MIAMI, Feb. 23, 2011
A tide of dead infant dolphins has washed ashore along the 100-mile stretch of the Alabama and Mississippi coastlines in the past two weeks, and the marine experts today said they believe last summer's Gulf oil spill may be to blame.
A total of 24 of the young dolphins been found dead in the last couple weeks, including five in the past 24 hours. Marine mammal researchers fear it will only get worse.
"I believe this is very very unusual what we're dealing with. It's a tenfold increase in calves that are dying," Moby Solangi, the head of the Mississippi based Institute for Marine Mammal Research, told ABC News. "Every year, we get one or two babies that die. Now, we're seeing stillborn, or preemies dying."
"With some, we're not sure if they actually took a breath," said Dr. Delphine Shannon, also of the IMMR....
The infant and young dolphins lost in the birthing season following the Gulf oil spill were either still born or born with birth defects that ultimately killed them. A dolphin fetus takes an entire year / 12 months to develop in utero. So, the adult females carrying them survived the spill, but, they were exposed to the spilled oil and the oil at the bottom of the Gulf, along with the Corexit. There is also the issue of aqueous methane from the gas escaping the ruptured oil well.
So, the infants and dead young are proof positive of the responsibility. There is no other reason the young are dead. We did not see massive aborting by the females either. So, the toxic materials they were exposed to are the real problems. And I don't want to hear how Corexit was approved by the EPA. Corexit was never approved for the diet of endangered species of dolphins. Its use wasn't even necessary until the 'experimental' well was ruptured.
Thu, Apr 19 2012 at 4:32 PM EST
In just two years, more than 600 bottlenose dolphins (click here) have washed onto U.S. shores from the Gulf of Mexico, about 95 percent of them already dead. Such "unusual mortality events" have hit Gulf dolphins before, but this one is different. In terms of total deaths, calf deaths and overall duration, it's unprecedented in recorded history....
..."The Barataria Bay dolphins have severe health problems that are not showing up in dolphins from the un-oiled area, and have not been seen in previous studies of dolphins from other sites along the Atlantic coast or the Gulf of Mexico," explains a fact sheet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is studying the die-off. These dolphins "are underweight, have low hormone levels, low blood sugar, and some show signs of liver damage," NOAA reports, adding that their symptoms "are consistent with those seen in other mammals exposed to oil."
Not only do the symptoms raise red flags, but so do the numbers and locations of dying dolphins. From 2002-2009, Louisiana averaged 20 dolphin strandings per year, but then had 139 in 2010, 91 of which occurred after the BP spill began. 2011 was even worse, with 159 strandings statewide — almost eight times the '02-'09 average. Alabama and Mississippi had four and five times the normal stranding rate in 2011, respectively, and 100 cetaceans have already washed up across the Gulf Coast in 2012. Yet strandings are back to normal in Florida, which is farther from the spill site....
