HYANNIS – Marine mammal rescue crews may soon be using a new carrier developed on Cape Cod – by high school students – to save stranded animals.
Sturgis Charter Public School students will present its Sturgis Dolphin Rescue Carrier to representatives from the International Fund for Animal Welfare Saturday at 10 a.m. at Grays Beach in Yarmouth Port.
The carrier, developed in partnership with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists, can hold up to 600 pounds and can be carried quickly through beach sand by one or two people.
The project was funded through a competitive Lemelson-MIT grant of $10,000.
The carrier is expected to increase the odds of saving beached dolphins and other marine mammals, including small whales.
“The Sturgis students have shown great persistence, diligence and innovation in developing this cart,” said Michael Moore, the director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI. “My hope is that it will enable extraction of stranded dolphins from remote areas with relatively few people required.”
According to IFAW, the Cape is one of only a few places in the world where mass strandings of dolphins occur on a regular basis. Cape Cod accounts for about a quarter of all live dolphin strandings in the country, with 114 stranded live dolphins reported last year.
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