Cape Cod Animal Welfare Team Made Unusual Dolphin Rescues

It's not everyday that an entire pod of dolphins need to be rescued from shallow Cape Cod waters, but its even more unusual when three rescue and relocation efforts need to be made in the same number of days.

Yet that is exactly what happened to the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) rescue team based in Cape Cod to kick off the month of May.

Three times this week, the Cape Cod Rescue Team was called to use kayaks, boats and pure human strength, to help distressed marine animals in Provincetown, Wellfleet and Barnstable.

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The first rescue effort was for a pod of nine Atlantic white-sided dolphins swimming in very shallow waters of Wellfleet Harbor. Though one managed to swim off on their own, the other eight needed to be rescued from the shallow shores.

According to the IFAW's Facebook page, all of the dolphins were given a health assessment  and received treatment before being released to deeper waters.

But that wasn't enough excitement for some of these dolphins.

The very next day a single dolphin was again trapped in shallow waters in the same area and kayaks were used to herd it back to a deeper swimming spot. Then pretty far away in Barnstable Harbor another dolphin was trapped almost immediately after this first release.

As if that wasn't enough, the same day (May 2), a third dolphin needed help in Wellfleet causing the two rescue teams to come together and transport two of these distressed dolphins by custom "mobile dolphin rescue vehicle" to the much deeper Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown.

The busy Cape Cod Rescue Team then fixed all three dolphins with temporary satellite tags to keep a better eye on them in the weeks to come.

No word on if any of these dolphins were the same ones seen swimming through Fall River or feeding in Mount Hope Bay last month.