Beached juvenile dolphin rescued on 7MB
(CNS): A team effort between the Department of Environment, staff from the dolphinarium and the Cayman Turtle Centre led to the successful rescue of a juvenile bottlenose dolphin on Saturday morning. The distressed dolphin was spotted by the members of the volunteer turtle nesting team as they conducted nest patrols along Seven Mile Beach very close to the water’s edge.
As the dolphin beached, Chris Pike called the turtle hotline and set in motion a rescue effort. As the teams assembled and headed to the northern end of Seven Mile Beach, the volunteers kept a close eye on the dolphin, as it managed to get back in the water but appeared not to have the strength to swim back out to sea.
The first to arrive on the scene were two vets from the CTC and the team from Dolphin Cove, including Ruben Mendez, a 15-year veteran of dolphin husbandry, who swam out to the dolphin to check its condition while everyone else waited for the DoE boat and Chief Enforcement Officer Mark Orr to help take the animal back to sea, where all of the experts believed it had the best chance of survival.
Mendez said that as he swam close to the dolphin, it was clearly extremely tired and was quite vocal. When the DoE boat arrived, the vets climbed aboard with other DoE volunteers and visiting researchers, who then all began the work of helping the distressed dolphin get back out to sea. After some time, the young animal appeared to recover some of its strength, eventually diving into deeper water before the team lost sight as it swam away.
The vets had managed to get close enough to see that the dolphin had at some point sustained an injury that was healing, possibly a bite from a cookiecutter shark. But having likely lost its migrating pod, the young dolphin had somehow been carried on the current too close to the beach.
- Fascinated
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Category: Marine Environment, Science & Nature
What is the real porpoise of this article?
There was a few adult ones down by the Marriott earlier in the week.
Let’s release all the dolphins, and turtles.
And while you at it, please release all other enslaved creatures as well.. humans included
Like prisoners at northward? Pretty sure the lax laws do that for us.
They are certainly not enslaved!
Its a reason they beach themselves.
Lucky they found some beach
Thank you to everyone and Godspeed to the young ‘un. 😃
Did we test it for covid? Is it vaccinated?
:’D
Fool!
Same story is up on Marl Road for the dolphin breaching quarantine 🤣🤣🤣
Very happy to see the dolphin turned out ok. That would have been pretty surreal to snorkel along SMB and see a dolphin!
This dolphin is unlikely to survive.
Great to see a positive outcome for the dolphin in distress.
Lucky they got there before the poachers turned it onto dolphin burger
‘Mendez said that as he swam close to the dolphin, it was clearly extremely tired and was quite vocal’
A timely message, come in Mr Mendez, you can level with us, what was it saying? – not by chance ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ ?
✅ well done rescuers
A feel good story for a change, well done everyone involved.
Bullshit, think of all the hungry people in the tourism industry that could have fed.
Exactly, all that saved stipend cash could have bought a whole lot of 345
You mean Dart and his CITA lapdogs?! Their stomachs have not even been hurting yet.
Only them were really being fed anyway. The rest in tourism were just savvy to scraps that fell out of the troughs.
Look to your masters for your dues, not the public purse my friend.
‘Bout fed…kmft…
Our people don’t eat porpoise.
3:44 pm, that’s not the kind of Dolphin that we Caymanian eat,thats
a man friend, that’s a Pompous, we eat the flat Dolphins.
It’s the kind we entrap and use for profit.
Pompous lol
Exactly right. The system and those within it and outside of it all worked together for a favorable conclusion. Well done!