Beached Risso dolphin was euthanized!

Dozens of young children learned a hard but necessary lesson yesterday as they watched a dolphin euthanized near Skaket Beach.

"It's like when we had to say goodbye to Chelsea," Janet Ives from Ottawa, Canada, told her 10-year-old granddaughter Emily Phelan.

Hotline

To report the stranding of a dolphin, whale or seal, call the Cape Cod Stranding Network hot line at 508-743-9548.

Like many parents on the flats, Ives likened the death of the dolphin to the passing of a family pet.
The animal was a Risso's dolphin, C.T. Harry, assistant stranding coordinator with the Cape Cod Stranding Network, told the crowd during an impromptu lecture.

Risso's dolphins usually travel in large groups of up to several hundred individuals and are common 50 to 100 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, he said.

The 8½-foot, roughly 350-pound female dolphin that died yesterday was in bad physical condition and was likely separated from its group, he said.

Even if the dolphin was healthy enough to return to the water, it was unlikely that it would find its group again, Harry said. "This particular species is a very social animal."

The dolphin was first sighted swimming across the flats from Rock Harbor as the tide retreated yesterday morning at about 9.

The area around Skaket Beach experiences dramatic tidal action and water empties from the flats quickly during the falling tide.

Lifeguards realized the fin moving through the water was likely not a shark and called the stranding network, a project of the Yarmouthport-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, said Karen Wolff, an Orleans lifeguard originally from Philadelphia.

Once the animal beached itself, a crowd gathered and soon children of all ages had dug holes and trenches in the still wet sand to provide water for the rescuers to keep the dolphin moist. Children's buckets were put to use transporting water and members of the crowd provided towels for the rescuers to use.

"It makes me feel proud," said 6-year-old Paige DosSantos from Oakville, Conn., who excavated holes along with her 8-year-old brother, Jed.

The dolphin needed to be euthanized because of its poor physical condition, Harry said.

Fresh and healed lacerations on the animal's head and body indicated a skin infection but it was difficult to tell what might be wrong with the animal internally, he said.

The dolphin was also emaciated, a sign the animal was unable to eat, stranding coordinator Sarah Herzig said.

There have been few reported cases of Risso's dolphins stranding inside Cape Cod Bay, Herzig said. Most strandings of the species occur on the Nantucket Sound side of the Cape, she said.
"If it was healthier, we might try to relocate it," Harry said.

The dolphin was brought by stretcher to a waiting stranding network truck to be taken to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for a necropsy, an autopsy on marine mammals.

Information from the necropsy could be helpful for scientists studying Risso's dolphins, Harry said.