Eight dolphins were dead after a pod of the marine mammals washed ashore in a mass stranding in Sea Isle City, N.J., on Tuesday, the authorities said, prompting questions over what caused their deaths.
It’s unclear how the glossy, gray Common dolphins ended up splayed on the sands of southern New Jersey, with two dead and the other six deteriorating so rapidly that they had to be euthanized, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said.
The center responds to reports of marine mammals in distress along the waterways of New Jersey.
A veterinarian examined the six dying dolphins and determined that euthanizing them was the best option “to prevent further suffering, as returning them to the ocean would have only prolonged their inevitable death,” the center said.
The eight dolphins were taken to the New Jersey State Lab for necropsies. The Marine Mammal Stranding Center did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment late Tuesday night.
“We share in the public’s sorrow for these beautiful animals, and hope that the necropsies will help us understand the reason for their stranding,” the center said.
The discovery on Tuesday came about a week after the Marine Mammal Stranding Center reported that two other Common dolphins — an adult and a calf — died after also washing ashore on a sandbar in Sandy Hook Bay, near a pier. Workers with the center climbed over a guardrail of the pier and trekked through rock and marsh to get to the calf, which was placed on a stretcher and taken to a veterinarian’s office, where it was euthanized.
While Common dolphins are not endangered, the deaths in recent weeks have still worried locals.
In Facebook comments on the Marine Mammal Stranding Center’s posts about the dolphins, some have questioned what may have caused the deaths.
“In all my 30 years down here, I’ve only seen one big, huge dolphin washed up,” Alan Nesensohn, who lives near the beach where the dolphins were found on Tuesday, told ABC 6 news.
Several residents have speculated whether work being done offshore, such as ocean floor sonar mapping, is the catalyst, The Asbury Park Press reported.
Representative Jeff Van Drew, Republican of New Jersey, and other Republican lawmakers held a hearing last week with residents about a proposed wind farm to be located off the coast of southern New Jersey.
Cindy Zipf, the executive director of the environmental organization Clean Ocean Action, said at the hearing that while “climate change is real” and the wind farms could help reduce reliance on fossil fuels, there was still concern over whether the wind turbine farms would be safe for marine life, the newspaper reported.
Whales have also faced danger in recent months along the northeastern coastline. Since early December, at least 23 dead whales have washed ashore along the East Coast, including 12 in New Jersey and New York, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Post-mortem examinations have suggested that ship strikes are likely the cause of many of those deaths.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement last week that all offshore wind survey activities have been “deemed safe for marine mammals.”
Arthur Kopelman, a marine biologist and president of the Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island, said on Tuesday that offshore wind farms did not appear to be the direct cause of the mass strandings in recent months.
“I’m not discounting it fully, but there doesn’t seem to be evidence that offshore wind is the primary cause, that a much more reasonable, direct cause is ship strikes, at least for most of them,” he said.
Emily Schmall contributed reporting.
