An incredible video from San Antonio Este, Argentina, shows an elderly man saving two stranded dolphins using nothing but a rope. Walter Andreoli, the man who saved what appears to be two Pacific white-sided dolphins, believes they may have beached themselves in an attempt to escape from a pod of orcas.
Dolphins can survive out of water for several hours if they remain wet and cool. If they had been beached for a day, there wasn’t much time left to save them.
“In a second, I sensed what happened because the day before, orcas had been seen in the area,” Andreoli told Pagina12. “Since they eat them, I imagined that these little dolphins fled and, disoriented, were left stranded.”
Even though orcas and dolphins are closely related, dolphins are a regular part of a killer whale’s diet.
Andreoli found the dolphins in a secluded area where no one was there to help, although someone was close enough to shoot footage of the rescue. Even though white-sided dolphins are one of the smaller members of the species, they are still a lot to drag into the ocean. The average adult Pacific white-sided dolphin weighs about 300 to 400 pounds and can be up to 8 feet long.
“In the place where we found them there is no way to call the wildlife watch, we have no phone signal, and their lives were in danger,” Andreoli told Storyful. “The ATV had a rope and I towed them to the water and waited. I waited for the tide to come in and then I saw them leave on their own.”
