AN INVESTIGATION into the UK’s largest mass stranding of common dolphins has identified naval activity as the likely cause.
Twenty-six dolphins became stranded and died in the Fal Estuary in Cornwall on 9 June 2008. A by Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London and colleagues has ruled out infectious disease, pollution, decompression sickness, or attack by killer whales or bottlenose dolphins.
Documents obtained under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act gave the team records of a naval exercise that had been taking place in the area on preceding days, and on the morning of the stranding. There was no evidence of physical injury…
