Three fishermen sacrificed a day’s work to rescue a dolphin family that had got into difficulty in shallow waters.

The fishermen noticed a pod of up to 60 dolphins in Smerwick Harbour in west Kerry as they made their way out to sea at dawn.

The spectacle had never been witnessed before in their lifetimes and they set about rescuing about 15 calves and their mothers that had already beached themselves on Beal Ban strand.

Edward Moore, Declan Kennedy and Maurice Lynch immediately notified fisheries expert Kevin Flannery and the four men lifted the calves onto their boats and brought them to deeper waters.

They then herded the mothers, too heavy to lift, and didn’t rest until the entire dolphin family had been reunited.

“I never saw the like of it in all the years I’m fishing,” Mr Moore told Independent.ie. “Sometimes you’d see one or two dolphins but this was a whole family.

“The juveniles were very small, only about two feet long, so we managed to lift them onto the boats.”

An audience had gathered on the shore watching the unusual spectacle, waiting until the rescue mission had been completed successfully.

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