormation.
thank you kahu.

ELK
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Kahu
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Most of my links come from stuff.co.nz, and then you can select which area of the country you're interested in.
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elkouri
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THAnk you kahu/

i have put it in my favorites for reference.
elk

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