MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By JESS BIDGOOD – “WELLFLEET, Mass. — When a single dolphin washed up on Cape Cod on Jan. 12, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

But eight days later, 81 more had been found stranded on this craggy coastline, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, bringing the weekly count unusually close to the 120 animals the group typically responds to in high stranding season, which typically runs from January to April. By Jan. 23, the count was 85.

‘It’s just about as intense as I’ve ever experienced,’ said Katie Moore, the manager of the mammal rescue and research team at the nonprofit fund, which employs six scientists to rescue dolphins and whales that find themselves the unwitting occupants of Cape Cod’s empty winter beaches.

It is common for dolphins to be corralled by the cape’s U-shape and flummoxed by its shallow inlets and extreme tides. In fact, Cape Cod is, like parts of New Zealand and Australia, a world hotspot for dolphin strandings.

But so many dolphins washing up in less than two weeks — 61 of which were dead, killed by stress or injuries from the stranding — has baffled researchers, who have been working relentlessly with volunteers to rescue as many as possible.

Six of those dolphins turned up on Thursday in ‘The Gut’ of the Herring River, in Wellfleet, a waterway in the Cape Cod National Seashore that turns into a squelchy stretch of sticky mud at low tide. When researchers arrived, they found five live dolphins gulping for air with their blowholes, sounding like asthmatic humans. The sixth was dead. At the time, hundreds more dolphins were being coaxed out another part of Wellfleet Harbor by a small team of rescuers and its harbormaster.” Read more.