Every year a few baby dolphins in the Gulf don’t make it and are found on the shores of the Gulf, but this year something is different. To date, 24 baby dolphins have been found dead in Alabama and Georgia, some are stillborn, others aborted fetuses. Researchers, who say death-toll is ten times the average, are currently studying the dead porpoises for clues to cause. These could include colder-than-average waters, algal blooms, disease, or the incident in the back of everyone’s mind: the BP oil spill last year.
“I think we scientists are probably thinking pretty much the same thing everyone else is thinking. Does this have something to do with the oil spill?” Ruth Carmichael, a scientist with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, told the Press-Register. “It is not totally unusual to have these sort of mass mortality events or strandings. But, because this one is happening in the first birthing season after the spill, it certainly raises the question of a connection. And it should.”
However, researchers warn that their investigation could take months, and given that most of the bodies were found already-decomposing, the smoking gun may never be identified.
Even if the dolphins are not dying from direct contact with oil pollution, they may be facing nutrition problems if the oil spill killed off a significant portion of marine animals lower down the food chain. Since January, 67 dolphins, both young and old, have been dead along the coast.
Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia recently told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that the Gulf ecosystem has been hit harder by the oil spill than previous reports suggested Using a submersible, she found dead marine life covered in oil and places where oil lay on the Gulf floor nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick.
Still, at this point no one can say with any certainty what is causing the mass mortality of dolphins in the Gulf.
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