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Alex Gallardo / Reuters
The dorsal fin of a wayward dolphin pops up at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach, Calif. on Friday.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
Alex Gallardo / Reuters
A Huntington Beach State lifeguard floats on a paddle board to assess the condition of a wayward dolphin swimming in the Bolsa Chica Wetlands.
Reuters reports: A dolphin who took a wrong turn from the Pacific Ocean into a Southern California wetlands became an unwitting star on Friday when scores of motorists on a nearby busy highway stopped to watch it swim in circles.
The 700-pound (317-kg) mammal was discovered on Friday morning in Bolsa Bay, about 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles in the Orange County community of Huntington Beach.
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They need to see if it needs help
Free Willie!
And.........where's the rest of the story? Did someone accidentally shred the last page? What are their plans to help this mammal?
You guys keep saying "They" need to to do something and What are "their" plans? Who are "they"? What are your plans? Dont "You" care? What are YOU going to do?
They need to get someone from SeaWorld to come up and check out this dolphin. If it is healthy they need to help guide it back out to the ocean, if not they can capture it and take it to SeaWorld for rehabilitation and later release.
I'll get my spear gun.
Well, it only took 4 posts before someone wants to kill it. You win a bloody cookie.
JS: I don't think SeaWorld staff is necessary. The animal rescue team discovered plenty of fish for it to eat, deemed it healthy, and decided to wait for high tide this morning to see if it would swim out on its own, like the other seven dolphins already did. If it doesn't swim out, they are coming back to check and will either help guide it or will move it themselves. Problem solved.
Sea World would be the last people I would call. If it doesn't attempt to try to make it out by itself, it can be led back out. There are many rescue and rehab centers in this area, who can help this animal and its best interests at heart.
I'll get my spear gun.
And according to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, "Getting your spear gun" will cost you a tour in a federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
Michael, you are a liar sir. Getting a speargun is not illegal. Shooting the dolphin with it would be but just getting a speargun does not satisfy the elements of the statute you quoted. As for the fine, you ae wrong again because you cant get blood from a turnip. Maybe you should go to law school before you starting posting like you are an attorney.
hee hee hee.......da smackdown :)
hee hee hee...whoa...Jack....smackdown :)
really hope they help it back to sea.and dont send it to japan! everyone needs to watch the movie "the cove"and see whats happening to these smart animals and how high levels of lead are being found in the dolphins they are butchering and selling to japanese schools and in stores. lil off subject but its to be seen. any chance i get to tell someone. hope he makes it back to sea.:)
Tuna in a can.
@Charlene, since "the cove" happens in Japan maybe you shold stop with you ethnic "Hate Speech." Do you celebrate the the deaths of the japanese that died in the Tsunami and Hiroshima? You are a hateful racist!
Yes, I'm sure these spectators are hatching a diabolical plot to put the dolphin on the first All Nippon Airways flight to Japan they can book.
that's free willy's descendant trying to connect to us humans. maybe they are nearer to us in the evolutionary ladder than the chimps..
One problem with your theory: Willy was a Killer Whale, this one's a dolphin.
Orca.
An Orca is a dolphin
TO Steve 3683652
My 3 year old grandson knows that an Orca is a Killer Whale not a Dolphin!!!!!!!!
@Dan C
And when your 3 year old grandson grows up he may learn in school that Orca's belong to the family Delphinidae with all of the other ocean Dolphins. Whoops almost forgot- !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its true, Dan C. Orca belong to the dolphin family.
"Orcas, or killer whales, are the largest of the dolphins and one of the world's most powerful predators."
Definitely in the dolphin family...
It's true Orcas are the largest members of the dolphin family.
But the individual in question is not an Orca, as part of the next division down.
*smh*
Isn't it a bit unusual for a dolphin to swim solo, without others around?
There were others around, about seven others that were also stuck but swam free.
yes
oh god, please don't let them put it in a marine park--it's the end of freedom for poor marine mammals and they never rehabilitate them to the wild because they bring in money. We need to end the captivity of these animals that are so highly intelligent and social. JS, I wish they did rehabilitate and release them, and maybe they could, but I would want to see a signed contract before they took it from where its family might be.
Damn! they are smart!!, sign a contract with an animal that doesn't have hands, arms or can even read. They may even be smarter than you!
Woodrat, if nobody appreciated them, which has come largely as a result of people seeing them in marine parks, then they'd still be getting killed in huge numbers in tuna-fishing operations and there would be no audience for movies like The Cove. The sad fact is people only care in large numbers about species they think that they know, and usually that they can anthropmophize to some degree.
I was on the Balboa Pier this afternoon and I saw about 10 dolphins swim by. I wonder if this was the dolphins pod?
:-)
Scoop her or him up and put it back in the ocean.
Oh sure, right away!
~God~
People (including me) really hate nature sometimes, particularly the "natural selection" aspect. Let's face it, the "natural" thing to do would be to let it find its own way out, or not, and if it can't then it doesn't survive as it wasn't part of the "fittest", and the dolphin gene pool is thus cleansed of one individual with a poor sense of direction which then would not reproduce or at least reproduce any more. For better or (arguably) worse, we humans have evolved to a point where many of us have a paternalsitic feeling toward animals which we like, such as dophins, even to the point where more people would probably care about this dolphin than would care about the child of a human who had been killed by a shark.
Well put, with one exception: a child killed by a shark would be big news. A child killed by its parents or by neglect or just by someone walking up and shooting it would never get as much coverage as this wayward cetacean.
This would never have happened if we would have filled in the wetlands years ago.
These people would be better served watching the mammals we cage in the projects.
Can they ask the sea world staff to help the dolphin to lead the dolphin back to the ocean?
Who's the chick in the bluish-green tank top? ;-)
I don't know, but she is starring at what appears to be a skeleton in black shorts???
alan
She's from the Sea Shepperd. She's afraid to open her mouth until her hippie friends come with the stink bombs. Safety in numbers you know.
From what I see, she looks like my future ex-wife! LOL
Sam, LOL! Yeah, that is one skinny white boy. I'm thinkin he might be a granola eater from Sea Shepard.
My IQ just dropped 20 points after reading the posts above.
So, it is now zero?
down goes owen!!! down goes owen!!!
woulda been better in caps. stupid rules...
Here comes another cheesy Disney movie.
No no, that will only happen if a child becomes the dolphin's best friend while it's stuck, or if it loses a fin...
When I see a solitary fin cutting ominously through the water, I tend to leave the water... quickly.
You got that right. I don't stick around to determine the phylum.
Does anyone remember the movie called Sammy the Way Out Seal ? Good movie
I hear they taste a lot like manatee.
And manatee tastes a little like 3rd world children. Yay 1%'ers
He's lost!
No wonder MSNBC directs a lot of certain news story discussions to Facebook. This is an insufferable and idiodic thread of comments.
They must've overlooked this one.
And yet, you're posting here. Feel better now?
they should get that hot rescue chick to hump that dolphin. or let it smell between her legs so it follows the smell of fish
This is clearly a problem Barack Obama has inherited from G.W. Bush.
KNEW that one was coming. :-)
Why do anything? It's called nature. Animals die everyday. It is the circle of life.
when i was growing up we called bolsa chica tin can beach for all the trash.. the community finally got fed up and cleaned it up. beautiful place , or was last time i was there
Time to get the local rescue center to capture and relocate this majestic animal. Good luck.
Wouldn't a true conservationist realize this is life in the wild? A darwinist would say survival of the fittest. So if that's the mainstream way of thinking in the States as "they" tell us. Why are they interfering?
Dean: The Darwinism in the US only applies to people, and "the fittest" means how well do your clothes fit; ie are they custom tailored or off the rack.
Good point, Dean. I remember watching nature shows when I was a kid, where inevitably an animal died in some gruesome manner and the narrator would mention something about the camera crew not interfering because that would be disrupting nature.