Stranded dolphins rescued in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel -

20 Minutes

“When I saw them in the mist, I screamed.

Both are alive, both are alive ”.

Gaël Gautier may have worked with dolphins for nearly twenty years, his enthusiasm is intact.

Sunday morning, the coordinator of the Al-Lark association was called by firefighters to help two common dolphins stranded in the mud in Cancale (Ille-et-Vilaine), at the end of the bay of Mont Saint-Michel .

“We had mud up to our knees.

The person who called the fire department even lost his two shoes, ”explains the cetacean specialist.

Unaccustomed to the shallow depth of the bay and its very significant tidal ranges, the two animals ran aground on the mud at low tide.

For the Cancale firefighters and the Al-Lark association, it was necessary to intervene as quickly as possible to save them.

“Dolphins are very sensitive to stress.

Most of the animals that are found dead on our coasts succumb to heart attacks linked to their state of panic ”.

The two common dolphins were then embarked on a semi-rigid to be released offshore.

“By releasing them in the middle of the Cancale oyster beds, we ran the risk of them running aground again,” explains Gaël Gautier.

An increasingly frequent phenomenon

In the last five months, his association has counted eight stranded dolphins in this sector.

A figure that has progressed worryingly in recent years, without being certain about the reason.

Very comfortable in the Bay of Biscay, the common dolphin is not the most common off the coast of Brittany.

Unlike the bottlenose dolphin, which likes these areas of cold water.

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