Dolphins die in UK mass stranding

Was there some kind of military sonar-related testing going on?

The Royal Navy said none of its ships had been in the Falmouth area over the weekend. It said the last naval activity in the area was on Thursday.

But Trevor Weeks, from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, said many disturbances could have unsettled the animals.

"Any sort of underwater shockwave or noise could cause dolphins to strand, it doesn't necessarily have to be a navy thing. Strandings have always occurred.

Was there some kind of military sonar-related testing going on?

Dolphin mystery: Naval exercises clue

Steven Morris
The Guardian, Wednesday June 11 2008

The Ministry of Defence confirmed yesterday that Royal Navy exercises had been taking place off Cornwall before dozens of dolphins became beached. It is believed that as part of the exercises a surface ship dropped charges on to a submarine just off Falmouth.
Postmortem examinations are being carried out on 26 dolphins which died after being stranded at four locations around the Percuil river but the detailed results are not expected for weeks, and even then may not reveal what prompted the pod to swim into shallow water. Many experts believe an underwater disturbance may have led the dolphins to panic and beach themselves.

The coastguard and local people have said there had been intense military activity in the area in the days before the strandings.

Though the MoD confirmed the exercise had taken place, a spokeswoman said there had been no live firing between noon on Sunday and noon on Monday. The dolphins were found yesterday morning.

British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), which coordinated the rescue of several dolphins believed an underwater disturbance was the most likely explanation.

BDMLR chairman Alan Knight said: "I have never heard of anything like this ... we can find no conclusive evidence as to why the stranding took place or why they stranded in such numbers at different locations. My personal conclusion is that there was some sort of disturbance that has caused the animals to panic."

Knight said they were investigating shipping movements in the area as well as any mining or military exercises.

A team from The Zoological Society of London which conducted postmortems on 11 of the dolphins said they were a pod of healthy young juveniles.

The bodies of the other 15 dolphins will go to the Zoological Society laboratory in London and a centre in Truro for postmortems.

Rob Deaville, project manager of the UK Cetacean Stranding Investigation programme, said it could be months before the results of all the tests were known and no cause was ruled out.

The dolphins that died after becoming beached in Cornwall had ingested debris and mud, leading one of the scientists who examined some of the corpses to compare their deaths to a "mass suicide".
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There are several theories, one of which is that the dolphins may have been upset by some sort of underwater disturbance.
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Other theories suggest the dolphins may have been frightened by a killer whale or that they had suffered some sort of infection. It is not thought they became trapped after chasing fish into shallow water, because the stomachs examined were not full of fish.

The idea of dolphins committing suicide is a controversial one. In Iran last year 152 dolphins washed up on the coast, leading people there to claim they killed themselves. But most scientists believe this is an example of anthropomorphism.

Liz Evans-Jones, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum, said: "Whales and dolphins strand themselves for a number of reasons and we're not sure yet what happened with these dolphins.