Dolphin Rescue Attempt by Green School Staff and BAWA

On the night of Monday, 2 May, a live dolphin washed up on the beach at Sanur. Dr. Ating, who was out walking his dog, acted quickly and set a rescue mission in motion.

Dr Ating:

My afternoon activity is either playing basketball or dog-walking at the Biaung beach, about a 10 minute-walk, with my wife Meidy. That afternoon I was walking with Epos, a golden retriever. Epos is overweight and needs more exercise than the two other dogs do. At the beach, I saw some people were gathering at one spot near the water line. A black big thing was in the center of the crowd. “A dolphin,” a boy told me, “but it is injured.”

I approached the crowd but not too close because Epos might be scared of the dolphin. Then a man pushed the dolphin toward the sea. It looked like it was swimming, but a few minutes later the dolphin came to the shore. The man pushed it again and it came back to shore. It seemed the dolphin was too weak against the waves; something was wrong with it.

It was almost dark. I decided to call Bali Safari Marine Park, only about five kilometers away from the beach, which has a pool for dolphins. But I did not bring my cellular phone. I returned home and called my colleague Joel, the English teacher at Green School, because I did not know the telephone number of the Marine Park. Joel did not know either, but he thought we should call BAWA, a famous organization helping Bali dogs.

Pak Joel:

I was playing “Knights” with my five-year-old son Oskar at home when Dr. Ating called with the news about the injured dolphin. I told him I would find the number for BAWA and send it to him. As we searched for BAWA’s number, my wife, Simona, remembered a scene from the children’s book “The Snail and the Whale”—one of Oskar’s favorites—where the whale washes up on shore; during the rescue mission, the people dug holes in the sand around the whale. Perhaps Dr. Ating could give first to the dolphin, she suggested. We sent BAWA’s number to Dr. Ating and quickly looked up first aid techniques for beached dolphins. We discovered, just like in the book, that the rescuers should first dig holes in the sand under the flippers to relieve pressure; they should keep the dolphin wet and make sure the blowhole is not obstructed. When we called back, Dr. Ating said he had not gotten through to BAWA yet, so I instructed him in first aid, hung up and called BAWA myself. After a few attempts my call made it through, so I explained the situation and gave BAWA Dr. Ating’s phone number.

Once I was off the phone, Oskar, who’d been pulling at my shirt, wanted to know all the details.

“Will the dolphin live?” he asked. I told him I didn’t know. Dr. Ating:

I went back to the beach with my wife by motorbike. Only a few people were left at the beach; luckily there were still two men attending the dolphin and it was still alive. One of them said there was a hook in its mouth. Through a physical examination I found one big hole on the right side of its body. It looked nasty and deep.

Joel called and told me he managed to contact BAWA. Joel gave instructions of the first aid to administer to a beached dolphin. With Meidy and the men, I helped carry the dolphin to the shore. It was heavy, about 150 kilogram, and long, almost about two meters. We put it on the sand and dug holes under the flippers to prevent relieve pressure and allow for easy breathing. The tide was up and it reached the dolphin. We held it in a position that made the blowhole exposed to the air all the time. The blowhole is the nose for a dolphin.

Meidy and I caressed it; we named it Biaung. “Be strong. You will be fine,” we told the dolphin while caressing it. It raised its head and tail a couple of times. Sometimes it opened its eyes. “It is crying,” Meidy said. I was not sure it was, but there were tears dropping from its eyes.

Around eight o’clock, two men came. They were volunteers of an animal rescue organization who lived nearby. The network communication worked. The burden was less. A few minutes later a veterinarian sent by BAWA arrived, followed by the team led by Janice Girardi, the founder of BAWA.

Having examined the dolphin, the team concluded that it would not survive with any treatment because the penetrating hole made it unable to swim. They decided to put it down with lethal injection. It was a very sad decision but it would stop its suffering. It had already been in agony on the beach about six hours. Meidy was crying and kept saying, “We can save Biaung.” I knew nothing about dolphins and trusted the team was competent.

Pak Joel:

We called Dr Ating later to ask how things were going. He told us the dolphin had to be euthanized. And then I had to explain to Oskar what euthanized meant.

“It means they had to help it die. There was no way to save the dolphin. If they put the dolphin back in the water, it would drown. It couldn’t swim. It was wounded.”

“What means wounded.”

“Wounded means hurt,” Simona said.

“They could give it medicine,” Oskar suggested. “Or maybe they could put it in a truck and bring it to a pool and take care of it until it’s all better.” Oskar wasn’t convinced that killing the dolphin was the right thing to do. We told him that no one is really sure what the right thing to do is, but we do what we think is best. We fell asleep that night discussing various theories of the afterlife, and the last image I had in my head, planted there by my son, was of the dolphin, reborn as itself, unwounded and in waters far from the shore.

Dr. Ating:

We waited until Biaung stopped breathing before leaving. The volunteers and some locals would bury it beyond the coast line. During a late dinner, Meidy and I were quiet. It was the first time for us to be in physical contact with this highly intelligent animal. It was brief but very touching. I dreamt of Biaung that night.

Bali, May 6, 2011