Dead dolphin found on Chelem Beach

The corpse of a dolphin 2.10 meters long and weighing approximately 160 kilos was found this Monday on the beaches of the Chelem police station in Progreso, by a person who was exercising on the seashore.

The body of the animal would have landed at some point in the night and was found at dawn by the GMT citizen at the entrance known as Maeba.

Around 8 in the morning the man was exercising on the beach when he noticed the corpse of the cetacean, which had blood dripping from its eye, apparently due to bleeding.

He immediately notified the authorities and the police and a biologist appeared at the scene, who pointed out that the dolphin is known as a bottlenose and instructed that the animal be buried on the beach.

According to Raúl Díaz Gamboa, a doctor in marine sciences and professor-researcher at the Autonomous University of Yucatán (UADY), 95 percent of the marine mammals that strand off the Yucatecan coast arrive dead, while the rest only gets to die later. 

“The number of strandings per year varies, but we separate the year into three seasons: north, rainy and dry, so most strandings occur in the northern season in the first months of the year, the most frequent being February, April, May and June ”, he declared.

He specified that more than 50 percent of the cases are due to human interaction or incidental fishing, while a lower percentage is because they are old, sick, or injured organisms, as well as disoriented by contamination and ingestion of plastic bags. 

“Dolphins are also injured by collisions with boats and by predation since some fishermen use dolphin meat as bait for sharks”, Díaz Gamboa concluded.