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Around 20 residents of the small Newfoundland community of Point May came together on Sunday to help two beached whales get back to the water safely.<\/p>\n
Matt Lamkin, a town councilor in the Burin Peninsula community, said the two pilot whales were stranded on the beach by his home.<\/p>\n
“We were advised from [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] to kind of leave the whales alone and stay away from their tails. But, like, I went down to investigate with my kids, and we could see that it was [bad], like they were in pretty dire straits,” Lamkin told CBC Radio\u2019s The St. John’s Morning Show Monday.<\/p>\n
“But then once we started pouring some water and stuff over them, like they started getting a bit revived. So we’re like ‘Man, we can’t leave them here.”<\/p>\n
WATCH | Watch the rescue effort here:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793040491_853_default.jpg\")
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2 whales freed from beach using buckets, hoses and an excavator<\/p>\n
Matt Lamkin raced to grab a bucket when he discovered two pilot whales stranded on the beach next to his house in Point May, N.L. Lamkin says the rescue effort quickly grew to include a fishing boat and an excavator. Lamkin shared the story, and video, with us.<\/p>\n
Lamkin and his kids went down to see the whales, and they and other residents knew they had to act. He said the town’s mayor, Darren Harris, was quick to bring a water hose and pump to make sure the creatures stayed hydrated.<\/p>\n
Harris also drove an excavator to help get the whales free of the sand. Lamkin said around 20 people took part in the rescue effort, which Lamkin said lasted over four hours.<\/p>\n
“[DFO] just said ‘they come to shore to die,’ but I didn’t accept that,” Harris told The Broadcast. “I think there was everybody in the community at one point, and people from outside the community. So everybody helped.”<\/p>\n
Both whales were able to get back to sea thanks to the help of residents.<\/p>\n
“Once we [saw] the first one starting to blow his blowhole and splash around and stuff, everybody was so excited,” Lamkin said, adding he was proud to see how the community came together.<\/p>\n
However, on Monday Harris said one of the whales \u2014 the female of the duo \u2014 had died. The whale was seen ashore earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
“The fact that we get them a chance at life again is the most important thing,” Lamkin said earlier on Monday.<\/p>\n
Download our free CBC News app<\/a> to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click here to visit our landing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-947234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}