They ended up returning to sea. Friday evening, the three dolphins who had taken up residence in the Old Port of La Rochelle, left the Chalutiers basin. They are left on their own, without intervention, around 9 p.m. The lock had been open for about an hour. After two days spent under the amazed eyes of the Rochelais, they quickly disappeared into the distance.
The guidance operations had not worked
A few hours earlier, Friday morning, a team from the Pélagis observatory and agents from the port of La Rochelle tried to guide the dolphins out of the basin. They used kayaks, boats and ultrasound. But it didn’t work. The operation was interrupted to limit stress on marine mammals. The team then decided to limit itself to simple observations of dolphins.
According to the teams at the Pélagis Observatory, two of the dolphins were subaldutes: a male and a female. The third was a juvenile, of as yet undetermined sex. It is not uncommon to observe them in the port of La Rochelle. Last July, two common dolphins had already camped there.
