A day at the beach got even better for a group of surfers in California. We’re sure the surfers have seen everything out on the water — and today you can add surfing with dolphins to their list! The group was positively tickled when they realized they weren’t alone in the waves. Thankfully, another person was there and captured the whole thing on camera and the internet is awestruck!
Who hasn’t secretly wished to swim with a dolphin? This is one moment we’re sure that no one wanted to forget. Shared by ABC 7 News, the video looks like something out of a dream!
The footage is absolutely perfect. Just imagine, you head out to surf for the day and end up riding waves with real dolphins! In the clip, you can hear the person behind the camera cheering as the dolphins jump in and out of the water. Meanwhile, the surfer was trying his hardest not to run into the animal. Thank goodness they didn’t collide!
“A friendly dolphin pod joined a group of surfers as they caught some waves in California,” the video’s caption reads. “The dolphins are captured majestically leaping in and out of the water alongside the surfers at Rincon Beach.”
Commenters thought the scene was perfect. “What a magical moment for the surfers,” wrote one person. “The humans are back. Doug, show em how it’s done,” another commenter teased. “Dolphins are like dogs of the ocean. They just wanna play and run with you,” added a third commenter. “The dolphins are making the surfer get a speed boost when they swim nearby like that,” someone else added.
What to Do if You See a Dolphin in the Water
It might seem like fun and games to randomly run into a dolphin, but it has to be stressed that these are very real, very wild, animals that you probably shouldn’t bother too much. It’s best to keep about 50 yards between you and any dolphins you might see in the water. There are lots of reasons for this, but it actually stresses them out. It can also be illegal. So do yourself a favor and keep your hands to yourself.
Similarly, you want to stay still and stay quiet if you see a dolphin nearby. Dolphins are often thought of as being friendly, but that’s not necessarily the case. Some dolphins might see you as a threat and attack. Which is why you want to keep your distance and try to wait patiently for them to pass. It goes without saying that you should never feed a dolphin and you want to back away slowly from wherever you spot them.
Thankfully, none of these surfers got hurt during their encounter. But they did get a pretty cool story!
Bird flu has been spreading in North America since late 2021, but recently the situation has taken some concerning turns.
In January, the first person in the US died from bird flu. In February, two more people were hospitalized, and officials detected two new spillovers into cows, indicating the virus is here to stay among livestock and farm workers. The price of eggs has also skyrocketed as bird flu moves through egg-laying chickens.
“The past couple of weeks, it’s all been new plot twists in the H5N1 story,” said Meghan Davis, an associate professor of environmental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
People who work closely with wild and domesticated animals should take precautions, such as washing their hands, wearing a face mask while handling sick or dead poultry and cleaning their litter, and monitoring symptoms after contact with animals.
But most people should feel “alert, not alarmed”, Davis said.
“The overall risk to the average person remains low,” said Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases physician and assistant professor of medicine at Emory University.
“But have an awareness, because that could potentially change – because the outbreak is not quite contained.”
What is bird flu?
Bird flu is influenza that usually spreads in birds – but it can also be transmitted to other animals and people.
There are several types of bird flu, but right now the H5N1 strain is a highly pathogenic avian influenza spreading widely in wild and domestic species, and spilling over into people.
What are the symptoms of avian flu in humans?
Bird flu usually causes respiratory symptoms and sometimes stomach upset.
Patients usually have typical flu symptoms: cough, fever, fatigue, body aches and headaches. Some patients have runny or stuffy noses and sore throats, and some people experience diarrhea, nausea or vomiting.
More severe illness includes difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, seizures and what the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls “altered consciousness” – all signs that a patient should go to the hospital.
Very red or irritated eyes (known as conjunctivitis or “pink eye”) have also been a common symptom in this outbreak, and are not a typical flu symptom.
How many people have died from bird flu?
Since 2003, there have been more than 950 reported cases of H5N1 globally, and 49% of patients have died.
In the US outbreak, the mortality rate has been much lower so far. There have been 70 confirmed cases, and several more probable cases, in the past year. One person has died, and three others have been hospitalized.
It’s possible the mortality rate is lower because the cases detected in this outbreak have been less severe. But the mortality rate is still significantly high in cases that are bad enough to need hospital care, said Davis.
In countries with poor access to healthcare, the mortality rate may be higher because sick patients aren’t able to get care that could save their lives, she said.
“The virus can be really nasty for some people,” said Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and dean of the Yale School of Public Health.
We don’t know yet what puts someone at risk of getting really sick, Ranney said.
Flu viruses mutate and evolve quickly. If bird flu begins spreading between humans, there could be changes in how it sickens people, she added. “There’s really no way for me to say, if it becomes a pandemic, that we’re going to have the same case fatality ratio that we’re seeing right now.”
How does bird flu spread to humans?
Bird flu spreads through contact with animals and unpasteurized animal products. That means the people who are most at risk are those who care for chickens and dairy cattle, those who come into contact with wild birds and animals, and anyone drinking raw milk or eating undercooked meat.
There have also been two US cases, in California and Missouri, where patients got sick with H5N1 with no known contact with animals or raw food.
There has been no documented transmission between humans.
However, details about the outbreak have been scarce in the past month especially, starting with a communications blackout at health agencies, so it’s not clear if new patterns of transmission have emerged.
“We’re missing opportunities to learn more about this virus and the risk that it poses to people and our economy,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. “But also, we’re missing the opportunity to possibly discover something that would make us worry less about the virus.”
What is the treatment for bird flu?
Flu antivirals such as Tamiflu seem to work against bird flu by reducing the severity of illness and possibly keeping patients from transmitting it to others.
But Tamiflu needs to be given soon after illness starts. And scientists recently identified a strain that could demonstrate some resistance to antivirals.skip past newsletter promotion
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Yes, there are bird flu vaccines for people and for animals. But we don’t use them yet.
Some of the shots for people have been licensed for use in the US, while others are still awaiting approval. The US government has stockpiled 4.8m doses of H5N1 vaccines.
But none of them are available to the public. The reasons why are complicated: there have been few hospitalizations and deaths in the US, there isn’t evidence of person-to-person transmission, and officials worry about hesitation over a new vaccine, Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the CDC, has told the Guardian.
Experts say the vaccine should be made available to farm workers, veterinarians and other people at risk. “This is a recurring occupational hazard,” Nuzzo said.
There are also vaccines for poultry, and scientists are working on a cow vaccine as well. But none of these have been given to animals yet.
Does the seasonal flu shot help?
“You should get the seasonal flu vaccine to protect you from seasonal flu,” Davis said. Another reason is that in rare cases when someone catches H5N1, they might catch the seasonal flu at the same time – and the two variants could mix together in a process called reassortment.
This could cause H5N1 to become more easily transmissible or cause more severe disease, suggested Davis. “Brand-new viruses that can transmit easily are the ones that tend to cause epidemics or pandemics.”
Fewer cases of seasonal flu takes pressure off the healthcare system during flu season, and makes it easier for doctors and health departments to identify rare infections like H5N1.
Is bird flu going to get worse?
Any hopes that the current outbreak would simply pass through “have been dashed”, Nuzzo said.
“We have to be looking ahead to what would happen if this virus began spreading more easily between people,” Nuzzo has said. “If it could spread easily between people, we would be in a pandemic, and it would be around the globe in a matter of weeks.”
Experts expect another flu pandemic at some point. It might not be H5N1 – it might be a combination of H5N1 and a different flu variant, or a different type altogether.
That means it’s important to prepare vaccines, treatments and tests, and to strengthen healthcare systems.
Can I get a test for bird flu?
Yes. Your doctor can order an H5N1 test for you at commercial laboratories.
It’s important to let your doctor know why you think you might have bird flu – for instance, if you work closely with animals or consume raw milk, meat or eggs.
“It will help the health authorities to get things in the queue much faster for further testing,” Davis said.
Is there a risk of bird flu from raw milk, eggs or meat?
Raw milk can contain enormous quantities of virus. While no cases have been reported yet in humans from drinking raw milk, it has sickened and killed mammals such as cats – so officials strongly recommend against it for people, as well. Pasteurization (boiling milk for a certain amount of time) kills the virus and makes milk safe to drink. Eggs and meat should be cooked fully to kill all pathogens, including bird flu, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
Davis recommended “good hygiene practices writ large in the kitchen,” such as washing your hands after handling raw eggs or meat.
It’s illegal for sick animals to enter the food chain, but US officials have detected bird flu in meat from dairy cows intended for slaughter. It’s important to cook meat to an internal temperature of at least 145F (63C).
“There are many, many, many different pathogens that you can get exposed to from these sources,” Davis said, such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E coli, listeria and salmonella.
This November, the United Nations will descend on the city of Belém, Brazil in an attempt to solve climate change. The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, will bring 50,000 people to the city. Brazil cut down portions of the Amazon rainforest to build a four-lane highway and make it just a little easier for those 50,000 people to arrive.
As reported by the BBC, the state government of Pará cleared out eight miles of Amazon rainforest to build the highway. The BBC’s article has pictures of the clear-cut forest floor where logs have been piled up along a stretch of road that will soon hold concrete and passing cars.
Forests, in general, and the Amazon Rainforest, in particular, are instrumental in fighting rising global temperatures. André Aranha Corrêa Do Lago, a career Brazilian diplomat who is heading up the COP30, eloquently made the case for forests in a letter he published earlier this week that laid out his vision for the conference, the climate, and the world.
“When we get together in the Brazilian Amazon in November, we must listen to the latest science and re-evaluate the extraordinary role already played by forests and the people who preserve and rely on them,” Do Lago wrote.
Local resident Claudio Verequete lives near the highway and previously made a living harvesting açaí berries. Those trees are gone now, cut down to make way for the UN Climate Conference. “Our fear is that one day someone will come here and say: ‘Here’s some money. We need this area to build a gas station, or to build a warehouse.’ And then we’ll have to leave,” he told the BBC.
The highway cuts across the forest, cutting off access to animals and people who have lived in the forest for generations. What was once a whole area will soon be two halves blocked by pavement. Verequete told the BBC his village won’t even have an onramp to the highway. They will just live abutting its looming noise-blocking walls. Scientists and conservationists, those who know the extraordinary role of the Amazon well, told the BBC they fear the new highway will devastate the local ecology.
Pará has wanted to build a highway to Belém, a city with more than two million people, since 2012. But environmental protections around the Amazon rainforest have always prevented it. In a perverse twist of fate, the upcoming climate conference has given the state the authority to build infrastructure to support it. And so the Amazon was felled. The highway will be called Avenida Liberdade or “Liberty Avenue.”
Avenida Liberdade is part of a much bigger infrastructure project that Pará hopes will revitalize Belém. It’s spending $81 million to expand the airport and build a five-million-square-foot park. The city is building multiple hotels, and organizers are planning to sail high-capacity cruise ships into the city’s port to house people who can’t find room in the hotels.
Belém was chosen on purpose. This is the first U.N. climate conference that will be held in the Amazon, an important natural wonder that’s instrumental in regulating the planet’s temperature. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva campaigned on protecting the forest and, early in his tenure, did slow down deforestation. But it hasn’t stopped, and Lula has even endorsed projects such as allowing oil companies to do exploratory drilling at the mouth of the Amazon river.
“Forests can buy us time in climate action in our rapidly closing window of opportunity,” Do Lago said in his letter. “If we reverse deforestation and recover what has been lost, we can unlock massive removals of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere while bringing ecosystems back to life.”
Exposing the Big Game 