Stranded Dolphin is Free But Spooked

Mother Nature will have to work her magic in this Dolphin Tale.

Workers helped a stranded dolphin exit the shallow waters of the Bolsa Chica Wetlands and swim into open water today, only
to watch it apparently flee from two other dolphins and return to a lagoon.
   ``It looked scared, but it swam well,'' said marine biologist Peter
Wallerstein of the Marine Animal Rescue organization, who was in the water
trying to shoo the dolphin under a small bridge beneath Warner Avenue. The bridge is about five or six miles south of Belmont Shore via Pacific Coast Highway.

According to Wallerstein, the dolphin encountered two other dolphins about 200 yards into the Huntington Harbor channel, and then apparently hid by passing back under the street.
   Biologists are still stationed along the cul-de-sac lagoon where the
dolphin first attracted bystanders, and then helicopter TV crews a few days ago.

They had been readying plans to trap the marine mammal and relocate it at sea, if it didn't follow their urgings to leave the shallow water.
   On Friday, the consensus was that the dolphin is ``a healthy, adult
animal.''
   It had first been spotted swimming with five other dolphins in
Huntington Harbor, according to Kelli Lewis of the Marine Mammal Center in
Laguna Beach. ``It is most likely that this pod was after schooling fish when
they entered the harbor,'' said Dean Gomersall, an animal care supervisor at
the mammal center, on Friday.
   During high tide Friday, the one dolphin swam under Warner Avernue's
small bridge and into a very-shallow wetlands area. California Fish and Game
officials called for help from the mammal center and the El Segundo-based
nonprofit organization, Marine Animal Rescue.
   The dolphin likely followed some fish into a ``dead-end area'' of the
wetlands near Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway, Wallerstein said.
   Wallerstein urged curious onlookers to stay away.
   ``We just want people to be smart. If they go and observe, be quiet and
don't get involved or get in the water,'' Wallerstein said, adding that too
much noise or activity could make the dolphin anxious.
   ``Be smart and stay away,'' Wallerstein said.

-With City News Service reporting.