Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Pan­ic swept through Las Cuevas Beach on Sun­day, af­ter beach­go­ers fled the wa­ter be­liev­ing a shark was cir­cling in the shal­lows. How­ev­er, it was lat­er dis­cov­ered that it was a dol­phin.

A video of the in­ci­dent spread rapid­ly across so­cial me­dia, al­so spark­ing ini­tial pub­lic con­cern. It showed bathers scram­bling to shore as a fin was spot­ted cut­ting through the wa­ter close to the beach, trig­ger­ing fear and con­fu­sion among beach­go­ers.

Res­i­dent Akeem De Ver­teuil, who wit­nessed the in­ci­dent, said the ma­rine an­i­mal was part of a group mov­ing off­shore be­fore one ap­peared to be­come sep­a­rat­ed and en­tered shal­low wa­ters.

“Well, yes­ter­day it had a por­poise. They were mov­ing in groups like dol­phins, and some­times one leaves the group and ends up lost. He came in­to the shal­low area and was mak­ing a cir­cle be­fore the oth­ers went back out in­to deep­er wa­ters,” De Ver­teuil said.

He added that he had seen a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion the week be­fore, when an­oth­er dol­phin re­mained near shore for some time be­fore lat­er wash­ing ashore.

The in­abil­i­ty to de­tect what was in the wa­ter caused alarm among bathers, who ini­tial­ly be­lieved a shark was in the wa­ter.

“Peo­ple were pan­ick­ing and run­ning out of the wa­ter be­cause they thought it was a shark,” he said.

De­spite the scare, De Ver­teuil said he re­turned to the beach the fol­low­ing morn­ing with his child and en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic not to be de­terred from en­joy­ing the sea.

“I still came this morn­ing and bathed with my youth. We have plen­ty of peo­ple ask­ing ques­tions, but I want them to feel free to come on the beach and en­joy it. Vil­lagers are al­ways around; if any­one has con­cerns, they can talk to us and find out which spots are safe to bathe,” he added.

Vis­i­tor Leo Nichols said he al­so made en­quiries af­ter hear­ing the re­ports and was told it was a dol­phin.

“I spoke to the man, he called up here and found out it was a dol­phin. I don’t be afraid of noth­ing. Fear is fear it­self. You could sit at home, and some­thing could fall on your house and kill you, so what is the fear about go­ing to sea?” Nichols said.

Nichols, who pre­vi­ous­ly lived in Flori­da, said he con­tin­ued bathing even in ar­eas where shark bites had been re­port­ed.

“When I lived in Flori­da, and peo­ple were get­ting bit­ten at West Palm Beach, we still used to go to sea at night while peo­ple were get­ting bit­ten in the day,” he said.

Al­so at the beach was Nadir Ali, who was cel­e­brat­ing his 90th birth­day when the com­mo­tion un­fold­ed.
Ali said he sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion af­ter hear­ing claims about a shark.

“I in­quired about the shark re­ports, but the vil­lagers told me it was just a dol­phin,” he said.

Res­i­dents are now urg­ing beach­go­ers to re­main calm, ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion be­fore re­act­ing to vi­ral so­cial me­dia re­ports, and fol­low guid­ance from ex­pe­ri­enced lo­cals and life­guards when vis­it­ing the pop­u­lar north coast beach.