Dead Dolphin Washes to Shore off Rehoboth Avenue

One of several dolphin deaths investigated by the MERR Institute this past week.

The remains of a dolphin calf came ashore around 4:15 p.m. this past Saturday just south of Rehoboth Avenue. Suzanne Thurman, executive director of the MERR Institute, said the calf was “Fairly decomposed so some of the clues were obliterated. It had some unusual scavenging but otherwise nothing I could detect.”

But that was not the only dolphin death her organization investigated in the past week or so. Thurman said on Monday that she had a striped dolphin found dead at Middlesex Beach, an adult bottlenose dolphin in Slaughter Beach and possibly one other calf. MERR performed a necropsy on the striped dolphin and is awaiting results. She added that the bottlenose had some potential signs of fisheries interaction.

On Monday, Memorial Day, her team was called to yet another dolphin death on the Point in the Cape Henlopen State Park around 2 p.m. No details were available as of yet on that case.