Kentish Express Ashford & District
The unusual animal visitors to Kent who won our hearts
While Kent provides a permanent home for millions of animals, some just pop up from time to time and leave their mark. Sam Williams looks at some of our beloved visitors from over the years.
With its thousands of acres of countryside and miles of coastline, Kent has a range of attractive habitats for members of the animal kingdom.
And when the more exotic animals visit the county, we like to claim them as our own, even naming them.
Here are some of the more well-known creatures who have called the county home.
Dave the Dolphin
Despite being called Dave, the dolphin that lived off the coast between Folkestone and Hythe for 18 months was female.
She first appeared in April 2006 after making a home at a rock groyne in Seabrook and would regularly entertain crowds with her ducking and diving.
She wasn’t afraid of boats and wouldswimuptothemwhen her instincts should have told her to stay away.
At times she would disappear - even being spotted at Camber and Bexhill - but would still return to Kent. At one point it was thought Dave was becoming so used to humans that she would start displaying her dominance and would therefore pose a threat.
But in October 2007, Dave suffered a serious tail injury thought to have been inflicted by a boat propeller.
She was given antibiotics and was said to be responding well to treatment but the popular mammal was last seen in November 2007.
In 2008, two men were found guilty of disturbing Dave the Dolphin, in the first case of its kind to be heard in the UK. They were charged with intentionally or recklessly disturbing a wild dolphin after getting in the water at Seabrook in June 2007 in the early hours of the morning following an all-night party. They were seen swimming with the creature and putting their arms around its neck.
Residents called police after being disturbed by the men’s noise and officers said the men refused to get out of the water when they were told it was illegal to swim with the dolphin.
Following a six-day trial at Dover Magistrates’ Court the two men were found guilty and ordered to do 120 hours of unpaid work in the community and to each pay £350 towards the court costs.
Benny the Beluga
Benny the Beluga whale was in Kent waters for six months in 2018, mainly in the Thames in Gravesend, where he was seen in September of that year.
But the first sighting had been that July in the River Medway.
A string of sightings were reported over the following months, with his presence causing a quite a stir. Many visitors would come to see him with their cameras in the hope of snapping a picture and some traders began marketing Beluga-themed merchandise.
At one point he was joined by two porpoises who kept him company.
Gravesham Borough Council even launched a #KeepBennySafe campaign and postponed an annual fireworks display to protect him.
But sightings diminished over the winter, with experts speculating that Benny had travelled out to sea on the trail of migratory fish and the last confirmed sighting of the whale was in December 2018, further downstream from Gravesend.
Benny’s memory lived on and even inspired artwork when Amy West created a life-size sculpture of the animal using washed up litter to raise awareness of plastic waste.
Hessy the Humpback
Dubbed Hessy the Humpback, the 27ft mammal surfaced in the Thames Estuary near Dartford in October last year.
Delighted spectators watched as the whale dived and resurfaced and moved along the river with the outgoing tide, seemingly unbothered by the passing vessels.
It was thought the young humpback probably followed prey into the area and had then gone off-course.
Humpbacks are more commonly sighted off the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland and it is rare to see them appear in the Thames.
But just a day later, the poor thing was found dead, floating near Greenhithe.
The next day a team from the Port of London Authority managed to get a rope around the creature and lift it from the water at Denton Wharf in Gravesend. A large wound indicative of a ship strike was found on its body.
A post mortem was carried out by a team from the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme and they concluded the whale was struck by a ship, which was the likely cause of death.