Muscle cramps can be relieved, and the animal's sense of balance restored, by rocking a stranded dolphin or whale from side to side as the tide comes in, just before its refloating.

The average annual number of stranded dolphins is four, he said.

Groups of stranded dolphins have been found as far afield as France and Uruguay.

Largely because of its vast coastline, Florida leads the nation in the number of stranded dolphins, with 214 last year.

They simply take too long in responding to a stranded dolphin.

A month after a stranded 8-month-old striped dolphin was rescued on the Delaware shore and taken to New Jersey, it has found more permanent shelter in the Miami Seaquarium.

Monitoring Marine Mammals: journey to the Cananéia Estuary in Brazil and you may wind up helping stranded dolphins on rustic tourist beaches.

Although details of their diet are sketchy, the stomach contents of stranded dolphins have included such fish such as silversides, sauries, houndfish, smelts, cutlassfish, and various squid and octopuses.

But that was to protest the bureaucracy that was interfering with the saving of stranded dolphins.

The foundation, which also rescues and rehabilitates stranded dolphins, whales, seals and turtles, has spotted 15 finbacks off Long Island since January, most recently on April 10.