By: Katie Gillis
Somewhere off the coast of Florida, a dolphin is counting its lucky stars that it was rescued last week by the U.S. Coast Guard after the marine mammal found itself stuck in a small dinghy.
This begs the question, how exactly did the dolphin end up in a tiny dinghy?
A man was on his sailboat when he saw the 7-foot dolphin leap into the attached dinghy around 1am in the Back Bay area off Fort Myers Beach. He placed a call to the U.S. Coast Guard, who then raced to the rescue in a small vessel.
The Coast Guard can be seen pulling the dolphin out of the small boat and into the water in the video. Before they took any action, the Coast Guard contacted a marine biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The biologist’s recommendation was to return the dolphin to the water as quickly as possible.
Given the go ahead by the marine biologist, the men work to return the dolphin from whence it came. Dolphins are rather heavy however, and the struggle to move the animal out of the boat becomes evident throughout the clip. Once the dolphin is back in the water, it can be seen splashing, and swims off.
The coordination between the FWC, the U.S. Coast Guard, and a boater led to the successful rescue. Chief Warrant Officer Robert Gruschow, the commanding officer of Station Fort Myers Beach, said that he was proud of the rescue and the close coordination between the Coast Guard and the FWC. He also expressed his happiness that the outcome was a positive one.
This isn’t the first time dolphins have hopped onto vessels (recall the whale that breached on a sailboat), and it probably isn’t going to be the last.
I think we can all agree how lucky the dolphin is that the man on the sailboat was up at 1am to see it flop into the dinghy, and to have a team of heroes on standby that responded so quickly. Needless to say, Flipper might lay off the flipping until the coast is clear.
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