[Mike]

from bridget:

An unusually high number are washing up along Texas’ Gulf Coast this
calving season for unknown reasons.
By Lianne Hart, Times Staff Writer
March 19, 2007

GALVESTON, TEXAS – An unusually large number of dead bottlenose dolphins
have washed ashore near this Gulf of Mexico city in the last month, and
investigators are looking at laboratory slides, satellite photos and
anything else they can think of in their search for clues.

About 180 dolphins are stranded in Texas each year, many from January
through March – their calving season, when infants may die during birth
or become separated from their mothers and are unable to survive alone.
The 47 bodies found recently included many newborns with umbilical cords
still attached. That is three times the number found during the same
period last year.

“Right now we don’t know what’s going on, but it is definitely
significant, ” said Daniel Cowan, a pathologist at the University of
Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “Nowhere else in Texas is having this
kind of problem. They’re coming in in multiples.”
Investigators theorize that poisonous substances seeping into the water
off Louisiana may have killed the dolphins, which were then carried by
currents to the Texas shore.

They are also scanning satellite images for toxic algae blooms and
considering the possibility of morbillivirus, a dolphin virus similar to
one that causes canine distemper.

Cold winter waters can also kill dolphins, said Cowan, who is also the
director of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, a largely
volunteer rescue group operating along the Texas coast. Most of the
strandings occur south of Galveston.

Blood, tissue and other samples from the dolphins will be sent to the
National Marine Fisheries Service in Florida for toxicology tests, Cowan
said.

In Galveston, scientists are conducting necropsies – the animal
equivalent of an autopsy – and looking for signs of bacterial infection,
wounds, disease or parasites. Results probably won’t be known for at
least several weeks.

The dolphin carcasses have been found from Galveston to Sabine Pass,
about 70 miles to the northeast. Necropsies are conducted on the beach
because most of the dolphins have been too decomposed for laboratory
testing.

The dolphins are then buried deep in the sand, said Heidi Watts,
operations coordinator for the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
Last week the investigation spread to Louisiana, where the Coast Guard
began aerial searches for dolphin bodies and clues to what may be
killing them.

“We’re checking out everything possible,” Watts said. “We don’t know
what’s happening.”