They might have been cowboys, except instead of Stetsons, they wore knit caps. They might have been cowboys, except instead of riding horses, they were riding in motorboats. They might have been cowboys, except instead of firing guns in the air, they banged hammers on gunwales. They might have been cowboys, except the canyon they were getting the animals out of was underwater. And they might have been cowboys except they were not herding cattle, they were herding dolphin. Also, on Tuesday, it was cold enough to freeze your butt off.

The Chief of Police of East Hampton, Todd H. Sarris, who came there in full dress uniform to watch the proceedings, said he had never seen anything like it in his life. Or, as some of the thousands of people who had come the prior Saturday had said when they came down to Northwest Harbor to greet the dolphins, this was a once in a lifetime experience.

Three times on Tuesday, the group of cowboys aboard the seven powerboats tried to drive the herd all the way through the channel to Gardiner’s Bay. And three times, the dolphins thwarted them, dodging and turning, and finally finding a slot between two of the boats where they could scamper to escape back to the deep water in the center of the Harbor.

“It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork,” I said to Charles Bowman, as we stood on the dock listening to the chatter over the walkie talkies. With the wind chill, the temperature felt like zero. We’d been out there an hour and our hands were in our pockets and we were stamping from one foot to the other. It might be a day at the beach for the dolphins, but all these people could not last much longer.

“I’d say our chances are pretty poor,” Bowman said. He’s the President of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation. He ought to know, “I think we are going to try just one last time.”

That prior Saturday morning, the visit from this school of dolphins had seemed like such a celebration. It was their third day in the harbor. On the first and second days, they had been eating and jumping around merrily for the crowd. But on this third day, what I had perceived as a slow walk in the park after a big meal was, in fact, the early stages of exhaustion. The dolphins had eaten up all the fish in the harbor on the second day. And now their instincts were telling them, inaccurately, that the channel you had to take to get back out of the harbor was too shallow to be an exit. All they could do was swim slowly around. They were doomed to die.

On the other hand, the cowboys were not going to let them.

They came Saturday afternoon to huddle and have the meeting that I had tried to crash. And they came back Sunday at 1 p.m. at high tide, armed with their boats and noisemakers and walkie talkies and a plan, and they tried three times to get the dolphins out of the harbor, but they failed. There had been one dolphin who had died on the second day, two that died on Saturday, another who died on Sunday — you’d find them beached on the sand, dead — and this was not going well at all.

On Sunday night, it had been decided by the volunteers that no attempt would be made on Monday. The weather would be bad. The wind was coming from the wrong direction. And the dolphins could use a day off to recover from the spooking they had gone through Sunday.
Now, on Tuesday, all the conditions were right. At 11 a.m., the tide was high. The wind, coming in from offshore, was piling more and more water into the harbor, making the channel look less and less daunting to the dolphins. And though for the humans, it was freeze your butt off weather, the sun was shining. This would be the day. Move ‘em or lose ‘em.

On hand now were people from the National Oceanic Weather Service, the East Hampton Town Trustees, the East Hampton Ambulance Service, the Federal DEC, the State Environmental Commission, the East Hampton Town Police, the State Park Police, the Coast Guard, the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research, the New York State Conservation Service and the East Hampton Harbormaster’s office. They had come in trucks bristling with equipment, including computers, two way radios, diving outfits, oxygen bottles, a fleet of seven aluminum outboards, and a 21 foot command ship. And this time, the general public was not welcome. A police officer at the corner of Northwest Harbor Road and Swamp Road a quarter mile up the road was turning all curiosity seekers away for the day.

After the three failed attempts, the situation went from very difficult to just about hopeless. The weather was deteriorating. The herd was in full flight this time and they had, for the first time, fled two and a half miles down to the very toe of the harbor, as far away from the channel as it was possible to get. But the cowboys in their boats were coming after them again. And through the telescopic lenses of press cameras all lined up on the wharf, it was possible to see that they were turning them around.

“Here they come,” someone said.

And so they were. They came closer and closer to the wharf, an invisible roundup, about thirty people in seven boats, pushing along what appeared to be nothing at all, except every once in a while when a black fin would appear for a second or two as the dolphin came up nervously to take a breath.

They got closer. And then you could hear the noise. The cowboys were making an incredible racket, banging sticks and hammers on the outsides of the boats, splashing paddles, revving engines to send up rooster tails of spray, shaking cans and shouting and whooping, and occasionally, you’d hear a distinctive, almost furtive clicking sound from the dolphins themselves as they breached the surface of the harbor. They were trying to get away. And they were getting closer and closer to the channel.

And then, the seemingly impossible happened. It was later determined that a little more than half the dolphins got chased out through the channel into the bay. At the time, what we saw from the shore were the outboards moving up through the channel, then stopping just outside, with the cowboys continuing to bang and shout, just daring the dolphins to try to get back in.

The dolphins needed no further disincentive. The bay was saltier, filled with sea life and fish and they were hungry. They swam away, leaving the rest of the herd inside, for the sea rescue people to make another go at.

“All the dolphins get saved,” I said to the chief, as I saw that the cowboys were going to make one more attempt. “But the people freeze to death.”

“I just heard on the radio that a pod of whales have chased some fish up onto the beach out in Montauk. We really don’t need this.”

I couldn’t take it anymore, and retreated to my car and the warmth of the car heater. I’d talk to Bowman and the chief later. They’d have to win or lose without me.

Outside my car window, a man with a TV camera that said Animal Planet on the side, was talking to a woman.

“I’m so happy they can go home now,” she was saying.

Also in residence were all three networks, CNN, Newsday, The Discovery Channel and dozens of other newspeople.

Home? They’re going home? Where’s that?