They rescue a kangaroo in the middle of the sea three kilometers off the coast: "I had never seen anything like it in my life"
Some fishermen found it exhausted in Boston Bay, south of Australia
What was supposed to be a routine day of fishing ended up turning into an unusual rescue. The crew of a boat fishing in Boston Bay , off the town of Port Lincoln , in the state of South Australia , found a kangaroo swimming about three kilometers from the coast this week. The fishermen managed to pull it aboard and take it back to shore, according to the Australian public broadcaster ABC .
It was the boat's skipper , Ryan Smith , who raised the alarm after saying he had seen a kangaroo in the water. His companions did not believe him at first, but they decided to turn back to check. To their surprise , he was right: a male kangaroo was struggling to stay afloat in the middle of the bay.
To get it out of the sea , the crew opened the boat's side hatch , which is practically at water level. That allowed them to hold the animal underneath its front legs and hoist it aboard without too much trouble.
Hugging the kangaroo until reaching land
Jake Murray , a diver and farmer, is used to dealing with wild animals, but he had never experienced anything like this. During the trip back, he made sure to keep the kangaroo calm by hugging it and controlling its hind legs , which are especially strong. According to his account, the animal was exhausted and soaked after spending quite a while swimming, so much so that, while he was holding it, it seemed to be taking a little nap.
Among the crew was Miguel Villarroel, a diver from the Galápagos Islands who, despite having lived in Australia for some time, was seeing a kangaroo for the first time. When he asked whether that was something usual, Murray was blunt: “I had never seen anything like that in my life” . The fisherman explained that he has seen kangaroos in shallow waters or on beaches, but never in the middle of the bay.
Murray does not know how the animal ended up so far from the coast. He points out that the calm sea or the currents could have carried it away , although he also joked with another hypothesis: that it was a young specimen that jumped into the water to impress its companions after accepting a dare.
Already on dry land, the kangaroo rested for a while on the beach sand before regaining its strength and moving away in great leaps.
