DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 3 Aug)—A six-foot male spinner dolphin with ruptured eardrums was found dead at the shore of Punta Dumalag in Barangay Matina Aplaya here Wednesday, according to American marine biologist Darrel Blatchley.
In a post on social media, Blatchley, who owns the D’ Bone Collector Museum in this city, said that no traces of food were found on the intestines based on the necropsy conducted on the spinner dolphin, which weighed about 40 kilos.
He said that the result of the examination was not a “total confirmation” of the cause of its death but added that its eardrums appeared to have ruptured “due to blood pooling on both sides.”
“Ruptured eardrums affect the dolphin’s hunting capacity as it’s their sonar or echolocation system,” he said.
Blatchley said the DNA of the marine creature has been saved for study while its bones will be prepared for display at his D’ Bone Collector Museum.
“Number 76 for the museum. [Sixty-one] due to man in 15 years,” he wrote on his Facebook page. This apparently means this dolphin will be the 76th marine creature he has collected and displayed in his museum over a span of 15 years. Of these, 61 died due to man.
In a statement, environmental group Ecoteneo said that the “Davao Gulf is home to at least 15 species of marine mammals.”
“Activities that affect their hearing are crucial and can cause their death because they travel through echolocation,” it said.
Spinner dolphins weigh 100 to 165lbs and measure 4.25ft to 6.89ft, and can live for over 20 years, according to Greenpeace.org.
The International Whaling Commission said that spinner dolphins are found in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.
Spinner dolphin has most recently been assessed for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2018 as “Least Concern.” (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
