Time is running out for a small pod of dolphins in New Brunswick,
Seven Atlantic white-sided dolphins became stranded near Lamèque, N.B. last Wednesday when they entered a small, shallow bay. One of the animals died two days later-- its carcass is still visible below the waves. Of those that remain, two are young calves. One attempt to get them into deeper water has already failed.
“I don’t think they’ll last long, especially if they stay there and the water starts getting colder,” local fisherman Ronald Ward told CTV Atlantic.
In the small town of Lamèque, a predominately francophone fishing community 300 kilometres northeast of Fredericton, locals are becoming increasingly anxious about the marine mammals’ chance of survival.
“They just echolocate the sides and the bridge, the pillars of the bridge, and they locate it and just swim around,” Pierre Larek, who has been checking in on the animals daily, told CTV Atlantic.
While Larek understands that they need to be rescued, the veteran fisherman fears that any hasty attempt to move the distressed dolphins could also prove disastrous.
“The stress could kill them,” he said.
No one is quite sure how the dolphins ended up in such dire straits. Some locals believe that the dolphins must have followed a school of small fish into the bay, only to find themselves unable to navigate a tricky labyrinth of sandbars and shallow waters. Parts of the bay -- like the channel the dolphins need to use to swim to safety -- are only a metre deep at high tide.
An attempt by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to herd the dolphins through that channel failed on Thursday.
“To get them to open ocean, we have to get them up over a shallow body of water for over a mile,” Andrew Reid of the Marine Animal Response Society, which is working alongside Fisheries and Oceans Canada, told CTV Atlantic.
“They didn’t react well to the shallow waters. They managed to evade the boats and return to this small patch of deep water.”
Rescue crews now hope to use acoustic pingers -- devices designed to scare dolphins away from fishing nets -- to herd the animals towards the open ocean.
“We’ll use them in a similar fashion.” Reid said. “We’ll have boats in the water and we’ll use these acoustic pingers, dipping them in the water, and hopefully they’ll facilitate us moving these animals out of this region.”
Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not set a timeline for the next rescue attempt. If the aquatic pingers fail, the dolphins could be physically removed as a complicated last resort.
A common site in the Maritimes, Atlantic white-sided dolphins can grow up to 2.8 metres in length and weigh as much as 230 kilograms. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, they are a “least concern” species.
With files from CTV Atlantic and The Canadian Press
