Michael Maes heard the dolphin before seeing it, never imagining that it would become his worst nightmare.
He was diving with his wife and a friend off the coast of Grand Cayman, in the Cayman Islands, in September 2012, when the animal suddenly appeared just a few centimeters from his face.
“Its eye was right there, just centimeters from mine… I screamed”, the videographer recalled about that first encounter.
At first, it seemed like one of those magical moments any diver would dream of experiencing. What Michael still didn’t know was that he had just encountered “Stinky”, a solitary dolphin that the Cayman Islands Department of Environment had been urging swimmers and divers to avoid for months.
And he soon understood why.
The animal began approaching insistently and displaying sexual behavior toward the divers. Stinky was an adult male weighing approximately 227 kilos and measuring 2 meters who, living apart from other dolphins, had begun directing toward humans the “amorous” behaviors it would normally display toward other members of its species.
“It’s an animal with 227 kilos of pure muscle. I dive with sharks and know a few tricks for keeping my distance, but he beat me at every one of them”, Michael recounted.
The dolphin exposed its private parts and first tried to mount Michael’s leg, then pushed him against the seafloor and prevented him from getting away. His wife, Ellen Cuylaerts, and marine biologist Alex Mustard tried to distract it with their fins and diving equipment so it would leave him alone.
Dolphins cannot pleasure themselves, but they can overpower a person, and with their weight of more than 200 kilos… it’s an encounter you won’t survive. Stinky’s behavior became so concerning to specialists from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that they later traveled to the island to study it and confirmed something simple: if you see a solitary dolphin approaching, get out of the water immediately.