Ice Keeps Three Dolphins Trapped in N.J. River

Ice kept three dolphins trapped in an inland waterway Wednesday, frustrating rescuers’ efforts to free the animals and shepherd them to open waters.

A fourth stranded dolphin disappeared and was believed to have died.

Marine Police and the Coast Guard used boats to break ice around a clearing in the Shrewsbury River where the bottlenose dolphins were clustered. But the ice reformed quickly and the boats’ movement apparently scared the animals. The effort, which began on Monday, was suspended in midafternoon Wednesday, and plans to resume were unclear.

“They were panicking. They were jumping right out of the water backward, looking right at us,” Marine Police Officer Bryan Stillwell said.

Rescuers had hoped to string a 160-foot net between two boats and use it to herd the dolphins out of the river.

Bob Schoelkopf, executive director of the private Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, N.J., has said that if the rescuers failed, he would urge the National Marine Fisheries Service to send divers with nets to capture the dolphins and carry them to sea.

“It’s a life-and-death situation,” said Schoelkopf, who estimated that netting the dolphins could take days and said he was uncertain the dolphins could survive that long if the river continues to freeze. Experts said a deep freeze that has settled over the region threatened the mammals’ survival.

Dolphins can live in cold water but must surface to breathe and would drown if caught under ice.

The group of four dolphins had been feeding since July in the river in central New Jersey, which connects with Raritan Bay off the Atlantic Ocean.

Bottlenose dolphins normally migrate south in September, but the four may have been confused because leaving the river required that they first swim north, Schoelkopf said.

“Their biological clocks tell them to swim south, not north, when winter arrives,” he said.

The creatures have floundered for days on a clear patch of the river.

The “Christmas” dolphins were dubbed Noel, Holly, Frosty and Poinsettia by a country club worker in Rumson, N.J., on the river’s shores.