In February 2009, a bottlenose dolphin named Nari swam up to the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island off Australia’s Queensland. Dozens of wild dolphins, including Nari, routinely entered an adjacent bay every night for dinner—hand fed fish by tourists and resort staff. But on this night, the workers immediately noticed something was wrong: Nari was missing a huge chunk of blubber from his dorsal surface, just behind his blowhole.
As Trevor Hassard, director of the Tangalooma Marine Education and Conservation Centre, came rushing down to the wharf, he knew immediately that Nari’s injuries were the work of a shark—and this was one of the worst bites he had seen in his 19 years at the facility. “It was absolutely horrific,” he recalls. Worried that the bite may have nicked Nari’s trachea, Hassard sent some pictures of the injured dolphin to David Blyde at the nearby Sea World on ...
