The Lake District Coast Aquarium has rescued a dolphin stranded on a local beach close to Maryport.
A beached dolphin was reported in the Lake District yesterday.
A team of three from the Lake District Coast Aquarium sprung into action.
The dolphin was safely returned to deeper waters in a successful rescue mission.
The Lake District Coast Aquarium received a desperate call late yesterday afternoon about a beached dolphin. Staff rushed to the scene, where a team of three managed to get the stranded dolphin back into the sea.
Mark Vollers, the Lake District Coast Aquarium’s owner who helped to free the off-course dolphin alongside staff members James Bennett and Arran Demello, told Cumberland’s News & Star, “Its flippers were getting stuck in the sand so [they] took a side each, enabling [us] to safely push him towards the water.”
“I thought it would be a porpoise, but it was a dolphin, a short-beaked common dolphin,” he added. The short-beaked common dolphin is a different species from the dolphin that famously visited Maryport Harbour for a while back in 2006, which was a bottlenose.
With Bennett and Demello having turned the dolphin around, Vollers went into the sea in waders to guide it back to the safety of deeper waters. “James stayed around for about an hour afterwards,” local aquarium owner Vollers explains. “We also alerted the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, who sent a representative from Silloth.”
There have been no reported sightings since, suggesting the rescue was a success. Well done, Mark, James, and Arran!
