A staffer advised the caller to ask the crowd to bring the animal to shore and provide aid until rescuers arrived, Whitehead said. Instead, the beachgoers pushed the animal underwater, crowded around it and placed their children on top of it “as if they were riding the dolphin,” she said.
Now a federal agency is offering a reward of up to $20,000 to anyone who can help identify the beachgoers who interacted with the mammal before it died. Necropsy results found the mammal drowned.
“Video stills obtained during the event could help identify individuals who have direct information concerning this event,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement said in a news release announcing the reward.
Dolphins are covered by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. Anyone found guilty of harassing, harming, feeding or killing wild dolphins could be fined up to $100,000 or face one year in jail per violation.
On the afternoon of April 10, a woman called the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network’s hotline to report that the dolphin, which was first seen on the sand, was surrounded by a crowd that had pushed it into the water, Whitehead said.
“That’s not an uncommon occurrence,” Whitehead told The Washington Post. “Unfortunately, members of the public think they are doing the right thing and try to push the mammal into the water.”
That instinct is “not the right course of action,” she added. When a dolphin is stranded on the beach, Whitehead explained, it is usually injured or sick and could be having difficulty breathing.
“They would essentially drown if they are pushed back into the water or re-strand on a beach,” Whitehead said.
With that in mind, a staff member with the organization told the caller to ask the beachgoers to bring the animal back to shore, give it space, keep it wet and give it some shade so the dolphin could be as comfortable as possible before rescuers arrived.
But despite the caller’s best efforts, Whitehead said, the crowd disregarded the advice.
“Unfortunately, they weren’t listening,” Whitehead said. Minutes later, the dolphin died in the water. The beachgoers swiftly left, she added.
The rescue operation then turned into a recovery mission, Whitehead said.
Members of the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network arrived from Galveston, Tex., a little over an hour after the woman first called.
The sun had begun to set when Whitehead and her team rolled the dolphin into a body bag and put it into their vehicle to take it back to their laboratory to perform a necropsy, she said. Her office informed NOAA about the incident, she said.
Whitehead, who joined the organization as a volunteer more than two decades ago, said she was appalled and disheartened.
“It’s one thing when members of the public are well meaning and attempt to push the dolphin back because they don’t know it’s not the right thing to do,” she said, “but it’s a completely different situation when it comes to harassment behavior — that type of behavior is totally inexcusable. The most difficult part for me and my staff was just thinking about [the suffering] that animal no doubt endured in its last few minutes of life.”
She added, “If we can turn this tragedy into something where we can educate the public, hopefully that will make that dolphin’s life mean a little more than it already does.”