Coast Guard urges caution in public encounters with marine life

PORTSMOUTH

After several days of discovering distressed dolphins along area beaches, the Coast Guard is offering advice to anyone who finds a marine wildlife in trouble.

Personnel from the Cape Charles Coast Guard Station assisted the Virginia Aquarium stranging team on Tuesday when four dolphins were found ashore near Cherrystone Inlet, located on the Chesapeake Bay.

Aquarium staffers and volunteers tended the animals, but due to their beached status and poor health, the animals died. In recent days, there have been reports of several other mass strandings in the Hampton Roads and North Carolina region.

Beachgoers and mariners often come across marine mammals, birds, and sea turtles. It is normal for some of these animals to be on land to rest or to give birth.

Marine mammals and sea turtles are protected by the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act. It is against the law to touch, feed, or otherwise harass them. Harassment occurs when your behavior changes their behavior.

Occasionally, marine mammals and sea turtles may end up on our shores sick, inured or dead. Other times, they become entrapped or disoriented and are unable to return to their natural habitat without assistance. These events are known as strandings. There are typically two types of stranding events – mass strandings and single strandings.

In most cases, the cause of a stranding is unknown, but some reasons in the past have included disease, parasite infestation, harmful algal blooms, injuries due to ship strikes or fishery entanglements, pollution exposure, trauma and starvation. In addition, strandings may occur after unusual weather or oceanographic events.

In some cases, live stranded animals can be rescued, rehabilitated and returned to the wild. In every case, whether alive or dead, stranded marine mammals and sea turtles reveal valuable information about their lives when studied by specialists.

If you find stranded protected species:

• Call experts for help. Contact the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Center at (757) 437-6159 or your local authorities. In rivers and lakes, contact the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. The Coast Guard is the point of contact for the Chesapeake Bay and ocean waters and can be reached in emergencies at (757) 398-6390 or via VHF Ch. 16.

• Do not touch the animal or push it back into the water. Doing so can cause the animal to re-strand and die. If it goes back into the water on its own, do not follow it or try to swim with it.

• Be careful around wild animals. Never surround animals, circle animals, or their nests. Avoid sensitive habitats such as shallow water around marshes and submerged vegetation.

• If you have to move close to animals because of channel markers, shallow water or traffic, maintain a slow speed and course. Do not approach right whales closer than 500 yards and stay 100 yards away from other large whales. If you are unsure of the whale species, assume the whales are endangered right whales. If animals approach you closer than 50 yards, place your vessel in neutral or maintain a set course at a slow speed until you are more than 50 yards away.

Steve Stone, (757) 446-2309, steve.stone@pilotonline.com