News
Editors Note: Talk about team work! There is so much compassion among these beautiful animals, we can all learn so much from them...
A dolphin guided two stranded whales to safety after human attempts to keep the animals off a New Zealand beach failed, a conservation official said on Wednesday.
"I've never heard of anything like this before, it was amazing," Conservation Department officer Malcolm Smith said.
The actions of the dolphin, well known locally for playing with swimmers at Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island, probably meant the difference between life and death for the whales, Smith said.
Smith had been working for over an hour and a half to save the two pygmy sperm whales which had repeatedly become stranded despite his attempts to push them back out to sea.
A bottle-nose dolphin, named Moko by locals, appeared and guided the whales to safety after apparently communicating with them, Smith said.
The whales, a three-metre female and her 1,5 metre male calf, were apparently confused by a sandbar just off the beach and could not find their way back to open water.
