EDGEWATER, Fla. – A boater was knocked unconscious by a leaping dolphin along the Atlantic coast of central Florida.
The Coast Guard says witnesses called 911 Thursday morning after seeing the dolphin jump out of the Intracoastal Waterway and hit Barbara Howard of Mansfield, Ohio. Howard was sitting in the 18-foot boat with her husband Norman, their daughter and their daughter's boyfriend.
Howard regained consciousness by the time the Coast Guard reached the boat in Edgewater.
She and her husband were briefly hospitalized and treated for cuts and bruises.
The Howards estimate the dolphin was at least 8 feet long and had jumped about 6 feet in the air onto the bow of the boat.
They say it slid in their laps and its thrashing tail knocked them down.
“We were able to wrestle it off the boat,” Norman Howard told FOX affiliate WOFL-TV in Orlando. “I looked back at my wife there was blood everywhere.”
Their daughter's boyfriend rolled the dolphin back into the water.
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