Friday, August 18, 2006

Crew rescues dolphin in a Speedo swimsuit

A lucky adolescent male bottlenose dolphin is back to living nude and free in Gulf Coast Florida's Sarasota Bay after making a potentially fatal wardrobe choice early this summer.

The 10-year-old dolphin, known as Scrappy, probably owes its life to a Brookfield Zoo marine mammal research team that works year round in the bay.

The drama began July 6, when a member of the team working in the bay spotted Scrappy unaccountably and uncomfortably swimming around while wearing a black, Speedo-brand man's bikini swimsuit.

"He must have found the swimsuit floating in the water," said Randall Wells, a population biologist who runs the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program for the Chicago Zoological Society, Brookfield Zoo's parent organization.

"Somehow he got his head and torso through the waist and one of the leg holes of the suit, and it was hugging him right where his pectoral fins and body meet."

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