Local men free dolphins trapped by ice

Posted by Queuebot in Animal on February 23, 2009 at 11:40 pm

Three dolphins had been trapped for a week by drift ice in the harbor of Seal Cove, Newfoundland.  Residents of the small community appealed to the local department of fisheries and oceans, but received no response. 

Four local men finally took their own 16-foot boat, rammed it up on the ice, jumped out and began hacking a channel to the open sea…

“You’d hear them crying, every night,” said one of the men in the boat, Rodney Rice, 39. “I went down there last night and you could hear them trying to break up more ice. . . . They wouldn’t have lasted another day.”

“I had a floater suit on,” said Banks, “And they would come up and rest their head on me and I would keep their head out of the water so they can breathe through their blowhole.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

 
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An Unlikely Encounter

Posted by Queuebot in Animal on February 12, 2009 at 12:37 am

If there’s ever been two animals you wouldn’t have expected to see together it’s these two.

(Photo by Mike Owyang/AP)

Beauregard, an 8-month-old male Grants zebra is greeted by Brandy, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin while out on a daily walk around the park at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. Beauregard was hand-reared at the park and takes daily strolls around the 135-acre park.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

 
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Dolphins: Talented Chefs of the Sea!

Posted by Queuebot in Animal on February 5, 2009 at 3:07 am

Australian scientists have determined that dolphins, already famous for their intelligence and depth of emotions, are also talented chefs of the sea!

Photo: Simon White/AP

Dolphins are the chefs of the seas, having been seen going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari, Australian scientists say.

A wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was observed going through the same series of complicated steps to prepare cuttlefish prey for eating in the Spencer Gulf, in South Australia state.

“It’s a sign of how well their brains are developed. It’s a pretty clever way to get pure calamari without all the horrible bits,” Mark Norman, the curator of mollusks at Museum Victoria and a research team member, told the Canberra Times newspaper.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

 
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Saved by Dolphins

Posted by Miss Cellania in Animal, Odd News on December 19, 2008 at 9:04 am

Ronnie Dabal was fishing in Puerto Princesa Bay in the Philippines when a squall capsized his small boat. He avoided drowning by hanging onto a piece of styrofoam. 24 hours later, he woke up on the beach. He told a tale of being rescued by dolphins!

Dusk came as Dabal’s hopes started to vanish and a creeping darkness began to envelope him. From out of nowhere, a pod of around 30 dolphins and a pair of whales measuring about 10 meters in length came and started to flank him on both sides.

“Dumating yung mga dolphins. Ang dami nila. Tapos may lumapit na dalawang balyena. Dun sila sa tigkabilang tabi ko lumalangoy,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. (There were dolphins, lots of them. Then a pair of whales started swimming on both sides)

Dabal, 35 and father of two kids, swore it was not his mind playing tricks on him even as his energy was starting to fail him.

As he lay still on top of his piece of plastic board, Ronnie narrated how the dolphins would alternately nudge his tiny life raft using their pectoral fins towards the direction of land.

Dabal is a part-time dolphin warden for the bay. His duties include spotting dolphin groups for tourists and removing garbage from their territory. Puerto Princesa City Mayor Edward Hagedorn was excited by the story.

“Ronnie’s experience is the greatest proof that what we are doing to protect our marine environment is worth all the effort that we are putting into it. I’d like to think that this is the animals’ way of also thanking us for helping protect their habitat,” said Hagedorn.

Link -Thanks, Marco Martinez!

(image credit: Flickr user julesnene)

 
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