Niemeyer helps the volunteers push the dolphin down the beach toward a waiting truck. She's a scientist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which relies on a network of 300 volunteers who alert the group when stranded dolphins are sighted and assist with rescues.
Kit Boucher, a volunteer from nearby Eastham, says she loves working with the animals. "It's an honor to be in their presence," she says, "and it's humbling and also an honor to be with them if you're right there when they die. Beautiful, beautiful creatures."
The dolphins are brought up from the beach, then carefully lifted onto mats inside a specially equipped IFAW trailer.
Scientists Are Stumped
Scientists are having a hard time explaining the dolphin strandings. Some say Cape Cod's hooked shape traps dolphins that swim into the bay and then can't find their way out. The cape also has numerous creeks and sand flats, as well as 9-foot tide fluctuations.
According to Katie Moore, head of IFAW's Marine Mammal Rescue and Research Team, there's another key factor.
"These are very social animals," she says. "When they do come into shore for whatever reason, they stick together. And so once that happens, you end up with many animals at the same time."
Moore says you can't just turn the dolphins around and send them back out into the bay because they're likely to re-strand. "So we put them in our trucks, continue our health assessments and supportive care and then release them off the other side of the cape, or off the tip of the cape out in Provincetown, where they have a shot at open water without any sand bars or creeks."
A Successful Rescue
After a couple hours of blood tests and other exams, IFAW scientists decide these four dolphins are healthy enough to release. At around 8:30 p.m., the large IFAW trailer arrives at Herring Cove Beach, the northernmost point of Cape Cod. From there it's a straight run back out to the ocean.
All four dolphins are given a final assessment in the parking lot, weighed and then carted down to the beach, where their harnesses are gently removed in waist-high water. It's a remarkable success, considering that around two-thirds of the recently stranded dolphins have died.
After re-acclimating themselves for a few seconds, the animals quietly slip back into the Atlantic, taking with them the secret to whatever impulses drove them ashore.
Brian Morris reports for member station WCAI.
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