Ocean Sentry
On Monday afternoon, Northern Ireland Environment Agency staff helped to refloat a stranded porpoise in Porstewart.
The young adult harbour porpoise Phocoena phocoena had surfed onto a rocky breakwater and was trapped some 10 feet above the water, contorted and distressed.
The angled boulders directing river water out from the Bann into the sea, cut into the animal, wedging it impossibly into a crevice and exposing it to pounding swell from the Atlantic.
Negotiating soft sand and encroaching wave surges from high spring tides, Gary Burrows, Joe Breen and Andy Black from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency arrived on scene to find an awkward, but otherwise remarkably healthy-looking porpoise, pinned between rocks well above the tide.
The vet was not yet on scene and as the incoming tide was now bringing damaging waves closer to the stricken animal, NIEA staff undertook a visual assessment of its physical condition.
The indications were that its injuries were superficial, so a decision was made to return the animal immediately to the water and give it an opportunity for survival.
NIEA and the National Trust staff monitorrf the beach for the next few days to keep an eye for the animal.
(From colerainetimes.co.uk, Ireland, by Nichola Forgrave)
