State and federal agencies are working in conjunction to determine the cause of the growing number of dead and dying dolphins washing up along the East Coast.
Robert Schoelkopf, director of the Maritime Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, said in an Aug. 21 interview the stranding center is working in coordination with the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the growing problem.
“The DEP is assisting us if we need animals picked up by boat,” he said.” NOAA is the federal organization that is responsible for marine mammals.
“They’re heading the investigation and taking in the data from all the other areas,” he added. “They are going to be doing the compiling to determine the cause of death.”
Earlier this week the remains of two bottlenose dolphins washed up onto local beaches: a dolphin was found on the beach in Sandy Hook on Aug. 20; another on the beach in Sea Bright on Aug. 21.
According to Schoelkopf 63 dolphins, either dead or dying, have washed ashore along the New Jersey coastline since July 9.
The dolphin found Wednesday is the seventh dolphin to be found washed ashore in northern Monmouth County this summer.
National Park Service (NPS) spokeswoman Daphne Yun said Wednesday five dolphins have been discovered on Sandy Hook over the course of the summer, three of them being bottlenose dolphins. The remains of a beached dolphin were also discovered Aug. 12 on the shore in neighboring Monmouth Beach.
The rash of dolphin deaths has puzzled officials over the summer and Schoelkopf said it has been difficult to identify a cause of dolphin deaths.
“Some of them are too badly decomposed to get any testing done and others are now pending testing in the labs,” he said. “We are seeing some respiratory problems with them, but by the time people report them there is basically nothing we can do.
“When they do come ashore the sharks have been working on them for some time,” he added, “the tissues are either gone or they’ve been contaminated and there is nothing we can do.”
Yun said the dolphin found at Sandy Hook was spotted in the water on Aug. 18 and did not wash ashore until Aug. 20.
Schoelkopf said in the few dolphins studied thus far at the Brigantine center a viral phenomena strain has been identified as a possible cause of death.
He said about a dozen dolphins wash up on beaches over the course of most summers and he compared the summer of 2013 to 1987 when 93 dolphins washed up in New Jersey.
According to Schoelkopf, dolphins tend to migrate south for the winter between the end of September and the middle of October depending on the weather and water temperatures.