Man Saves Dolphin Stuck in Mud on South Carolina Riverbank

Two men preparing for a fishing tournament spotted something unusual while boating along the Waccamaw River in Conway, South Carolina, on July 28 — a dolphin beached in mud along the riverbank. Elvis Black and Brian Crosby came across the dolphin with its face stuck in mud. Black can be seen in the video helping to free the marine mammal as Crosby records. Black explained in a Facebook post that he and Crosby have been fishing together for over 30 years, and have never come across something like this, noting that the dolphin was “a long ways from salt water.” “The dolphin was kind of buried in the mud with his face in a wallowed out hole,” he said in the post. “He was still living so I jumped out the boat and rolled him back into deeper water. He swam off so hopefully he wasn’t too weak and lived!” While it is unusual to see bottlenose dolphins in a freshwater, it is not the first time one has been spotted in the Waccamaw River. In 2019, footage captured a dolphin swimming near a boat on the same river, though it was found dead a week later, according to a local news outlets. Credit: Elvis Black via Storyful