On January 14, beachgoers in South Carolina stumbled upon an eerie, skeleton-like dolphin washed up on Hilton Head Island's Sea Pines. Based on the appearance of the carcass, it looks like the animal may have been slowly drying out for months.
Washed Ashore and Mummified
The dead animal was identified as mummified, but not because it underwent the type of mummification used in ancient Egypt. It is actually a classification used by the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network (LMMN) to refer to a dolphin that gets dried out by the sun.
Marine biologist Amber Kuehn from the Hilton Head Island Sea Turtle Patrol visited the site and collected skin and teeth samples from the dolphin's body. Analysis revealed that the animal was most likely a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) which measures around eight feet (2.4 meters).
Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the remains of the dolphin was very,very leathery and hard. Its organs were missing, which means that its sex and the cause of its death cannot be determined.
If the body happens to be freshers, the network will perform an autopsy, open up the stomach, and perform a toxicology report. Last December 2023, a dead bottlenose dolphin was found in Port Royal and the network suggests that it died from a fish that got lodged in its airway.
According to Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network Founder and Executive Director Lauren Rust, about 50-60 dolphins get washed up every year throughout Coastal South Carolina and about 10-15 on Hilton Head Island every year. Common causes of death among these animals include parasites, pneumonia, old age, and human impacts like boat hits.
Members of Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network buried the dolphin on site. Rust encourages beachgoers that if they find a dolphin, they should call the network since it has the authority to handle marine mammals. Once called, the network will rank the dolphins on a scale from one to five. One means that the washed up dolphin is alive, and five means that it is mummified.
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Possible Cause of Dolphin's Death
Kuehn suggests that the carcass could be several weeks old, but Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) in the U.K. believes that the remains could be months old. He suggests that the animal may have accidentally got stranded after deliberately beaching itself.
The dolphin appears to have completely dried out due to its dry surroundings and from being continually exposed to the sun. Strangely enough, the body desiccated to this extent while remaining fully intact, especially since it is uncommon for a dead animal to go unnoticed on a frequently-visited beach.
How the dolphins end up dead on beaches might be due to an interesting behavior. Recently, small groups of bottlenose dolphins in South Carolina were seen collectively surging onto the shore to drag small fish onto land in their wake. This enables them to pick off their prey before rolling back into the water.
Sometimes, an individual dolphin lunges too far, making them stranded and die before eventually desiccating. Hoyt clarified that this is just one theory, and there is no evidence of this having actually happened in the recent cases.
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