The moment a dog spotted and rescued a baby dolphin has been immortalized on YouTube.
The dog, Leia, was fishing with its owner, Rich Wilcock, in Criccieth on a Sunday morning, according to the Daily Post.
Wilcock, the owner of a creative agency, recalled the moment it happened.
“I was stood taking pictures and videos of the scenery when Leia started to make a right old fuss,” he said. “She kept coming up to me, barking and nudging me, she must have smelt the dolphin from a mile off.”
He added to the Post: “At first I thought it was a baby shark, it was only about one and half foot but on a closer inspection I could see the blow hole on top of his head and realised it was a dolphin.”
Wilcock noted that the beach was empty, and “there was nobody around for miles.
As a result, he recalled, “I did what I could as gently as possible. I lifted him gently under the belly and popped him back amongst the waves and he swam away into deeper water.”
He added: “I combed the beach for a while afterwards and stayed for an hour or so to make sure he made it back out to sea.”
A spokesperson for the Seawatch foundation praised the rescue effort.
The person told Wales Online: “It’s probably a juvenile harbour porpoise, it does look quite small even for a porpoise.”
“With the strong winds we are getting at the moment it is quite possible he just got blown out of the way and stranded rather than having anything seriously wrong with him, so let’s hope he made it back out to sea safely,” the organization said. “It’s great to see people (and dogs!) helping out wildlife and given the circumstances of the remote location Rich did a really good job with helping him back into the water.”
The organization said that when possible, it’s better to call local authorities when a dolphin or porpoise is in distress.
Leia’s owner, meanwhile, praised his pup.
“She is a very intelligent dog, more intelligent than most,” he explained. “We often see dolphins and porpoises swimming and playing in Cardigan Bay, Criccieth is a great spot in the summer to spot them.”
Dolphin Stampede
A Southern California man captured video footage of a rare scene off the coast on July 14.
The video shows a large pod or dolphins, described as a “mega-pod,” near Laguna Beach in Orange County.
Chuck Patterson told the OC Register that he was on a 95-foot boat off the Laguna coast when the dolphins seemingly emerged out of nowhere at around 12:30 p.m. local time.
“They came out of nowhere,” he said. “They looked like they were going down the coast and kind of hooked up with us to go up the coast. We were by ourselves the whole time. It was really cool,” The Mercury News reported.
Patterson said he has seen similarly sized pods of dolphins near the Channel Islands. However, he never saw them swimming so closely and around both sides of a boat.
“Noooo way, they are going off! So sick!” he is heard saying in a video posted on Facebook.
A woman told the Register that she also spotted the pod, saying she was having a memorial service for her deceased father.
“We had just released him in a biodegradable sea turtle box,” Caryn Cobilo said. “About 30 seconds later this pod showed up surrounding where we had left his box. It was incredible. The box was floating, then as it absorbed water it sank. Then we set off and the dolphins appeared.”
The dolphins stayed with the boaters for about 25 minutes.
