Baby Dolphin Die-Offs Continue in the Gulf
Last edited Wed Apr 25, 2012, 02:16 AM - Edit history (1)
SCIENCE -- April 24, 2012 at 4:22 PM EDT
An unusually high number of dead dolphins - including stillborn and infant calves - have washed up along the Gulf of Mexico shores in the two years since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded into flames, unleashing tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the ocean.
More than 100 dolphin strandings already this year add to a pattern of death and disease among the marine mammals. In a normal year before the spill, about 74 strandings would be reported in the area. That number has increased eightfold in the past two years. Since February 2010, more than 600 have been found on the shores between the Louisiana-Texas border and the western coast of Florida.
And many of these dolphins have serious health problems -- lung disease, liver problems and low blood sugar -- according autopsies on the animals and other research.
Scientists suspect oil as a major culprit, but linking the spill definitively with the dolphin die-offs has been tricky. Decomposition causes tissue to decay, making the animals difficult to study.
"In all of the dolphin deaths... only 17 percent are stranded alive or stranded in fresh-dead conditions," said Jenny Litz, a research fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is studying the die-offs. Decomposition makes it much harder to study tissues during a necropsy.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/04/baby-dolphin-die-offs-continue-in-the-gulf.html
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| This is all about oil. | |
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| This is normal die off and has nothing to do with oil. | |
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| All a bunch of BS, so what a bunch of dolphins die, they do that all the time. | |
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