Rescued again!

Thought I would update with another happy ending for some dolphins in Wellfleet. On Tuesday, we received a call at IFAW that there were 3 dolphins stranded behind the Wellfleet Audobon society. Of course the tide was going out and OF COURSE it had to be raining. Surprisingly, it wasn't too cold. We were short volunteers, so I called up some of my fellow AmeriCorps-ers and Amie, Greg, Alex, Brian and Crystal came to aid in the rescue efforts! We came upon the scene and found 3 atlantic white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus acutus, if we want to be scientific) that looked to a be a little family. There was a HUGE male (poppa) that was about 8 ft long and 600 lbs, a medium sized female (mama) and a "baby" that was about 5 ft. long. Check them out:

Being low tide in Wellfleet meant stinky, mucky mud was going to be working against us. More than once I fell over or lost my footing. It didnt help that the waders I was wearing were waaay too big for me. Needless to say, it took awhile to move the animals out of the mud flats and onto more stable ground. Here we are moving the BIG guy....

Once all animals were out of the muck, we had to transfer them to the IFAW rescue trailer, to transport them up to Herring Cove in Provinceown. This is also where we took the dolphins back in February. Luckily, IFAW has constructed a "dolphin cart" that makes moving the animals a lot better. It's basically a big wagon to put the animals on and cart wherever we need to. This is especially helpful when you have a 600 lb animal and not a lot of hands.

After all the animals were in the trailer, they took blood samples and did some ultrasound to check for traumas to the digestive tract (thats the body system that they are laying on when they are stranded....so a lot of the times dolphins get gassy!) We then met the trailer up in Ptown where we were greeted with some nasty weather and HUGE waves. We had gathered some more people to help from the Ptown Center for Coastal Studies, but were short on dry suits, so we decided to release the female and baby first and then follow with the large male. I, in my waders, was positioned in the back of the stretcher carrying the baby dolphin. Our group walked into the water simultaneously with the group carrying the female. CT (my IP guy) was watching waves and told us when to walk in. It seemed calm for a moment, so off we went, he counted to 3 and the front people dropped the stretcher, while it was my job to hang on to it & pull it out from under the animal. Just as this all happened, a huge wave crashed in and knocked us all over, which essentially wasn't a big deal because it helped me pull the stretcher out, but it also caused me to fall in the water -- and I wasn't wearing a dry suit! The ocean is not warm at this time of year, I would not recommend swimming at this time.

Anyway.....the mom & baby found each other and started to swim off as we prepared to get the big guy in the water. More waves crashed down on the rescuers, but he was successfully released and hopefully found the other two!

I also have a link to the video/article posted online at the Cape Cod Times. I would just like to point out that we were at the audobon at 2 pm -- not 4! Some people wrote some nasty comments about that, but the Times got it wrong. IFAW is dedicated to responding quickly to stranded marine mammals, and I get frusterated that the public sometimes is very eager to point out every flaw....especially since all that stuff with the manatee happened. UGH.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090422/NEWS/904220336/-1/NEWS01

Well...enjoy. I just posted IFAW pictures, so I will hope to put some of mine up here soon as well!

Take care!

ABBEY