Every week on Friday now on DGWGO we Focus on One Charity, Community or Non for profit Event, group or page that is either based in D&G or has strong connections with the Region ! This week we were contacted by Hannah of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue team ( As seen in the march edition of Dumfries and Galloway Life Magazine) who wanted top let folk know about an amazing one day course she is running !
Hannah Gordon is Dumfries and Galloways area coordinator of marine mammal rescues for British Divers Marine Life Rescue and she is a bit stuck as I have no medics in this area as this county is one of the last places to have any sort of rescue team or procedure in place to deal with strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises on our beaches or seal pup emergencies. Strandings are very common all along our coastlines and our Head Office gets calls daily on our hotline number to dispatch medics to rescue and refloat our cetaceans or to give first aid and send our seal pups on to rehabilitation facilities. We also formed a new team recently known as the Large Whale Disentanglement Team to disentangle whales that become caught in fishing lines and nets around our country. This is the only team of its kind in Europe and consists of other medics such as myself based around the country.
We’ll be holding a one day course in Stranraer on March 8th to train some marine mammal medics to be on call rescuers for our charity and to raise awareness of strandings and our rescue work in the local community so that if a member of public ever came across a stranding they would know who to phone. Our work is entirely funded through public donations and grants and this helps us to buy vital life saving equipment such as refloatation pontoons, medic kits and equipment for our own medics such as lifejackets and helmets. We’re asking that if some generous people aren’t interested in becoming rescuers for the organisation if anyone would help us out with fundraising so we can get a dolphin first aid kit for the county.
You can find any information on the charity at our website at bdmlr.org.uk please drop me an email Hannah Gordon <[email protected]> if there’s anything else you would like to know!
For Full details of the Course and to find out how you can take part go to http://www.dgwgo.com/ai1ec_event/whaledolphin-rescue-course/?instance_id=25452
