Passengers aboard a ferry made an unlikely and, as it turns out, alarming discovering during their trip to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Monday morning.
A dog was spotted struggling to keep his head above water – over a mile away from shore.
Around 10:30 a.m. Monday, passengers aboard the Island Queen Ferry noticed something splashing in the water during the trip from Falmouth to Oak Bluffs. As passengers grew alarmed, the ferry began circling the stranded pooch, but they couldn’t maneuver the 125-foot ferry close enough to the dog to get it on board.
“I think some of the crew actually looked like they were about to go in,” Carol Portier, who recorded video of the rescue, told the Cape Cod Times.
Passengers began yelling to a nearby fishing boat to get their attention, eventually alerting them to the dog’s plight in the water nearby.
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“All of a sudden the Island Queen turned around and started circling something,” Michael Hamel, who was fishing with his family aboard the fishing vessel “Lovely Day”, told WCVB News.
Using a net, the crew of the “Lovely Day” was able to get the dog safely aboard while passengers on the nearby ferry cheered.
The dog, which was wearing a collar but had no identifying tags, was brought to the port authority in Oak Bluffs.
It is not known at this time how the animal ended up so far out to sea.