Wayward dolphins escorted out of river in Suffolk

SUFFOLK

Early-arriving employees at the Xpress Lube on North Main Street had a treat in store for them Wednesday morning.

Dolphins in the Nansemond River.

Reports ranged from three to seven, big and small.

The first thought was to feed them, said James Cash, who got to work around 8 a.m.

“One of the girls at the convenience store ran home and got shrimp and fish out of her freezer,” Cash said. “Everybody wanted to take a picture.”

The fish menu may have been the wrong choice, said Susan Barco, a senior research scientist at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach. The Suffolk visitors weren’t the ordinary bottlenose variety. Instead, they were a species known as a “common” dolphin. They prefer squid.

Three to seven of the creatures were reported to have been seen by the admirers who gathered around the Kimberly Bridge, on both sides of the river.

Comments ranged from – “It’s a what?” – to – “Imagine that! In the Nansemond River?”

Not the mammal’s usual territory. When the stranding team first got the report, said Joan Barnes, director of public relations for the aquarium, it came in as an “out of habitat” sighting.

The common dolphin isn’t seen in eastern Virginia nearly as often as the bottlenose, Barco said. It’s slightly smaller, has a different coloration, and it’s not as capable of dealing with docks and river debris as its cousin, she said.

“They usually hang to the Continental Shelf edge, near the Gulf stream,” she said. “This is scary. They shouldn’t be here. We’ve got to get them out.”

The stranding team’s job was to convince the dolphins to head back under the bridge and on to the Chesapeake Bay. The theory was that the dolphins came into the narrow channel that wraps around neighborhoods surrounding downtown overnight, when bridge traffic was sparse and vibrations from the vehicles were less.

Almost as soon as the 16-foot, rubber boat started putting around, the dolphins started following . They were on the other side of the bridge, toward the upper end of the river, in no time.

The dolphins, Susan Barco said, appeared to be a little stressed and disoriented, but had no obvious injuries.

The team accompanied the dolphins through the Nansemond and into the James. At that point, Barnes said, the mammals turned and headed toward open seas, still about 60 miles from their home near the Continental Shelf.

Linda McNatt, (757) 222-5561, linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com