With sleds and ATVs, Newfoundland town bands together to free dolphins trapped by ice

HEART’S DELIGHT-ISLINGTON, N.L. – The mayor of a rural newfoundland community is beaming with pride after more than a dozen people from his town waded into the frigid Atlantic ocean to help rescue dolphins trapped by a crush of sea ice.

Melvin Harnum, the mayor of Heart’s Delight-Islington, said the animals swam into the harbour on Friday and were soon pushed up into rocky, shallow water by swiftly moving sea ice.

Harnum said in an interview that members of the local volunteer fire department and other residents bundled up and set out into the water to wrangle the thrashing dolphins onto large plastic sleds.

With the help of officials from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the province’s Whale Release and Strandings group, they brought the sleds farther down the shore behind ATVs and on the back of a flatbed trailer.

Harnum says they then released the dolphins into the water where they had better opportunities to swim away.

Wayne Ledwell of the whale release group said some dolphins didn’t survive, but he said many more likely wouldn’t have made it without the residents’ quick thinking and action.

“They figured it out,” Ledwell said. “And if you don’t figure it out, in many cases, there is no hope for the animals.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2023.