Freed dolphin splashes out in gratitude

Fisherman used scissors to free a dolphin caught in a fishing long-line. Photo / Supplied

Dolphins are famed for helping humans in trouble at sea and now fishermen off Northland have returned the favour by freeing a dolphin caught in a fishing long-line.

The dolphin, feeble and facing death, approached their charter vessel for help.

When the crew freed him, he farewelled his human helpers with a lap around their boat, before being joined by another 100 clacking, leaping dolphins.

Edan Craig was the deckhand when the charter boat the Cerveza was sailing off the Mokohinau Islands, east of Whangarei, on Friday, August 7.

In the distance he saw splashing. One of the anglers on board thought he had accidently hooked a dolphin.

When the splashing moved closer, they realised it was indeed a dolphin, but hooked in a piece of long-line.

Craig said the line had tangled the dolphin up by wrapping around its head and tail.

Craig and one of the fishermen who had chartered the vessel spent a tense 10 minutes using scissors to cut it free.

"He didn't move - we all thought he was on his last legs."

Even after the dolphin was free from the line the mammal took another 10 minutes to gain enough strength to swim away.

It spent those 10 minutes floating on its side while the 10 people on board the Cerveza waited with bated breath.

"He was lying on his side and he had eye contact," Craig said. "We didn't think he had a bit of hope."

But suddenly the dolphin came to life. "He sort of manipulated himself to get near us because he knew we were his only help."

Then the dolphin swam a lap around the boat before giving "a bit of a splash and a wink" and swimming out a sea.

"There were 10 of us on the boat and I don't think there was a dry eye on the boat at all, and they're all burly sorts," Craig said.

Twenty minutes later the boat was fishing near Burgess Island about a kilometre away when a pod of dozens of dolphins joined the Cerveza for more than hour, leaping around the boat, before swimming away. Craig said he had never seen anything like it in 15 years of fishing.

Genevieve Quirk, Greenpeace oceans campaigner, said "ghost" long lines posed a threat to all types of marine life, including aquatic birds and turtles.

"The New Zealand long-line industry needs to clean up their act," she said.