WTF is going on with Peru’s dolphins and pelicans?
By Julia Whitty
7 May 2012 Something awful is happening in the waters off Peru’s northern coast, where some 3,000 dolphins have died and washed ashore since January. This rates as one of the worst, if not the worst, Unusual Mortality Event (UME) ever recorded. (I’ve been writing about the UME with marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico since BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster here and here and here.) In recent weeks more than 1,200 dead seabirds, mostly pelicans, have washed up along the same Peruvian beaches. And Saturday the government declared a health alert along Peru’s northern coastline, urging residents and tourists to stay away from the beach while it investigates the unexplained deaths. It also warned local officials to wear protective gear when handling dead birds and animals. So what’s going on? My friend Hardy Jones of Bluevoice.org visited Peru in late March, where he joined a crew mustered by veterinarian Dr. Carlos Lima-based director of the marine mammal rescue organization, ORCA Peru. In one day they counted 615 dolphin carcasses scattered over 84 miles (135 kilometers) of coast before the high tide swept them off the beach. Two species were hit: common dolphins (both genders, all ages) and Burmeister’s porpoises (only females and calves). Some bodies were highly decomposed, while others were in the surf line freshly stranded. As Jones wrote at his blog, BlueVoice Views:At 11am we packed into a four wheel drive Toyota pickup with a back seat cab and drove through San Jose to the beach, cranked a right turn and headed north at low tide on a beach that was mostly firm. … Within a few hundred yards we began to see dead dolphins. In ones and twos, then Carlos saw a Burmeister’s Porpoise. Some were highly decomposed while others were in the surfline freshly stranded. All were dead. […]
Very sad.