UMaine Students Spend Spring Break Saving Stranded Florida Dolphins
Contact: Christine Nold (207) 866- 7373, George Manlove (207) 581-3756
ORONO — A group of UMaine students doing volunteer work in Florida over spring break joined dozens of wet-suited volunteers on Marathon Key, caring for some of the 70 rough-tooth dolphins that beached themselves in shallow water March 2.
Christie Nold, a 20-year-old secondary education major from Shelburne, Vt. was among a group of 10 UMaine students participating in Black Bear Volunteers and Alternative Spring Break program assignments at a Haitian community center and in Biscayne National Park, where they were cleaning beaches and helping to monitor coral growth at a coral nursery, when they heard about the stranded dolphins about two hours away.
Nold and her friends drove to the site of the stranding March 3 to sign up for shifts in the water, cradling sick or exhausted dolphins to keep their breathing holes above water. Their first glimpse of the scene was discomforting, according to Nold.
“I think the hardest part was we got there before there was a lot of police control and there were huge lines of people with cameras gawking but not doing anything,” she says. “The line for volunteers was a lot shorter.”
The UMaine students, with at least seven people available to go into the water, signed up for the least popular shift, 4-8 a.m., March 4, Nold says. “We had such a large group, we could pretty much fill any slots they had,” she says.
With wetsuits provided by Florida’s Marine Mammal Conservancy, the students waded into the chilly dark water at 4 a.m. Nold’s first assignment was to prevent the dolphins that were able to swim from colliding with mangrove trees growing in chest-deep water offshore, while others held the ailing dolphins up to breathe.
“I was by myself and I was very scared,” says Nold, who adds that she is fearful of fish, but buoyed by the camaraderie of her friends.
None hit the trees, she says, “but tons of them were swimming by. People were 20 feet away holding the dolphins.”
Her first experience actually supporting a dolphin ranks at the top of her list of memorable lifetime experiences.
“It was heavy,” she says of the first of three dolphins she held up. “I didn’t realize how much they really needed us.”
“You could tell the dolphins’ personalities by whether they would move around or talk to the other dolphins,” she says. “It was really neat to see their different personalities.”
Dolphins are social creatures, Nold says, and she saw some of the healthier ones swim around but come back to the group to check on the weaker ones. Occasionally, a tired swimming dolphin would approach a rescuer for a lift, says Nold, who is certain the dolphins were not only comfortable with the humans, but understood why humans were there.
Of the dolphins Nold assisted, one was a mother with a calf close by her side. She could feel when the dolphins became cold. They shivered, Nold says.
By holding to mammals so closely, she says, “You’re warming the dolphin up and it’s warming you up. You could feel the warmth going back and forth. You could definitely tell how the dolphin was feeling just by holding it.”
Volunteers back in Florida, meanwhile, are continuing their round-the-clock rescue vigil as biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Regional Stranding Network try to discover what happened to disorient the dolphins, about 30 of which have died or were euthanized. Authorities suspect a disease or disorientation caused by a U.S. Navy submarine sonar was the reason for the beachings.
Students in the UMaine volunteers group who helped with the rescue effort also included Rachel Maloney-Hawkins, Ashley Adams, Matt Sullivan, Kaylee Cooper, Caroline Seastrom, Vanessa Morin, Lindsay Landroche, Rachel Zawacki and Jason Saucier, a graduate student and advisor with the ASB group.
The UMaine Black Bear Volunteers’ Alternative Spring Break program arranges for students to do week-long volunteer service projects during spring break, including building homes for low-income families, doing conservation work or helping the elderly and at-risk youths throughout the East Coast. This year, the program placed students additionally in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to Lynette Dexter, program coordinator. Black Bear Volunteers also links students with charitable projects in Maine on weekends outside of spring break.