Mumbai, June 20: A carcass of a dead dolphin was found on Versova beach early this week. The condition of the dolphin was too bad and was thus buried at the beach itself. It was a five-foot Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin and most of its internal organs were coming out, so no post-mortem could be conducted on it. “Morning walkers and joggers at Versova informed us about the dolphin. Most of its internal organs had spilt out of the body. We had no option, but to bury the dolphin at the beach itself,” said Makarand Ghodke, assistant conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. Dolphins in India: Punjab Government to Conduct First Organised Census of Indus River Dolphins

There have been a lot of dolphin carcass washing ashore cases recently and it is more common with the monsoon arrival. On June 8, a 2.25-metre-long dolphin was found on the same beach. It was spotted by Afroz Shah, the activist who helped in the cleaning of the Versova beach. Shah had spoken about the frequency of such incidents. He had said, "We have so far witnessed the beaching of three dolphins and one turtle in 40 days. In the last three years we have not seen any beaching incident. Something terribly wrong is going on in the sea and it needs to be studied." A 7-8 feet dolphin carcass was found in Versova in the early state of May. The dolphin deaths have been reported even on the coast of Kerala.

Earlier, this week, a 40-feet blue whale was found at Uran near Mumbai. The skeleton of this whale will be kept on display at the Mangrove cell in Mumbai. The death of marine animals is really a worrisome issue. Because of the decomposing state of these carcasses, it is even difficult to conduct any tests to study the exact cause. Sea pollution is a major cause of the dead sea animals the world over. Talking about the beaching incidents, marine biologist, Vinay Deshmukh, had said in a newspaper report, "It is true that the incidents do increase during the monsoon as the winds bring the dead species to the shore. But it has only been two days since the monsoon began." He stressed on the importance of a study to determine the cause of these frequent beaching. This dolphin death frequency is sure alarming.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 20, 2018 11:48 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).