It was a foggy Wednesday morning when Naude Dreyer, driving with a client along a beach in south-western Africa, saw what appeared to be a shark on the sand.
When they drew closer, the pair realised the animal stranded on Paaltjies Beach, near the Namibian city of Walvis Bay, was a young Benguela dolphin.
"He was moving a bit and I immediately knew he was alive ... and immediately stopped to help him out," Mr Dreyer told Fairfax Media.
"I was just doing what was the right thing to do. I couldn't leave him there."
He gave his camera to the client with the intention of showing the rescue footage to his children.
He scooped the dolphin into his arms and shuffled 20 steps into the surf. He lowered the dolphin, which was pushed onto its side by the rolling waves.
When the dolphin steadied itself in the water, it "took off like a bullet" into the Atlantic Ocean.
"I was really happy. I really wasn't sure at first it was going to happen or not," he said.
"You never know why these guys are on the beach; they've been quite active in the area quite lately and I think they were playing just too close to the waves and a bigger wave came and pushed him out [of the water]."
He posted the video on the Facebook page of his business Pelican Point Kayaking on Wednesday night. He went to sleep pleased with the couple of thousand likes and shares.
He woke up on Thursday morning amazed that the video had been viewed more than 2 million times and shared more than 30,000 times.
The vast majority of the comments praised his actions.
However, a few Facebook users criticised him, pointing to the guidance of the Marine Mammal Centre in California that people should "not return [a beached whale, dolphin or porpoise] to the water" and instead report the stranding to the authorities.
But Mr Dreyer said that was not an option on the isolated coast.
"There's no real authorities around here, regarding that. It'll take a long time for authorities to get there, and he would definitely not have made it," he said.
"He's right next to the beach, it was in my capacity to put him back in the sea, so I wasn't going to leave him there," he said.
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