A group of friends scrambled down a rocky cliff face to rescue dolphins stranded on rocks in Wellington yesterday.
Melissa Prowse told Summer Report she and her friends were watching a big pod of about 50 dolphins play and feed near Houghton Bay on the capital's south coast.
She said as the tide went out and the mammals started to head back out to sea, she realised two of them had been left behind, stuck on rocks in shallow water at the bottom of the rocky face.
Three of her friends made their way down the unstable surface to come to their rescue.
"The cliff down there is really steep so we didn't know how they were going to get down there, but they managed to get down and over to the two dolphins."
She said there was only about 10 centimetres of water under one dolphin and the other was wedged between some rocks.
"Daniel [the rescuer] just sort of bear-hugged his one, he just ran in with both of his arms and cuddled the dolphin and moved it around.
"They said they had a bit of an adrenaline rush and probably didn't realise [until later] how big and heavy they were."
Ms Prowse said the first dolphin was very calm, but the second one was panicking a bit.
"The second one, that my brother went to, was splashing around and really stressed out until it got properly flipped around in the water."
She said once the dolphins were free they swam straight back out to sea to join the pod out in the bay.
Ms Prowse said they all felt really stoked to have helped the animals out of the rocks.