Wayward Dolphin Still Making Waves

A day after it eluded rescuers while swimming tight circles in an Oxnard canal, a confused dolphin disappeared Thursday morning for several hours before reemerging in the afternoon.

“It’s a long canal and he basically looks about the same as yesterday,” said Kathy Fischer, a volunteer coordinator for the Ventura County chapter of the Organization for the Respect and Care of Animals. “We just want to make sure he is OK. He’s moving around more than yesterday.”

Fischer, along with a handful of other volunteers from the organization, spent much of Thursday walking along the marshy edges of the canal attempting to spot the gray 200-pound dolphin.

She said the dolphin swam almost the full length of the canal toward the ocean before turning back.

Its wayward journey has taken the marine mammal past breakwaters, boat docks and even a side street called Porpoise Way.

At low tide today--sometime after 3 p.m.--the volunteer team of marine biologists, veterinarians and animal lovers will make another attempt to catch the dolphin--this time with a larger net being shipped in from Sea World in San Diego, officials said.

If caught, the dolphin will be trucked to a marine center in Laguna Beach to determine whether it is healthy enough to eventually return to the ocean.

The 4-foot dolphin was first spotted about 7 a.m. Wednesday swimming and jumping in the mossy 8-foot-deep canal water that is used to cool generator pipes at the Reliant Energy-owned Mandalay Bay Generating Station off Harbor Boulevard.

Officials said the dolphin somehow swam past an underwater fence at the mouth of the canal near Mandalay Bay that is designed to keep fish and marine mammals out.

For about two hours Wednesday, a dozen volunteers from the animal organization tried trapping the dolphin in a 50-foot fishing net.

Fischer and other rescue workers remained baffled why the dolphin would travel the meandering canal, which begins at Mandalay Bay and snakes through five miles of farmland and sand dunes before ending at the electric generating station.

Although the dolphin appeared to be breathing normally Thursday, there are still concerns it has ingested coastal algae infected with a lethal, naturally occurring sea toxin.

In the past month, marine mammal rescuers have recovered more than a dozen infected dolphins that have beached themselves. Most did not survive.

If the dolphin is healthy enough to eat, there are plenty of fish in the canal, said Sam Dover, a Santa Barbara veterinarian specializing in marine mammals.

Dover observed the animal Wednesday.

“My guess is he is finding fish there, because anything in the ocean can find its way into that channel,” said Dover, who once worked as a veterinarian at Sea World.

“He looked like he was behaving normally, but you are not seeing a whole lot in the water.”

Even if the dolphin is rescued and eventually returned to the sea, its chances for long-term survival won’t be known until a thorough examination is conducted, said Joe Cordero, a wildlife biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Long Beach.

“It has a 50-50 chance either way,” Cordero said. “Given enough time they can usually find their way out as a general rule.”