Scientists are baffled as to why the carcasses of a large number of bottlenose dolphins have washed up on beaches and are trying to establish if it is connected to the BP oil spill.

Since the start of the year there have been 29 baby dolphin deaths, compared with 89 in all of 2010.
The same thing happened in Texas in March 2007 when 68 dolphins washed up in Galveston and Jefferson, including a large number of infants.

The carcasses of 20 infant and stillborn dolphins washed up on the shores of the 130-mile stretch of coastline from Gulfport, Mississippi, east to Gulf Shores, Alabama yesterday.

The remains of about ten adult dolphins, none of them pregnant females, have also been found so far this year. Only one was not a bottlenose.

Scientists are looking at possible causes like cold winter and disease. But they are also investigating whether there was a link to the BP oil spill. though the spike in deaths has only occurred in one species.

Moby Solangi, director of the non-profit Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, says scientists have taken tissue samples in hopes of solving the mystery.

He revealed that it was about ten times the number normally found washed up along those two states during this time of the year, which is calving season for some 2,000 to 5,000 dolphins in the region.
BP cleanup crews found some of the carcasses. Others were discovered by park rangers, law enforcement officers and passers by.

The young dolphins, some barely three feet in length, appeared to have either died shortly after birth or were aborted just before reaching maturity.
Mr Solangi said: ‘For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born.The average is one or two a month.’

None of the carcasses bore any obvious outward signs of oil contamination. But Mr Solangi said necropsies, the equivalent of human autopsies, were being performed and tissue samples taken to determine if toxic chemicals from the oil spill may have been a factor in the deaths.