Portland harbour rescue of Dorset's 'Danny the Dolphin'

Over the last year, numerous pictures and videos have been taken of a solitary dolphin interacting with people off the Dorset coast, gaining a large fan base of followers – and the name Danny.

However, yesterday morning a dolphin believed to be Danny was got stuck in a rope from a mooring buoy in Portland Harbour.

The Harbour Authority received a call at about 9.30am and staff rushed out to help the creature.

Sandie Wilson, Environment and Planning Manager at Portland Port, said: “We located the dolphin and were relieved to see that it was still alive. As we came closer we could see that somehow the riser rope of the pick up buoy for the mooring chain had become wrapped around it’s tail fluke.

“Through a combination of keeping the dolphin calm and carefully cutting and untangling the rope we were able to remove all of the rope and the pick up buoy.

“The dolphin remained with us for a while and we can only assume it was simply exhausted especially as it had not struggled to swim away whilst we removed the rope.

“For a few minutes after it was released the dolphin remained with the RIB swimming close to us and around and under the boat and eventually regained its energy and swam away. It seemed relatively unscathed from the incident with a small flesh wound from the rope.”

This would not be the first time Danny has had to be rescued. In October he was rescued by a fisherman after getting tangled up in a buoy off Swanage.

Lisa Skelsey, member of the Danny the Dolphin Facebook group, said: “He always sleeps on the mooring ropes he’s done it from day one, but normally he sleeps with the ones that have chains but he is not having much luck with the ropes as this is the second time he has got caught that we know about.”

Dolphin and whale charity Marine Connection keeps track of all known ‘solitary dolphins’ and recorded Danny in its 2019 Lone Rangers Report.