Among the aquatic animals that marine biologist Laura Sanchez-Peregrine regularly sees out in the waters are fish, turtles and sharks – not wallabies.
But nobody told this little guy that.
The marine scientist made a startling discovery off the coast of NSW when she found a lone and exhausted wallaby swimming in the waters almost a kilometre from the shore.
Sanchez-Peregrine, a marine biology student, was just one of many aboard a little tin boat off the coast of Coffs Harbour when she saw a hairy animal swimming.
“We see this thing swimming — it’s like a hairy thing,” said Laura.
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“At first I thought it was a seal, but we came closer and it was a big wallaby, maybe a 25-kilogram wallaby — a big male,” she said.
“He looked really, really exhausted.”
After spotting the boat, the wallaby swam towards it, where Laura and her fellow students struggled to get him aboard.
“We decided to help him, but it was really difficult to bring him on board,” she said.
“At first, it was very difficult: he was defensive (and wallabies have huge claws), and we almost gave up and left it all in hands of Natural Selection. But we tried hard and we managed to bring him up on board, tied his legs up with a rope, put a towel on his head to calm him down. And he was all calm and still on the way back to the shore, not complaining much,” Laura wrote about her encounter on Instagram.
Eventually he was brought on board after being secured by ropes and towels, after which he laid, exhausted, in the hull before being released back onto the beach.
“He stayed on the beach for two minutes, super exhausted standing there, couldn’t move at all,” she said.
“And then yeah, he just went — hopped off and waved goodbye.”
In honour of his maritime adventure, the biologist named the little guy ‘Swampy’.
