Viral NZ video

It’s not every day that a video from or about New Zealand goes viral. The video above is the latest one to show up in my Facebook newsfeed and even onto the ABC (USA)’s evening news. That’s pretty viral.

The video description on YouTube says:

“British man Adam Walker is accompanied by a pod of dolphins on his quest to conquer the Oceans7! The Dolphins stayed with Adam for more than an hour and swam around him playfully getting close enough for Adam to touch. A fantastic experience for all involved.”

Of course, the news angle was that a Great White shark was swimming below Adam and the dolphins showed up and, the reports said, protected him. It’s a nice feel-good story, just the sort of thing to go viral.

It always amuses me when I see videos about or from New Zealand showing up on my social media feeds. Sometimes I haven’t seen the viral video, but, more often than not, the video is old—sometime very old. In this case, we saw it on our news when it happened, and then a few days later it started showing up on social media.

At least in this case the world saw what we here all know: Even our wildlife is friendly and helpful. That’s a good thing.