Tagged: dolphins

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says biologists did not see any external sign of trauma in a young dolphin found dead along the Mississippi River bank at Baton Rouge.

Spokeswoman Ashley Wethey said Thursday that the body was moderately to severely decomposed when biologists retrieved it by boat on Wednesday for testing.

A hydrologic survey crew reported the body Monday near the U.S. Highway 190 bridge.

A dead young dolphin washed ashore in an isolated area along the Mississippi River bank at Baton Rouge, state Wildlife and Fisheries personnel say.

Fisheries division biologist Mandy Tumlin says that in seven years with the department, she's never heard of a dolphin getting so far upriver. She says it might have done so by drafting along the bow of a ship headed upriver or by swimming up during Hurricane Isaac.

Researchers say snowmelt that chilled coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico may have contributed to baby dolphin deaths in the winter of 2011.

A new research paper says 86 baby dolphins are known to have been aborted or died shortly after birth during the period.

Researcher Ruth Carmichael of Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab says she can't say definitively that colder water caused the deaths. However, she says it may have been a deadly contributing factor.