Wayward Dolphin May Be Dead

A dolphin believed to be the one that delighted marine biology students with its frequent appearances off Pearson’s Port in Upper Newport Bay before vanishing days ago has been found dead on the beach on Lido Island, Orange Coast College student Molly Kent said Friday.

Kent and fellow student Bridget Ross had been watching a lone dolphin since September, visiting the bridge between Bayside and Dover drives to record and videotape its movements as part of professor Dennis Kelly’s Coastal Dolphin Survey Project.

Kelly got a call Thursday about the dead dolphin and on Friday had it brought to his lab, where his students will try to determine why the mammal died, Ross said.

The dolphin, which they sometimes called Dex, became a point of interest when it lagged behind after nearly all of the other dolphins had left the bay at the end of the summer.

“We’d been watching him, and he looked very healthy and active. He got out of the way of boats and was up and down diving for fish,” Kent recalled.

The students suspect that the dead dolphin might be Dex, Kent said, because it was the only dolphin that had stayed behind. Others had been spotted only sporadically.

Kent says she and other students will probably be able to tell if the dolphin that washed up on Lido Island is Dex by comparing its size and dorsal fin to video footage and pictures.

Ross hypothesized that Dex was eating smelt that live in a large underwater hole in the upper bay and plans to catch a few of the fish and test them and any undigested fish in the dolphin’s stomach for toxins.

“We’ll take skin tissue and see if he was contaminated with any type of poison,” Ross said.

Ross and Kent, who visited the bay several times a week to observe Dex, were saddened to hear the news of the dead dolphin.

“We had gotten attached to it, and we were upset,” Kent said. “But now we can learn a lot more about him through tissues and blood samples without having to capture him.”