Stranded baby dolphin airlifted to Florida

Virginia Beach, Little did Mr. Mags know, he was about to have a ride of hi short life.  The baby striped dolphin.,, rescues a week ago from the surf at the North End, had grown accustomed to nonstop care by staff and volunteers of the Virginia Marine Science Museum Stranding Team. From feeding to blood tests, from physical therapy to medications.

And now this, The deep sea creature that should have been way out near the Continental Shelf was about to go airborne, placed in the belly of a Coast Guard C-130 transport plane and delivered to a rehabilitation center in Clearwater, Fla.  BUT at 4 a.m.. in a makeshift pool in the hushed dark of the center on a dead end virginia Beach back road, his attention was drawn to food.  He clicked as a team member arrived with a bowl of fish and chowed down heartily.  Gentry and Marian Childress, retired elementary school teachers from Fairfax County, had begun their shift at 3 .m., lovingly walking the small dolphin around the pool, keeping track of its respiration as they kept it afloat and away from the walls of the narrow tank.

Stranding team members who had recently lost a well loved mutt named Maggie, the Childresses were doubly invested in the animals survival.  Breaking with a tradition of not naming marine animals, the team named the dolphin after Maggie, sure at first it was a female.  He it turned out to be a boy dolphin, Maggie became Mr. Mags. The dolphin was now the subject of an all out effort to save his life.

Beach strollers found him last Thursday morning near 88th Street, weak and rolling in the surf, The speculation was that the young dolphin, no more than 150 pounds, had lost his mother and was dehydrated from lake of food.  Otherwise, his health seemed good.  No apparent diseases or blockages. And once he started getting protein laced fluids in his stomach, his energy level shot up.  Team leader Mark Swingle began making calls to dolphin rehabilitation facilities around the East Coast and alerted the Navy nd Coast Guard that the animal needed transportation.

The stranding team is one of the busiest in the Southeast, responding to more than 200 calls concerning dead or ailing marine mammals or sea turtles every year.  But because its facilities are inadequate for rehabilitating the animals, there always a scramble when live alone are brought in.

Plenty of stranded sea turtles and seals have been nursed back to health, but no dolphin has made it back to the ocean in many years.  Hopes are high for Mr. Mags.  "It depends on what's wrong with the animal," Said Dennis Kellinburger, director of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where the dolphin was headed on Wednesday. "Sometimes they can fool you. They'll seem perfectly fine, then boom, they're gone."

Mr. Mags will be fattened up and exercised at the aquarium's 40 foot pool. Then, if a pod of striped dolphins can be found that will accept him as one of thier own, he will be released.  Help cam from the Coast Guard, which was staging a mission to Puerto Rico on Wednesday. The team would send four members, a vet, a vet tech, a dolphin expert and a volunteer.  They picked up Mr. Mags at 8 a.m.., carried him to a truck and drove him to the Coast Guard's Elizabeth City, N.C. air base.  He was clicking when they moved him from the truck to a shallow pool in the C-130's cargo bay.  And he was clicking when they placed him in the new pool in Clearwater. The guardedly optimistic report:  He ate a pound of fish..