Experts perplexed by 60 dolphins stranded on Cape Cod

This is interesting news! It's not the first instance this year of "fish" being stranded on shores around the world. Earlier this january 20 tonnes of herring washed ashore on a beach in Norway, which you can read more about here

BOSTON (Reuters) - Animal welfare advocates are perplexed by dozens of dolphins swimming onto land along the scenic Cape Cod shores south of Boston beginning late last week, one of the largest cases of dolphins stranding themselves in years.

About 60 animals have been stranded along 25 miles of Cape Cod coastline since Thursday, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

So far, 19 dolphins have been rescued and released, with some of the 27 dolphins stranded alive unable to survive, said Katie Moore, manager for the group's marine mammal rescue and research. She estimated another 32 washed ashore already dead.

She said the pattern this year is unlike past years, when just one dolphin or a group would be found on a single beach.

"It feels like stranding after stranding after stranding," she said. "It's definitely out of the ordinary."

Link to News Article

This is interesting news, but there's likely a very good explanation for it. The reason for the abnormally large amount of dolhpins that are stranded, may be due to changes in the earths magnetic field. As dolphins rely on their inner compass, and due to their group mentality, they've followed their old routes and simply wound up on the shore rather than the safe route they normally travel.

Or maybe we should just say as Douglas Adams did: So long and thanks for all the fish!

What do you think?

Based on how dolphins nagivate through the water....

They find their way by sending out high-pitched sounds (at a level too high for humans to hear). The dolphins then listen for the returning echoes as they bounce off objects. This is called "echolocation", and it lets dolphins know what is around them.

Read more: wiki.answers.com...

Source

Makes me believe something is messing up the Echo signal being sent back to them. Like Sonar or underwater earthquakes or under water volcanos or something is making them feel so bad they want to beach themselves. I know I got a cold last Thursday that had me beached in the bed all weekend not wanting to live.

Another view is:

•one of the pod got into trouble and was followed by the others
•that they were chasing a shoal of fish and then couldn't get back into deeper water
•or perhaps that they were being chased themselves

As dolphins are known for being a very social species, it's often thought that a distress signal sent out by one, brings others nearby flocking to help. "They're like humans, in that if your house and family were under threat, you'd go and help them, rather than run the other way," says Ms Dolman.

Source


I also found this

Since they are mammals, the dolphins have ears that are sensitive to large changes in pressure underwater, he said.

"If their eardrums are damaged they become disorientated and they float up to the surface," Mr Sarmiento said.

Source

I also found this happened in Sept. 2011 and I'm wondering if any of the dolphins that they tagged and released then are showing back up in this group trying to beach themselves.

Source

EASTHAM, Mass. (AP) - An animal welfare organization says 13 dolphins have been found stranded on a Cape Cod beach but only 11 of them survived.

Kerry Branon of the International Fund for Animal Welfare says the common dolphins were found on First Encounter Beach in Eastham on Wednesday afternoon.

She tells the Cape Cod Times the surviving dolphins were given blood tests and evaluated to determine their health. They were tagged, and released late Wednesday night at Herring Cove in Provincetown.

The dolphins were a mix of ages and sexes and weighed between 175 and 250 pounds.

The cause of the beaching could not be determined

reply to post by Droogie


A dolphin is not a fish. It is a mammal.

.. just sayin'

IRM

reply to post by InfaRedMan


I know, that's why I used a quotation mark

reply to post by Droogie


Mankind needs to understand animal behavior more. This would help in understanding water and air quality. I hope they are ok and not afraid of something or avoiding some pollutents ect. As another posted the em field may be distrupted of Earth and they may be confused, but so many confused ???

I hesitate to even bring it up, but as dolphins use echo location, could it be that these noises from the sky could have any bearing on these incidents? They were being noticed at least as far back as last fall, around August of '11. I noticed that the last stranding was in Sept. of '11.

Something to consider, anyway.

Strange sounds link thread

reply to post by jennybee35


Since they are mammals, the dolphins have ears that are sensitive to large changes in pressure underwater, he said.

"If their eardrums are damaged they become disorientated and they float up to the surface," Mr Sarmiento said

based on the quote above. If the strange sounds are to be considered I would say that no one's ears have been reported to have been damaged by the noise above the water.

So my question would be is.... Do these strange sounds we hear above water cause the pressure under the water to change which are harming the dolphins hearing?

I'm also wondering if there's something that can cause them to get ear infections like humans...

This is all I've currently found and it ain't much....

Dolphins have the best sense of hearing among animals. They are able to hear 14 times better than humans.
Animals hear more sounds than humans.
An earache is caused by too much fluid putting pressure on your eardrum. Earaches are often the result of an infection, allergies or a virus.

Source