Patrick Hines was on his usual predawn walk on Friday when he spotted what looked like a baby whale stuck on a sandbar in shallow water just offshore at Albert's Landing Beach in Amagansett.
When he returned two hours later in daylight to find it in the same spot, he called East Hampton Town police, who alerted Marine Patrol and the New York Marine Rescue Center, which responds to reports of live strandings all over Long Island. The animal was not a whale, but a Risso's dolphin, a species much larger than the bottlenose dolphin more commonly seen closer to shore here.
By 10 a.m., when two biologists from the rescue center arrived on scene, the animal -- identified as a female Risso's dolphin -- was beached but still alive, occasionally lifting its large head and its tail fins. A trickle of blood colored the water red.
The New York Marine Rescue Center does not have the tanks or the resources to rehabilitate injured dolphins. Sometimes, though, a healthy enough animal that is beached can be treated in its response truck and then "refloated" after being fitted with a satellite tag. There are portable blood machines that can help biologists assess what's wrong with an animal. They can elevate it so that it isn't being crushed by its own weight and provide IV fluids for rehydration.
Even an untrained passer-by could tell that the Risso's dolphin at Albert's Landing Friday was in bad shape. Jill Pryor, a senior biologist with the center, and her fellow biologist Andrea Jelaska zipped into waterproof coveralls and unfolded a large red sling on the beach. With the help of three Marine Patrol officers and four State Department of Environmental Conservation officers, the biologists rolled the large dolphin into the sling and carried it foot by foot to the response truck in the parking lot at the top of a steep incline, pausing every couple of steps to set it down.
Though it was "super underweight," according to one of the biologists, it took a Herculean effort to move it, even with nine people helping. By the time they reached the truck, however, the animal had died.
Relaying information gathered in the field, Maxine Montello, the executive director of the rescue center, said by phone later that day that the dolphin was about 300 centimeters long (over nine feet), "potentially an older individual," and looked very malnourished. "The best thing we could do was get it out of the water and make sure it wasn't rolling around in the tide."
"Our number-one goal always is to return these animals back to the wild, but unfortunately sometimes these animals are so compromised that best thing for them is that they die naturally or to euthanize them so that they're no longer suffering," Ms. Montello said. Pushing an injured marine mammal back into the water is not an option. "They are mammals; they breathe air. They can drown or aspirate. So that's a big concern, especially when they're being tossed in the waves."
The biologists collected swabs and a blood sample that will be sent for further analysis. The dolphin was taken to the East Hampton transfer station on Springs-Fireplace Road, where a necropsy will be performed by the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society, a sister organization that responds to deceased marine mammals and turtles or strandings of larger cetaceans.
Risso's dolphins, which are not endangered or threatened, are more of an offshore species that prefer deeper water, "especially near the continental shelf edge and slope, where they can dive to at least 1,000 feet and hold their breath for 30 minutes," according to NOAA Fisheries. They usually travel in groups of 10 to 30 and can live for 20 to 30 years.
"When we have them in our local waters, really close to shore, it may be an indicator that they're not in great shape," Ms. Montello said. "They're known for the markings they have on their body, these kind of raking marks."
While incidents like Friday's can be dispiriting to the biologists involved, they also provide opportunities to learn more about the species. Necropsies not only "allow us to fully understand what was happening internally for the animal," but they also paint a bigger picture of the species and how they use our local waters, Ms. Montello said. "A lot of animals that strand in New York have evidence of human interaction: entanglement with fishing gear, vessel strikes, ingestion of marine debris."
Ultimately, understanding the animal's history and the factors in its death "help us educate the public," she said.
Anyone who comes across injured or dead marine mammals or sea turtles can report them to the stranding hotline at 631-369-9829. The number is shared by both the Marine Rescue Center and the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society.
