A feel-good story about a man being saved by dolphins is making waves online again… 21 years later.
Global (27 December 2025) – A story from two decades ago has suddenly leapt back into the spotlight, washing up on social media timelines from Cape Town to California.
Dolphins protecting swimmers from a shark sounds like something straight out of a movie… and parts of the viral version might as well be. But when you strip away the edits, the AI (or photoshopped) visuals and the “someone-said-someone-said” fluff, the real event is actually more extraordinary than anything fiction could dream up.
This week, a post started doing the rounds, a dramatic retelling that names a British swimmer, mentions his daughter, throws in some slow-motion dolphin action (and lots of emojis) and adds a terrifying shark encounter. It’s a great read and it’s all over our feeds for a reason.
But it is not what happened.
And this is where the story gets interesting, because the truth is already remarkable. It doesn’t need help.
To understand what happened, we need to go back 21 years.
According to ABC News, the original incident happened in October 2004 off Ocean Beach on New Zealand’s North Island. No tourist. No child. No Instagram. Just four lifeguards on a training swim, 100 metres from shore, doing what lifeguards do.
Suddenly, a pod of dolphins appeared and changed the entire atmosphere of the ocean.
“They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us,” said Rob Howes (the actual person involved whose name keeps changing in the viral posts).
When he drifted away from the tight bubble the dolphins had created, two of the larger dolphins nudged him back. That was when he saw a three-metre great white shark, just beneath the surface.
“I just recoiled,” Rob said. “It was only about two metres away from me. The water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face.”
For forty minutes, the dolphins refused to budge. Every attempt to leave was blocked. Every escape route was redirected. Until the shark eventually backed off.
Another lifeguard, Matt Fleet, joined them from a rescue boat.
“I just kept looking around to see where it was,” he said. “I was keen to get out of the water but did not panic.”
Orca Research explained that dolphins have been known to challenge sharks to protect themselves and their young, and, occasionally, that instinct extends to protecting other vulnerable beings nearby.
“They could have sensed the danger to the swimmers and taken action to protect them,” said Ingrid Visser from Orca Research.
And we’ve seen this before. Most recently, in 2022, dolphins circled a lone great white shark in footage captured by a drone over the waters off Plettenberg Bay.
So dolphins are great protectors. And Rob’s story is absolutely epic. The challenge is that the post currently going viral gets a lot of it wrong. Like his name. It also added in a child (in some cases, more than one child) to try to make the story more emotional. And it exaggerates the story while adding a fake photo to seal the deal.
When we share altered stories, even happy ones, we take away from the truth. Rob’s story is already incredible. It didn’t need all the extra fluff.
The good news is that, thanks to that viral post, millions of people are rediscovering a real moment of ocean magic. A moment when nature stepped in. A moment where instinct looked a little bit like empathy.
Maybe the lesson isn’t that the internet got it wrong, maybe it’s that the truth found its way back.
And that’s good news worth sharing.
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