People who tried to save a dolphin that had washed up on the Lebanese shore may have inadvertently killed it, an inquest has found. On Aug. 9, a striped dolphin (stenella coeruleoalba) was found injured and floundering on the beach in the Sidon town of Adloun. Despite efforts to save it, the dolphin died.
The next day, the marine sciences department of the National Council for Scientific Research launched an investigation into the animal’s death, a statement from the council said Monday.
The Lebanon Diving Center volunteered to lift the dolphin’s body from the shore and take it by boat to the port of Zahrani, where a team from the CNRS carried out preliminary investigations into the incident.
The researchers took samples of fat, muscle, liver, intestines and teeth for analysis.
The CNRS report said that the dolphin’s body “showed no signs of beating, bruises or marks from fishermen’s nets.” Instead, the dolphin was killed by “the lack of experience” of those who tried to rescue it. “While believing they were helping [the dolphin], they sped up its death by dragging it out of the water and trying to pour water into the blowhole on its head.”
The report also criticized the dolphin’s would-be saviors for stopping to take photographs with it.
Ghina Nahfawi, a member of the Animals Welfare Activists group, told The Daily Star Monday that she thought the CNRS report was “amazing” and was exactly “the right thing to say.”
After a video circulated showing the dolphin being carried out of the sea, the activist group published a statement on Aug. 12 condemning the dolphin’s treatment, saying it breached Environmental Protection Law 444 of 2002. “Instead of filming, bragging and boasting, wouldn’t it have been better to put the dolphin back into the water to survive?” the statement asked.
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Nahfawi was keen to point out she was not accusing the people of intentionally causing the dolphin’s death.
The dolphin, which is not endemic to Lebanese waters, ended up in peril when strong currents and rough seas pushed it into a long, shallow and rocky strait. “Exhausted and lost, the dolphin was forced in the wrong direction and hit the rocky sea bed,” injuring it, the report said.
According to the U.S.-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity, striped dolphins “tend to prefer deeper, more offshore waters and can be found in oceanic waters over the continental shelves.”
Nahfawi suggested that it would have been better to gently push the dolphin back into the water, where “the sea could heal its wounds.”
“Even if he died, he would have become food for other fish,” Nahfawi added.
Amid concerns over high levels of pollution in Lebanon’s sea, and indeed globally, the researchers also investigated the possibility that plastic killed the dolphin. But the report stated they had not found any traces of plastic or solid waste in the animal’s digestive system.
Last week, a study set to be published in the December issue of Science of the Total Environment journal found that the concentration of microplastics on the Lebanese coast was 4.3 pieces per cubic meter of water. By comparison, in the western Mediterranean, the concentration is between 0.17 and 0.62.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
