Rio Grande Delta: April 2007

Melon-headed Whale
Monday, April 30, 2007

On Friday, April 27, I received a phone call from my friend Adrienne. She told me that one of the sea turtle patrolers had just passed a stranded dolphin approximately 5 miles north of beach access #6. I immediately contacted my mom and we took off north up the beach with John Grey. We were met half way by a man who, along with his family, had been caring for the dolphin most of the afternoon. His children were diligently keeping the animals blow-hole above the water. Once on site we quickly realized this was not our common in-shore bottle-nosed dolphin but rather an off-shore species of dolphin known as the Melon-headed Whale. We transfered him to the University of Texas-Pan American Coastal Studies Labratory on South Padre Island and into a holding tank. His condition was such that he could not support himself in the water and required two volunteers holding him to keep his blow-hole exposed at all times. Specialists from the local Zoo and Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network drove and flew in to assess the situation, run blood work, and other such procedures. He had several superficial shark bites but no other external wounds were of concern. His "breath" (from his blow-hole) indicated infection in the lungs and blood work showed an extremely low white-blood cell count, indicating he'd been fighting (and losing) this infection for a long time. He went into his "death swim," yesterday. He was necropsied and his head taken to a lab for cat scan, as they suspect brain parasites were a major cause in his stranding and subsequent death.

It was a long, exhausting, and tragic play of events. The TMMSN has only ever had 5 of these whales strand alive, none of which have ever survived. However this is the oldest of this species they have ever found stranded, and so perhaps it was just his time.