It was a Saturday in July, and Michael Smith was staring at a sight few would ever believe. Two days before, torrential rains had paired with the swing of the tides to flood many of the drainage lagoons and culverts that dot Hampton Lake where Smith works as a naturalist. That tide, Smith now saw, had washed something into the inland lagoon that definitely didn’t belong there.
Slowly circling in rapidly receding water, a dolphin had gotten itself tragically lost. Smith didn’t know it at the time, but the dolphin’s name was Lucky. And she was about to live up to her name in a big way.
“Michael called the hotline, who routed him to the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network (LMMN), which has the permit for marine mammals,” said local marine biologist Amber Kuehn. “I’m part of their regional volunteer network and I’m the first point of contact, so they called me directly.”
Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network is federally authorized to respond to marine mammals in South Carolina by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding and Response Program. It is otherwise illegal to handle marine mammals without authorization.
Along with her work as executive director of Hilton Head Island’s Sea Turtle Patrol, Kuehn has been the first person on the ground whenever a marine mammal washes ashore in the Lowcountry. As many rescues as she’s performed, pulling a dolphin from a lagoon was a first for her.
“I got over there and we weren’t sure at first if we could even do this. It’s a drainage ditch, so if we got in with her we’d sink up to our waists,” Kuehn said. “We found a path, but it was full of fallen debris. She was sort of sequestered by fallen trees, the water level was dropping and it was getting harder to access.”
After retrieving a chainsaw from her house, Kuehn and Smith were able to carve a path through the debris that would at least let them bring kayaks in to where the dolphin was trapped. Meanwhile, Kuehn was in constant communication with the LMMN.
“We’re typically responding to animals that have beached. When we got the call Saturday, we just couldn’t believe it,” said LMMN Executive Director Lauren Rust. “We came down from Charleston, knowing that we were relying on Amber to bring in volunteers. Since I’m the state coordinator, I didn’t want anyone touching the animal without us there.”
Time being a factor, Kuehn came up with a plan to work with what she had. “I had one volunteer, a sling, and a trailer with towels, blankets, and a half-blown-up innertube for cushioning,” she said. “And then I thought to call the fire department.”
The Bluffton Township Fire Department’s first reaction to hearing that a dolphin had somehow gotten trapped in a drainage lagoon was pretty much what anyone else’s would have been.
“Yeah, right. A dolphin in Hampton Lake,” said Stephen Combs, BTFD public information officer. “The call coming from Amber lent it some credibility, but I had to see a photo before I was convinced it was real.”
Their perfectly reasonable skepticism satisfied, the district scrambled their rescue crew. This special response team consists of firefighters who have received extensive training in swiftwater and technical rescue that can be applied to numerous kinds of conditions. This would mark the first time since the district was established in 1978 that their team would be rescuing a dolphin.
The Rescue 335 crew, consisting of driver/operator Brandon Driscoll, driver/operator Tony Crosetto, and senior firefighter Aaron Angel arrived on the scene, along with Lt. Jeffrey Smith and senior firefighter Dave Adams arriving shortly after Rust did.
“We were there essentially to just listen to what the marine experts were saying. Lauren had everything ready and was directing everyone on the scene,” Combs said. As the district’s PIO, he was on the scene filming video that you more than likely saw on your Facebook feed that weekend. “It blew up our social media and our website.”
With the whole team together, the rescue operation was underway. Using logs, 2x4s and an EMS backboard as a barricade, they attempted to corral Lucky into shallower water where she could be placed in a sling. The dolphin didn’t make it easy on them, evading the volunteers in kayaks and the firefighters who were wrangling her from inside the lagoon.
“It was waist-deep water in some places, but these firemen were willing to get in. They were such good sports about it,” Kuehn said. “We came up with all sorts of tactics. What ended up working was she got scared and headed further inland, in the wrong direction.”
Flushed from the lagoon, Lucky had stranded herself in just a few inches of water.
“That ended up being the best-case scenario. She had been evading us pretty well in deeper water, but now we could get her into the sling,” Rust said. “Once they got her into it, she kind of gave in. She was pretty calm.”
Getting her into the sling, however, was just step one. The hardest part lay ahead – hauling Lucky through the water, between fallen trees, and up a fairly steep embankment to where Kuehn’s trailer waited.
“It was a big mountain ahead of us,” Kuehn said. “They had to carry it probably 150 yards through the path we’d cut and up a steep hill, but they did it like champions. Keep in mind this is 400- to 500-pound animal.”
Moving at a deliberate pace to ensure safety for both Lucky and her human rescuers, they were able to negotiate the lagoons, creeks, forests, and hills with four people on each side of the sling. It was slow going, but they eventually made it to Kuehn’s trailer ,where Lucky was gently placed in a cradle for transportation.
“We were doing 25 mph all the way down Old Miller Road and down 46 with a fire department escort,” said Kuehn. “We turned in at May River Plantation but we couldn’t use the boat launch because there was lots of pluff mud.”
Once again Lucky was loaded into the sling and carried down a private dock’s ramp, angled sharply by the low tide. Once they had her in position, the sling was released just above the water line and Lucky gently slipped into the waiting water.
“She laid there in the water for a second, then just flipped around, swam in a circle, then rose up to the surface as if to say ‘thanks,’” Combs said. “A lot of us were pretty emotional at that point. These firefighters, they don’t always get to see a happy ending like this. It was such a cool experience.”
Members of the relocation team from left to right: Michael Smith (naturalist in Hampton Lake), Tracy Kowalczyk (Marine Mammal Stranding Technician), Senior Firefighter Aaron Angel, BTFD Driver/Operator Tony Crosetto, John Kane (LMMN Volunteer), Jane Rust (Executive Director LMMN ), BTFD Driver/Operator Brandon Driscoll, Amber Kuehn, Thomas Layer ( volunteer)
Coming from the point of view of a marine mammal expert, the experience was similarly affirming for Rust. “We usually do necropsies, which is still really important. But it does mean we do not get a lot of positive outcomes,” she said. “Everything about this, how smoothly it went, how easily they could release her … it was a great story for us. We needed a win.”
As Lucky was being lowered into the water, Kuehn was snapping pictures of her dorsal fin to send to her contacts at USCB. Part of an initiative by the university’s marine biology department is keeping a head count of our local dolphins, identifying each by the unique print of their fin. As she’s one of the most commonly spotted dolphins USCB tracks, they were able to ID Lucky without even having to check their program.
“Driving home I had a moment of panic because I realized we’d just had calving season. What if a calf had followed her in there? Thankfully, they even knew from their surveys that Lucky didn’t’ have a calf this year,” Kuehn said. “So I was able to sleep without feeling like I had to go backtrack through that culvert system.”
It was a coordinated effort among a crew of volunteers who found a bond deep in the lagoons of Hampton Lake as they rallied around Lucky and brought her to safety.
“We’re lucky the LMMN came down from Charleston and that I had connections in this area,” Kuehn said. “And we’re lucky that we have a great fire department and people who are willing to dedicate all this time and energy.”
