Visitors to a St. Simons, Georgia, beach pulled together to save many of the stranded pilot whales beached on the shore.
Pilot whales can weigh in at around 1,000 pounds, but the locals had the elbow grease to spare. Even children joined the adults in pushing the peaceful creatures back into the ocean. The Glenn County Emergency Management and Homeland Security reported that all surviving whales had been returned safely to their aquatic domain.
Twenty cetacean lives were saved by the civilians, eventually assisted by responders from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A video recorded by local resident Dixie McCoy was posted on Facebook, showing the heroic efforts. “It is so sad,” McCoy said at one point in the video. “They are going to die if they don’t get help.” Fortunately, most were not content to watch, and the whales did indeed receive the assistance they needed.