WWLTV reported yesterday that more dead dolphins are washing up on the shore around Grand Isle, LA:
"Since the beginning of the month, 14 marine mammals, including a dozen dolphins, have been found along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Half of the dead dolphins washed up on the Louisiana coast."*
Two dead whales and six dolphins have washed up just since the beginning of January.
As the Examiner has been reporting for over a year, the rate of dolphin deaths has been staggering. While WWLTV reports that there have been 630 in the course of two years -- actually slightly preceding the Gulf oil catastrophe of April, 2010 -- these do not fully account for the countless, unreported or underreported mammals who've perished.
Last autumn, NOAA said some of the dead dolphins showed signs of Brucella, a virus. Anecdotal reports shared with this Examiner indicate that dolphins may have been intentionally targeted by BP during overnight Vessels of Opportunity missions. This idea has hardly been substantiated.
Even so, Capt. Lori Deangelis, aka "the Dolphin Lady" of Orange Beach, Ala. told the Examiner that in spring, 2010 a Vessels worker walked into a cell phone store near Orange Beach, Ala. and complained about the grissly nature of their overnight missions. Whispers of the intentional dolphin killings surfaced shortly after Capt. Rookie Cruse, a friend of Deangelis's, committed suicide in June, 2010.
Deangelis, who spoke to several media outlets such as ABC last spring, demands a full investigation as to why these dolphins are washing up on the shore and continues to look into exactly what happened after the Apr. 20, 2010 catastrophe.
BP has to pay out more for the endangered species who've died than they have to pay for non-endangered species.**
Further, Corexit is banned in the UK, BP's very country. Since the dispersant application in 2010, thousands of Gulf residents have become very sick just as these mammals have. A 10-year, $19m NIH grant was awarded nearly a year ago to investigate the effects of the spill on residents of the Gulf states.
Whether it was Corexit that killed them, a virus, or some other aspect of what scientists are calling "an unusual mortality event" remains to be seen.
More will be determined in the coming weeks. The civil trial against BP and its contractors Transocean and Halliburton starts in Judge Carl Barbier's New Orleans court Feb. 27.
Because of the ongoing litigation, workers tasked with investigating why the mammals died are under a gag order.
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For more information: Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program
* WWLTV report, Jan. 27, 2011
** A detailed breakdown of what BP has to pay for various species will follow soon in a report in this space.
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