The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, the only organization in New Jersey authorized to rescue and rehabilitate stranded marine mammals and sea turtles, is hosting a three-hour volunteer workshop for local residents interested in becoming first responders for beached animals found along the Jersey Shore. MMSC staff members will be training individuals at St. Francis Community Center, located at 4700 Long Beach Blvd. in Brant Beach, at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 18. Participants must be 18 or older and live within 15 minutes of a beach or coastal waterway.
“If something comes up and we need a volunteer, we need the volunteer to be there quickly,” said Sarah Miele, MMSC’s education coordinator.
According to officials, more than 4,100 animals, including whales, dolphins, seals and sea turtles, have been handled by the MMSC since its founding in 1978.
First responders react to calls regarding stranded animals, to help staff determine whether or not the animal needs professional assistance. Crowd control is also sometimes necessary.
“People get very curious, and unfortunately when they get too curious, they’ll sometimes get bit by the animal because they’re getting way too close. We don’t want that to happen,” said Miele.
Volunteers will be able to perform a mock dolphin rescue using a fiberglass replica, provided by the MMSC, during the workshop.
“We go through all the expectations,” said Miele. “We go through all the different animals that you could be responding to and different scenarios. We’ll actually go through the steps if you were rescuing a live dolphin because we’re getting into the season where the bottlenose dolphins are closer to shore,” she added.
Volunteers willing to transport any deceased animals to the MMSC or the New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania for a necropsy are also needed.
At the end of the workshop, volunteers can decide whether or not they would like to be on the MMSC’s response list.
“We want people to come with an open mind because there’s a lot that we do go over, and a lot of times we’ll have at least one or two people who decide at the end of the workshop that it’s not quite cut out for them,” said Miele. “We totally understand that; it’s not for everybody. So we try to encourage people to just really think about whether it’s something that they really want to do.”
The number of calls a volunteer receives varies day by day, depending on the time of year, said Miele.
“This time of year we get a lot of calls for seals that are either young, disoriented, sick or injured,” she said. “Usually November through May is the busiest time of year for us. June starts to slow down, and then it picks back up again once we get into (sea) turtle season, typically July, August, September,” she added.
To register for the workshop, call Miele at 609-266-0538. For more information about the MMSC, visit http://www.marinemammalstrandingcenter.org/.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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