Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.
The Biloxi, Miss. Sun Herald reports 17 young dolphins, either naturally aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines.
Scientists at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies performed necropsies on two of the dead dolphins on Monday. The Sun Herald has a video report on the dolphins, but a warning that it’s hard to watch.
This is the first birthing season for dolphins since the BP oil spill.
Dolphins breed in the spring and carry their young for 11 to 12 months. Typically in January and February, there are one or two baby dolphins per month found in dead on the shores of Mississippi and Alabama, then the birthing season goes into full swing in March and April. This year there have already been 17 deaths and February isn’t even over yet.
Since the first days of the Gulf oil disaster, many warned it takes years to assess the full impacts of a catastrophic oil spill. With this terrible news, it is clear this disaster continues to unfold.
1 comments:
:-( so sad.
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