I am sharing this article with you because it must be a similar event to the beaching of the pilot whales in a Grind. People who have had years of experience with these animals describe the Rodeo in a marine park. Bear in mind that the animals in these situations are very used to human contact, very used to the handlers and over time used to the activity itself. I quote one persons account and I couldnt help thinking that she describes a terrible scenario - how much worse must it be for wild pilot whales during a hunt. So what they would do every six months is lower the water in the pool down to a foot or so. You have all these dolphins on the bottom of the pool and it was kind of a scary thing even though I think they were probably used to it. But they didn’t like it. And they would sort of flounder and start to panic. and it was our job to basically wrestle them and grab them. So one person was in charge of jumping on the animal, and the other was in charge of coming and grabbing the other side so that they are kind of restrained. And at that point they would be led over to a stretcher which was lowered down into the bottom of the pool. Once the animal was in the stretcher it would usually calm right down. But trying to get them to that point was just a crazy thing. Here is the full article:
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:26:33 +0000