Facebook Saves Dolphins On Vancouver Island (VIDEO)

Four dolphins in Canada were saved this week by good samaritans and... Facebook.

According to The Vancouver Sun, Bob Solc first spotted four Pacific Whiteside dolphins early Tuesday morning, on the mud flats of Vancouver Island's Oyster Bay.

Solc says that the dolphins had beached themselves in the middle of the bay as the tide was going out. "They were up in the mud. You could see them kick a little bit from the road every once in a while so I knew they were alive."

At that point, Solc began calling neighbors, and the story spread quickly on Facebook, Twitter and a local radio station.

CBC News reports that soon after 7am, over 50 people had shown up to help save the dolphins.

Some volunteers worked to keep the dolphins wet, while others gently placed them on tarps, and carried them back to the ocean.

According to Lisa Spaven of Marine Mammal Response Biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, it's unclear why the dolphins were beached. While ideally she would have done a veterinary assessment, the urgency of the situation did not give her that option. She told The Vancouver Sun:

"It's certainly a possibility that the reason they live-stranded here today was due to feeding in shallow waters and they weren't aware of the tide. There's also the possibility of injury or some kind of illness. There's also the possibility that killer whales chased them in here. There have been a lot of dolphins and a lot of killer whales in the Strait of late, so we can't really say for sure."

Spaven herself confirmed that the dolphins were in trouble based on a Facebook report, and says, "Certainly Facebook and Twitter are very good things when it comes to these kind of urgent situations."

Other dolphins in recent months have not been so lucky. In March, four dolphins were killed in San Diego Bay due to an underwater training blast conducted by the U.S. Navy. Also, NOAA reported in May that 153 dead dolphins have washed ashore along the Gulf Coast since the beginning of this year.

WATCH the report by Newsy:

Comments

[FrankfurtSirens]

08:01 AM on 07/05/2011

Really, Liberal American propaganda says 'Facebook' was the cause for Arab unrest, now Facebook is saving Dolphins.

Facebook saves civilization, yay for America!

[Igor Purlantov]

04:51 PM on 07/01/2011

Glad to see social media being used for something positive. Hats off to the people that were able to save these dolphins.

[jcolvin325]

01:26 PM on 07/01/2011

Or it could have read...Dolphins Saved by Corporations. It would have been just as true.

[FrankfurtSirens]

08:02 AM on 07/05/2011

Don't mess with the HP communist filters, they'll get you.

[Caroleeena]

12:44 PM on 07/01/2011

These dolphins weren't saved by Facebook. They were saved by people.

If people had called each other on the phone to help would the headline have read,
"Dolphins Saved By Telephone"?

[NateinMpls]

12:47 PM on 07/01/2011

Unfortunately, I think people check their Facebook updates more often than voice mail.

[scud420]

01:00 PM on 07/01/2011

exactly. Facebook is a company. Twitter is a company. Maybe a more appropriate headline would be "Dolphins were saved by social networking"... I wonder if this is some kind of guerrilla marketing?

[Debbie338]

01:40 PM on 07/01/2011

I'm impressed. You didn't say "gorilla" marketing. :-)

One of my pet peeves, along with "regimen/regime"

[20thCentury Man]

12:23 PM on 07/01/2011

In 2004, a group of swimmers were confronted by a ten-foot great white shark off the northern coast of new Zealand. A pod of dolphins “herded” them together, circling them until the great white fled. There are several other examples from the area of Australia of similar incidences.

In another case in the Red Sea, twelve divers who were lost for thirteen and a half hours were surrounded by dolphins for the entire time, repelling the many sharks that live in the area. When a rescue boat showed up, it appeared that the dolphin pod were showing them where the divers were; they leaped up in the air in front of the rescuers, jumping toward the lost people as if to lead the boat onward – as, according to old stories, they often did with endangered ships in treacherous water.

http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphins_Rescuing_Humans.html

[limonista]

12:21 PM on 07/01/2011

Ah, finally, a story that made my morning. Great job to those that took the time and compassion to help these beautiful dolphins.

[Rinalia]

12:14 PM on 07/01/2011

What a nice story. I hope the dolphins don't end up on the beach again...but if they do, it looks like they'll have a team of helpful humans on their side!

[Master-T]

12:06 PM on 07/01/2011

This is so great. Hats off to all those people. You did a great deed, a selfless deed in helping those dolphins.

To all those people out there who like to chant "people first", you could take a lesson from these folks: When someone (human or non-human animal) is in need, you help them. Period.