This article is from page 10 of the 2013-08-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
THE dolphin human relationship in Clare may have got some bad publicity in recent weeks, but two striped dolphins are back swimming off the west coast of Clare thanks to a group of children.
The young heroes floated the two mammals, who had become beached on Thursday evening at the west end of Kilkee beach, before the emergency services has arrived.
The Kilkee unit of the Irish Coast Guard were dispatched to the beach following reports of the distressed dolphins trapped in shallow waters.
The unit had been on a training exercise nearby at the time.
The call out came at around 7.30pm but the coast guard arrived just in time to see the dolphin swim away, after it was helped out of shallow rock pools.
A spokesperson for the coast guard told The Clare People , “By the time we got there a few local lads had floated the dolphins back out. Apparently it happens regularly enough.”
Members of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group also arrived at the beach shortly after the rescue.
It is believed that there were as many as four dolphins in the area on the night in question.
The striped dolphin is more likely to become beached in shallow waters that the more confident bottlenose dolphin.
Dolphins are social, living in pods of up to a dozen individuals. In places with a high abundance of food, pods can merge temporarily, forming a superpod; such groupings may exceed 1,000 dolphins.