A brilliant bit of good news from the west of Ireland this week: a pod of dolphins stranded on a dropping tide at Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare was successfully guided back to sea thanks to a determined, carefully coordinated volunteer response.
Just before 9am on Sunday 4 January, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) received an alert about around eight dolphins circling in shallow water as the tide fell. By late morning, stranding network volunteers were on site assessing the animals from a safe distance and planning the safest response - for both dolphins and people - knowing there wouldn’t be enough water to refloat them until mid-afternoon.
The pod was split across three areas, including adult-and-calf pairs. Volunteers worked for hours to keep the dolphins calm and protected from gulls, then carefully prevented animals becoming trapped in rocks or seaweed as the tide surged back in. Local kayakers joined the effort, helping herd the pod along the channel into deeper water.
One distressed adult caused real concern but recovered, and swam off with the group. By around 3pm as daylight faded, everyone was back safely ashore: exhausted, soaked… but smiling.
Tens of thousands of cetaceans are entangled in fishing gear every year and injured or killed, decimating vulnerable populations and pushing some species towards the brink of extinction. Our monitoring work plays a vital part in helping to identify hotspots where cetaceans are vulnerable to bycatch, so please visit www.orca.org.uk/donate to help support this vital work.