400 Dead Dolphins Found In Zanzibar
ZANZIBAR, Tanzania, April 28, 2006
(AP) Hundreds of dead dolphins washed up Friday along the shore of
a popular tourist destination on Zanzibar's northern coast and
scientists ruled out poisoning.
It was not immediately clear what killed the 400 dolphins, whose
carcasses were strewn along a 2.5-mile stretch of Nungwi, said
Narriman Jidawi, a marine biologist at the Institute of Marine
Science in Zanzibar.
But the bottleneck dolphins, which live in deep offshore waters,
had empty stomachs, meaning that they could have been disoriented
and were swimming for some time to reorient themselves. They did
not starve to death and were not poisoned, Jidawi said.
In the United States, experts were investigating the possibility
that sonar from U.S. submarines could have been responsible for a
similar incident in Marathon, Fla., where 68 deep-water dolphins
stranded themselves in March 2005.
A U.S. Navy task force patrols the East Africa coast as part of
counterterrorism operations. A Navy official was not immediately
available for comment, but the service rarely comments on the
location of submarines at sea.
The deaths are a blow to the tourism industry in Zanzibar, where
thousands of visitors go to watch and swim with wild dolphins, said
Abdulsamad Melhi, owner of Sunset Bungalows, perched atop a small
cliff overlooking the beach.
Villagers, fishermen and hotel residents found the carcasses and
alerted officials. Mussa Aboud Jumbe, Zanzibar's director of
fisheries, went on state radio to warn the public against eating
the dolphins' meat, saying the cause of death had not been
determined.
But residents who did eat the dolphins' meat early Friday were all
doing fine, Jidawi said.
The Indo-Pacific bottlenose, humpback and spinner porpoises,
commonly known as dolphins, are the most common species in
Zanzibar's coastal waters, with bottlenose and humpback dolphins
often found in mixed-species groups.
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