- While a large group of pilot whales was heading for Cape
Cod beaches to die Monday morning, another mass stranding of marine mammals
had taken place on a remote island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
-
- A mass stranding of 14 rough-toothed dolphins, a species
rarely seen close to shore, occurred Sunday on the southern end of Wreck
Island, an uninhabited nature preserve owned by the state.
-
- The stranding was reported long after the animals had
died, officials said. The Stranding Team from the Virginia Marine Science
Museum, accompanied by a dolphin expert from the Smithsonian Institution,
went to the barrier island opposite Oyster and examined the animals.
-
- Rough-toothed dolphins get their name from ridges on
their teeth. They have narrow heads and sloping foreheads, according to
the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.
-
- Charles Potter, a Smithsonian marine mammal specialist,
said Tuesday that there was no sign of trauma, such as net marks or boat
strikes. Although the animals had not eaten recently, they were not emaciated.
-
- ``They might have just become trapped, or if one or two
of them was ill, it might have been a follow-the-leader sort of thing to
the beach,'' Potter said.
-
- They were mostly juveniles, Potter said.
-
- ``You get the feeling that if they were older, they might
not have ended up like this,'' he said.
-
- Mark Swingle, director of the stranding team, said mass
strandings are rare in Virginia. Three rough-toothed dolphins came ashore
in Sandbridge in the late 1980s, he said.
-
- They are deep-ocean animals, almost never found close
to shore. ``Something must have been wrong,'' Swingle said.
-
-
- http://www.pilotonline.com/news/nw0731rou.html
|
