Dolphins rescued at Langebaan

At 17h45 on Sunday the 9th of March, NSRI Mykonos volunteer sea rescue duty crew were activated to assist Wildlife Rescue at Kraal Baai, on Langebaan Lagoon, where 2 dolphins were found stranded in shallow water.Our NSRI volunteer sea rescue duty crew launched our sea rescue craft SPIRIT OF FREEMASONRY and on arrival on-scene found the two dolphins, appearing to be an adult female dolphin and her calf, stranded in shallow water in a channel where they couldn't get out because of low tide.It appeared that the dolphins had become stranded in a channel where the area drains of water at low tide, causing shallow pools of water that only fill up again when high tide comes in. It is not known what caused the dolphins to be so far up the lagoon.A third dolphin witnessed to be in the area had appeared to avoid being caught in that channel and that dolphin had appeared to be heading in the direction of open water.A lot of kite-surfers were kiting in the area at the time. The kite surfers had found the two dolphins stranded in the channel with the tide draining water from the channel and they were trying to get the dolphins out of the channel and they had raised the alarm.Wildlife Rescue, NSRI Mykonos volunteers and assistance from bystanders helped in the rescue effort. The two dolphins were secured onto our medical trauma boards and loaded onto our sea rescue craft and transported out of the lagoon mouth into open sea water and released in the vicinity of Jutton Island.It appears that the two dolphins are healthy and we are cautiously optimistic and confident that they survived this ordeal after appearing to both swim away strongly.Earlier in the day NSRI Mykonos had assisted at an unmanned house boat that broke her moorings to be re-housed at her mooring at Kraal Baai, and in another incident eye-witnesses suspecting a yacht to be in difficulty off Paternoster was investigated by our NSRI crew but the competent skipper informed us that he was merely biding his time off-shore of Paternoster before continuing on his voyage.(Pictures by Shani van der Merwe, NSRI Mykonos)