On Monday, March 5, a group of locals and tourists united to save an estimated 20 dolphins from beaching themselves.
The improvised rescue took place on the shores of Arraial do Cabo, Brazil, just north of the city of Rio De Janeiro.
The details are slim beyond what can be gathered from the video clip below, but such scenes of dolphin landings are undoubtedly rare.
The pod can be seen rapidly approaching from some distance out, perhaps corralling a school of fish, before crashing ashore seemingly unexpectedly.
One possible explanation for the wash up may be navigational error; the beach where the incident occurred, Arraial do Cabo, lies on a thin strip of land jutting out along the otherwise relatively unvaried coastline which the pod might not have accounted for.
However, the frightened mammals weren’t stuck for long with locals racing to the water to help drag the dolphins back to sea.
A man in board shorts approaches the animals cautiously and is soon followed by like-minded beachgoers who stoop down and do what they can to try and move the mammals on.
While entire pods of dolphins are known to sometimes beach themselves, the occurrence is still not fully understood by experts.
According to MSNBC, common dolphins will sometimes strand themselves in large numbers due to their tight social structure, even if they’re not sick.
Luckily, this pod was in good health and managed to swim back out to sea with a little help from the friendly beach goers.
In the stunning video below, you can watch the entire event unfold, as the dolphins move to shore, beach themselves, and are assisted safely back into the water. – source