Swift action saves spinner dolphin stranded on Bessy shore

Karunakaran, a local fisherman, who patrols the beach during the Olive Ridley sea turtle nesting season, said a few children tipped him off about the dolphin. “When we found the dolphin, we immediately got in touch with the Forest department, who responded immediately. We saw that the dolphin was injured. Even when we released her into the sea, the dolphin kept coming back to the shore,” said fisherman. 

The Forest Department acted swiftly, organising a boat to release the dolphin into the sea. Forester Clement Edison revealed, “At 8.30 am on Thursday morning, the local fishermen informed us about the spinner dolphin, which was near the shore in Besant Nagar. A 10-member team from the department immediately went to access the situation. Luckily, the four and a half feet adult female dolphin was still in the water and we were able to immediately attend to the minor injuries on the tail fin. The local fishermen were very helpful. They tied the dolphin lightly to the boat (a catamaran) and swam along with it about 3kms into the sea, where it was released.” Karunakaran relates, “I was one of the people swimming along with the dolphin. Once it was released in the ocean, the dolphin was initially stationary but revived and swam away.” 

Shravan Krishnan, a turtle conservationist with the SSTCN who was involved in this rescue, hoped that the dolphin survives. “We usually hear of dolphins and turtles being stranded on the beach. So we were pleasantly surprised when we saw that this dolphin was alive. However, there were mild injuries on its body and in Chennai, we lack a specialised centre to take care of these mammals. Our best option was to release it deeper into the ocean and hope it survives,” he said.

Rahul Muralidharan, a marine mammal researcher says, “It is common for dead dolphins to strand in our coastline between December to March. But this was a case of live stranding. There is no standard procedure or equipment to deal with such situations. Usually, a special stretcher is used to transport these dolphins back to sea, since most of their organs are on the lower side and placing them on a hard surface can cause internal injury. Even in case of dead stranding, there are standardised procedure to analyse the data, it is not being followed systematically,” he added.