KCBA - Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz - News Weather-Research Aims to Shed Light On Dolphin Attacks Mystery
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MOSS LANDING, Calif. - For anyone who has spent time near the shores of the Monterey Bay the sight of the dolphin has become one of the most revered and spectacular of any marine mammal. But the sight which researchers got a glimpse of in recent months may have shown a new unknown side of these animals.
“They're like a family in a sense because I'm out with them very often, sometimes during the summer every day," says research scientist Dr. Daniela Maldini. The family she is referring to is comprised of nearly every dolphin to have called the Monterey Bay waters home in the past two decades. "There are 280 animals in our catalogue right now, again since 1990," says Maldini as she points to her list of dolphins on her computer. She has tracked and studied the animals for so long each of them have been given a scientific distinction and a personal name, but what she saw in the waters off of Capitola she calls disturbing. "Obviously seeing it happen is even a little bit shocking even for us," she says.
With a video camera in hand, her crew captured one of the only known filmed incidences in the nation where the typically docile dolphins have attacked and killed porpoises for no apparent reason. "You see there is a lot of corralling and circling, the harbor porpoise is in the front trying to get away and the dolphins are chasing it from the back," the series of video clips and photographs show a group of much larger dolphins cornering and attacking the smaller porpoise.
"They beat it up with their fluke, they smash it out of the water they're pretty rough with it and they try to drown it. They sandwich it between two dolphins, sometimes more than one dolphin involved,” she says. Due to the rarity of the event scientists have very little to go by as far what has caused these dolphins to attack and kill the porpoises, but with the dramatic increase in dead porpoises washing up to our shores in the past several years, one thing is for sure.
"We have seen too many rake marks and internal injuries which indicated that somebody out there, possibly a bottlenose dolphin was killing these porpoises. "With the video tape proof to support this possibility scientists are now analyzing other dolphin attacks in different regions of the world to better understand what is driving these animals to such behaviors.
Several hypotheses are being evaluated, but what is important to note is all dolphin attackers were males, and in animal ecology it is not uncommon to see males killing off a female’s offspring to mate with one. The only problem with that theory here of course is these were not baby dolphins being killed but porpoises.
