When members of the marine mammal team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare rush to a Cape Cod beach in Massachusetts to help a stranded dolphin or porpoise, they have no choice but to treat the endangered animal on-site and then immediately release it.
That is about to change.
The organization, which protects animals worldwide, is opening a first-of-its-kind short-term dolphin hospital on Cape Cod this month that it hopes would not only improve survivability rates, but also enhance the research it has developed over 25 years.
Photo: AP
Stranded marine mammals are stressed, in shock and dehydrated, said Brian Sharp, director of the rescue team.
Simply caring for them at the scene is often not enough and they need additional diagnostics, treatment and recovery time, Sharp said.
“With this ICU for dolphins, we’ll be able to get them treatment that’s needed, then be able to release them quickly,” he said.
While there are marine mammal rehabilitation centers that can take care of animals for months or even years, the goal of this facility is to release them back into the ocean within four days, he said.
“This is the first time that this has been attempted before,” Sharp said.
There are more live marine mammal strandings on Cape Cod than anywhere else in the world, Sharp said.
A DANGEROUS HABITAT
The welfare fund has responded to more than 400 live stranded dolphins, whales and porpoises in the region in the past five years alone, the organization said in a news release.
Cape Cod is a good habitat for dolphins, but a risky one. Its geography — it is basically a hook-shaped spit of sand jutting into the ocean — can make dolphin navigation difficult, and 3.6m tall tides can quickly expose a mile of beach.
The 390m2 Dolphin Rescue Center is in a renovated retail space in downtown Orleans.
It includes an 167m2 rehabilitation area with two treatment pools 4.3m across and a veterinary laboratory. The public will not be permitted to have direct contact with the animals being a cared for, but there is also an education center where visitors can watch the recovering animals on a monitor.
Staffed by four full-time workers, it is equipped to provide round-the-clock care. It would start by treating one animal at a time, but the goal is to eventually treat multiple animals simultaneously.
The privately funded center has been federally inspected and expects to open by the end of the month, Sharp said.
“We want to take what we learn here and share it nationally, internationally,” he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS