ORONO – A group of UMaine students doing volunteer work in Florida over spring break joined dozens of wet-suited volunteers on Marathon Key, caring for some of the 70 rough-tooth dolphins that beached themselves in shallow water.

Christie Nold, a 20-year-old secondary education major from Shelburne, Vt., was among a group of 10 UMaine students participating in Black Bear Volunteers and Alternative Spring Break program assignments at a Haitian community center and in Biscayne National Park, where they were cleaning beaches and helping to monitor corral growth at a corral nursery, when they heard about the stranded dolphins about two hours away.

Students in the UMaine volunteers group who helped with the rescue effort also included Kaylee Cooper of Carmel, Rachel Maloney-Hawkins, Ashley Adams, Matt Sullivan, Caroline Seastrom, Vanessa Morin, Lindsay Landroche, Rachel Zawacki and Jason Saucier, a graduate student and adviser with the ASB group.

Nold and her friends drove to the site of the stranding March 3 to sign up for shifts in the water, cradling sick or exhausted dolphins to keep their breathing holes above water. Their first glimpse of the scene was discomforting, Nold said.

“I think the hardest part was we got there before there was a lot of police control and there were huge lines of people with cameras gawking but not doing anything,” she said. “The line for volunteers was a lot shorter.”

The UMaine students, with at least seven people available to go into the water, signed up for the least popular shift, 4-8 a.m. March 4, Nold said.

“We had such a large group, we could pretty much fill any slots they had,” she said.

The UMaine Black Bear Volunteers’ Alternative Spring Break program arranges for students to do weeklong volunteer service projects during spring break, including building homes for low-income families, doing conservation work or helping the elderly and at-risk youths throughout the East Coast. This year, the program also placed students in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, said Lynette Dexter, program coordinator.