Everyday heroes

Via Chap, a story of how one small group of intelligent, social mammals rescued another small group of same from the icy waters of remote Seal Cove, Newfoundland:

The dolphins had been stranded by a slab of ice since Sunday in White Bay off the coast of Seal Cove, a village of about 400 people. A chunk of ice was rapidly closing in around the mammals and threatening to suffocate them.

"You'd hear them crying, every night," said one of the men in the boat, Rodney Rice, 39. "I went down there last night and you could hear them trying to break up more ice. . . . They wouldn't have lasted another day."

May said it took the four men about three hours to break a channel in the ice with their boat, and one — Brandon Banks, 16 — got into the water and helped calm one of the dolphins weakened by the ordeal so they could tow it to open water.

"I had a floater suit on," said Banks, "And they would come up and rest their head on me and I would keep their head out of the water so they can breathe through their blowhole."

"Local boys" in speedboat free dolphins (Canada.com, 19 Feb 2009)