Rescuers battle through the night to save stranded dolphins on Scots beach
LOCALS and tourists battled throughout the night to save a pod of four dolphins that became stranded on a Sutherland beach.
The cetaceans were spotted in trouble at Balnakiel at Durness – the most north westerly village on the UK mainland – at around 9.30pm on Monday.
They came ashore about an hour later. A group of about 10 locals, tourists and coastguards then battled to save the pod, waiting for the rising tide to refloat them at 3.30am today.
The rescuers also took advice from British Divers Marine Life Rescue by telephone.
Durness local Julien Moreau said it was a long night.
“People did all they could to keep the dolphins alive. They were very large. It was quite an effort. We had to wait for the tide to rise and then refloat them. They all swam away and have not been seen since. We hope it stays that way,” he said.
A pod of pilot whales stranded in July, 2011, at the Kyle of Durness in what is believed to have been Scotland’s largest ever such event.
Some 19 of the 70 whales died.
Four large bombs exploded underwater by the Royal Navy were later blamed by government scientists for the mass stranding.
A long-delayed report by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs said that the noise from the explosions could have damaged the hearing and navigational abilities of the whales, causing them to beach and die.
It is also thought that the sonar waves can frighten deep-diving whales, forcing them to surface too quickly and leading to symptoms similar to decompression sickness, known as the bends, in humans.
But a spokesman for the MOD has said the Navy does all it can to ensure sonar is not damaging marine life.