Psychoblues
02-21-2009, 09:08 AM
Fishermen, no less!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Toronto
Sapa-AP
A group of fishermen and a teenage boy from a small eastern Canadian village were being hailed as heroes for rescuing three exhausted dolphins that had been trapped behind drifting pack ice for nearly a week, the wife of the town's mayor said on Friday.
Sadie May said the men cut a path through the sludgy ice in Newfoundland's Seal Cove harbour with their five-metre trawler on Thursday night, freeing the dolphins from the small oval-shaped hole in the ice they had been swimming in for several days.
Two dolphins followed the open channel immediately, but the third was too weak and tired, said May.
"He could barely swim about, the little guy, and the men knew something had to be done. A kid, 17 years old with a survival suit, jumped into the water and the dolphin just kind of attached to him and wrapped his flippers around him, like a friend or a mate," the mayor's wife told The Associated Press.
The teenager, Brandon Banks, helped tow the animal to open water, where it swam away, said May.
The two-metre-long animals somehow became separated from the open Atlantic Ocean and had been stuck in the narrow, ice-filled harbour since the beginning of the week. They had been surviving in the shrinking hole in the ice, roughly 30m by 200m.
Residents of the close-knit community of 400, who were kept awake by the sounds of the crying dolphins at night, were fearful that the mammals would succumb to suffocation if the ice continued to encroach on them.
Seal Cove Mayor Winston May had been pleading with the federal Fisheries Department to dispatch an icebreaker into the community's harbour to create a channel to the open Atlantic, but the department said there were no boats available.
"In the end, it wasn't experts or the government, it was us, the people, who made the decision to rescue them. We didn't know, at the time, if we were doing the right thing but we knew something had to be done," said May. "In Newfoundland, you don't think about yourselves, you think about others and this time, we were just thinking that we couldn't let these dolphins die."
The department said on Friday that they were still investigating the incident and would not be able to comment immediately.
May said that residents had seen a fourth dolphin trapped in the icy cove earlier in the week, but that dolphin had not been seen since Wednesday night.
The dolphins are regular visitors to the waters around Seal Cove, which is about 640km north-west of Newfoundland's capital city St John's.
More: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20090221081737512C996731
Maybe there really is compassion within the people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:beer::cheers2::beer:
Psychoblues
Toronto
Sapa-AP
A group of fishermen and a teenage boy from a small eastern Canadian village were being hailed as heroes for rescuing three exhausted dolphins that had been trapped behind drifting pack ice for nearly a week, the wife of the town's mayor said on Friday.
Sadie May said the men cut a path through the sludgy ice in Newfoundland's Seal Cove harbour with their five-metre trawler on Thursday night, freeing the dolphins from the small oval-shaped hole in the ice they had been swimming in for several days.
Two dolphins followed the open channel immediately, but the third was too weak and tired, said May.
"He could barely swim about, the little guy, and the men knew something had to be done. A kid, 17 years old with a survival suit, jumped into the water and the dolphin just kind of attached to him and wrapped his flippers around him, like a friend or a mate," the mayor's wife told The Associated Press.
The teenager, Brandon Banks, helped tow the animal to open water, where it swam away, said May.
The two-metre-long animals somehow became separated from the open Atlantic Ocean and had been stuck in the narrow, ice-filled harbour since the beginning of the week. They had been surviving in the shrinking hole in the ice, roughly 30m by 200m.
Residents of the close-knit community of 400, who were kept awake by the sounds of the crying dolphins at night, were fearful that the mammals would succumb to suffocation if the ice continued to encroach on them.
Seal Cove Mayor Winston May had been pleading with the federal Fisheries Department to dispatch an icebreaker into the community's harbour to create a channel to the open Atlantic, but the department said there were no boats available.
"In the end, it wasn't experts or the government, it was us, the people, who made the decision to rescue them. We didn't know, at the time, if we were doing the right thing but we knew something had to be done," said May. "In Newfoundland, you don't think about yourselves, you think about others and this time, we were just thinking that we couldn't let these dolphins die."
The department said on Friday that they were still investigating the incident and would not be able to comment immediately.
May said that residents had seen a fourth dolphin trapped in the icy cove earlier in the week, but that dolphin had not been seen since Wednesday night.
The dolphins are regular visitors to the waters around Seal Cove, which is about 640km north-west of Newfoundland's capital city St John's.
More: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20090221081737512C996731
Maybe there really is compassion within the people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:beer::cheers2::beer:
Psychoblues