3 of 4 dolphins led through ice to safety, says mayor
Updated Thu. Feb. 19 2009 9:41 PM ET

The Canadian Press

SEAL COVE, N.L. -- A group of men in a boat cut a quarter-kilometre path through ice off this tiny community Thursday and led three white-beaked dolphins that had been trapped since the weekend to freedom.

Mayor Winston May said one of the dolphins was so weakened by the ordeal that a 16-year-old boy wearing a survival suit went into the frigid water to attach a harness to it.

The animal was towed to open water, where it swam away.

"It was a real nice ending. We're all glad it ended this way," a pleased May said in a telephone interview.

The rescue ended a dramatic day where initial reports of a rescue attempt suggested it had failed.

May said earlier that the roar of the engine from the five-metre speedboat used to break the ice spooked the dolphins and it was feared they had swam under the ice and drowned.

But the mayor later revised that, saying the dolphins returned to their small breathing hole and the rescuers were able to lead them through the soupy "slob ice" to safety.

"Two just followed the boat," he said.

May said the third dolphin was too tired to break free of the ice, so the boy went into the water to help.

"The dolphin just kind of attached to him and wrapped his flippers around him, more or less like a friend or a mate," he said.

After leading the other two to safety, the boat returned to attach the line to the third animal and pull it "through the little slob pathway they had cut."

The fate of a fourth dolphin seen with the others earlier in the week wasn't known.

May said it hadn't been seen Wednesday and either died under the ice or made it to open water on its own.

Earlier in the day, a whale-rescue expert who went to Seal Cove said he believed at least two of the dolphins had died after being frightened off by the initial rescue attempt.

Wayne Ledwell said the well-intentioned effort may have hindered the dolphins' chances of surviving.

"They thought they were doing good, but they actually forced them out into the ice field," he said.

"They would've been better off where they were in that little hole, for a while anyway until maybe the weather changed."

"I can understand why they did it," he continued. "I wouldn't have approved of attempting to do that."

The dolphins had been stuck in a narrow, ice-filled harbour in White Bay, on the west coast of the Baie Verte Peninsula.

The animals survived in an oval-shaped hole in the ice, roughly 30 metres by 200 metres, and residents reported hearing their distressed cries at night.

May initially called on the federal Fisheries Department to dispatch an icebreaker to free the dolphins, but a federal scientist warned that carried the risk of crushing the animals.

"If you bring an icebreaker into this relatively small area, it may end up pushing the ice right in over top of the animals," said Jack Lawson.

Experts say many animals get trapped and die in the province's many coves.

In 1983, a particularly bad year, some 300 were trapped in more than a dozen separate incidents around Newfoundland.

More recently, 14 of the animals were trapped in Trinity Bay in 2005, according to statistics compiled by Whale Release and Stranding , a non-profit organization led by Ledwell. At least seven died.

"It happens a lot more often than people know about," Ledwell said.

"Unfortunately, many times there's not much we can do."

White-beaked dolphins are year-round visitors to the waters around Newfoundland.

They are typically about 2.5 metres long, weigh about 180 kilograms and are dark grey to black around their dorsal fin, with a white blaze that extends from their eyes to their flanks.

Seal Cove is a town of 300 on the western side of the Baie Verte Peninsula, about 600 kilometres northwest of St. John's.

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