During a leisurely boating trip late last week near Fort George Island in Florida, Kerry Ware and her family spotted a dolphin stranded on a sandbar. Fortunately, Ware and her father were able to save the beached animal by dragging it with great effort to deeper water.

“We were turning the corner and we saw a dolphin that had beached itself on a sandbar,” Ware said. “It looked like she was trying to come out of a smaller creek into open water.”

The video below shows Ware and her father,George Heheman, dragging the 300-pound dolphin by the tail. After struggling with the desperate creature for several moments, the duo then released it in open water.

According to Ware, they then herded a calf toward the mother dolphin and the two swam off together. Ware believes that the dolphin and calf had been trying to escape a tidal creek when the mother got stranded.

“It was so sweet,” said Ware. “I was just beaming from ear to ear and we’d just sit for the rest of the day saying, ‘I can’t believe we just did that.’ It was such an amazing experience.”

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