When dead baby dolphins wash ashore

This time next week, most of us will be crossing the Indiana state-line and headed to sunny, southern destinations. Such travels are expected for spring break. What might come as a surprise though, are the recent finds along our southern beaches.

Forget shells and shark teeth: During the past few weeks, two dozen dead baby dolphins have washed up on the shores of a 100-mile stretch of Alabama and Mississippi coastline. 

Whether this is a total anomaly or an after-effect of last year’s Gulf oil spill is up for debate, but there’s obviously a problem.

The head of the Mississippi-based Institute for Marine Mammal Research, Moby Solangi, explains how unusual these deaths are: “Every year, we get one or two babies that die. Now, we’re seeing stillborn, or preemies dying.”

These accounts of finding multiple dolphin bodies mark a staggering tenfold increase in the average number of dead calves found in a single year.

It’s possible that the dolphins “ingested something that may have affected their reproduction,” Solangi said. 

Blair Mase, a marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, echoes Solangi’s confusion about the calves’ cause of death.

“It could be infectious-related. Or it could be non-infection,” she said.

Scientists have taken tissue samples from the dolphins in hopes of figuring out the issue, but it seems the tragedy will run its course with or without the efforts of science. There’s no stopping it now.

Since the dolphin calving season doesn’t end until May, even more babies are likely to be found.

I just hope I’m not the next person to come across one while strolling along the beach.

Why can’t there be a sudden dumping of golf-ball-size pearls or something? Wouldn’t that be a fun prank, Mother Earth?
Though, really, I doubt this is one of Nature’s random flukes. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, sure, those happen on their own.

As for temperature and climate changes — you be the judge.

But with this mass of dead dolphins, I’m willing to make an unscientific guess that there’s foul play afoot.

We can’t change the past, but we can definitely be conscientious beach-lovers this time around.

So before you load up the van, make a pact with your buddies: no littering, no harpooning and no dumping bottles of sun tan oil into large bodies of water.

Science may not be able to tell us why the dolphins showed up on the sand yet, but while we’re waiting, we might as well do our part to keep the beaches clean.


E-mail: paihenry@indiana.edu