Ecologists are sounding the alarm about a huge increase in the number of dead dolphins being found off the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi and they pin the blame partly on the opening of the Bonnet Carre’ Spillway in March.
Institute for Marine Mammal Studies President Dr. Mody Solangi says 28 dead dolphins were found in April, and 55 since January.
“The entire year of 2018 and 2017 the total number of dead dolphins for the entire year was 51, so we have already surpassed that annual number in the first months.”
The spillway floods Lake Pontchartrain with Mississippi River fresh water to relieve pressure on New Orleans levees. That water eventually drains out of the Lake to the Mississippi Sound.
But Solangi says it’s not just the Spillway at fault. In previous decades, the spillway’s opening wasn’t as devastating, but the Mississippi River has grown so polluted that dumping that water into the Gulf is disastrous.
“It is bringing agricultural, industrial, and other sewage and waste from 31 states, and two provinces in Canada, and this is not the water that the Mississippi Sound is used to.”
Solangi says local marine life is not adapted to the polluted river water that floods the coast when the Spillway opens, and that’s having a terrible effect all the way down the food chain.
“It is not only just one species that is being effected. These animals are at the top of the food chain, so they are much more easily seen.”
Solangi says that includes a significant, and growing threat to one of the most endangered species on earth, sea turtles.
