In a heart-warming story that briefly makes everything seem all right with the world, two beached whales have been rescued by a dolphin in New Zealand.
The pygmy sperm whales had stranded themselves repeatedly at Mahia Beach, on the east coast of North Island. Conservation teams, which had tried hard to rescue the whales, were on the point of giving up and giving them lethal injections when the bottlenose dolphin, known to locals as Moko, appeared and made straight for them.
"I don't speak whale and I don't speak dolphin," said Conservation Officer Malcolm Smith, "But there was obviously something that went on, because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea."
Mr Smith may not speak Whale or Dolphin, but here at the Nev Filter we do, and our expert has been analysing hydrophone recordings of the incident.
The transcript shows the following exchange took place:
“Hello, sir, madam. Having a little trouble, are we?”
“You took your own sweet time.”
“I’m supposed to get here within two hours of your call, sir, and you called an hour and three quarters ago. Don’t blame me, the traffic’s bloody awful this time of day. What seems to be the matter?”
“It’s this water. It’s gone all hard underneath us, and we can’t seem to swim through it.”
“That’s sand what you’ve got there mate. Sand, that’s your problem.”
“Sand… um… that’s bad is it?”
“Well, guv’nor, it’s one of those things you get when you run out of sea. That’s what you’ve gone and done. Never mind, I’ve got a tow-rope, I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.”
“Sorry about this. It’s the wife, you see, you can’t give her a map, she’s got no sense of direction at all. Sorry, dear.”
“Dave! At least I don’t swim like a lunatic.”
“Well, you want to get one of these here satnavs, mate. Absolute lifesaver. I wouldn’t be without it. Here we go - ladies first, whoops, ‘scuse me missus - right, heave-ho. There you go. Now you, sir. That’s it. Right, now where was you trying to get to?”
“Antarctica. We’re meeting some very nice Japanese people who found us on Facebook.”
“Righto, no problem, let’s punch that into the old satnav… here you are. Go round this New Zealand bit here, miss that thing called Australia, straight on up the Atlantic for a couple of thousand miles to this little crinkly bit called Norway. Now mind how you go, sir! And watch out for plastic bags in your blowhole around that bit called Britain.”
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