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Displaying items by tag: Shea Coyle

#MarineWildlife - Two dolphins saved from stranding on a beach in Donegal leapt from the water "as if to say thank you" after their rescue by a local fish farmer.

The Belfast Telegraph reports that salmon farmer Shea Coyle and his father Michael acted quickly after noticing what at first looked like two upturned surfboards on Downings beach near Fanad.

But what looked from afar like surfboard fins turned out to be the fins of two dolphins that had become trapped in the sand.

Shea described how the dolphins were "trying desperately to wriggle free" before he leant a hand to heave them back into the water.

"After about 10 minutes I got one dolphin safely out into deeper water and he stayed there whilst I got to work on the other."

Once the second dolphin was free, the pair "just took off" - and were later seen by the Coyles from a nearby peer, giving what might just have been a show of thanks.

The happy story in Donegal occurred not long after a series of dolphin and whale strandings in the northwest described as "unusual" by the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG).

Published in Marine Wildlife

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago