WASHINGTON — The principal investigator who examined hundreds of bottlenose dolphins washed ashore along the Atlantic Coast acknowledged Wednesday that manmade pollutants may have played a role. But he flatly rejected the notion contaminants were the cause of death.
"We cannot make a precise determination that contaminants killed the dolphins," Joseph Geraci told a House Merchant Marine and Fisheries subcommittee.
Geraci, a well-known marine mammal veterinarian and the committee's sole witness Wednesday, stuck by his finding that the most likely cause of death was a naturally occurring toxin produced by red tide algae.
Geraci headed an 18-month investigation into the death of more than 750 dolphins the last two summers. He was assisted by hundreds of scientists and federal officials.
His report, released by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, concluded the dolphins died after eating fish tainted by the toxin produced by the ride tide algae.
In his 26 years in studying marine mammals, Geraci said he'd never seen dolphins in the condition he found them on the East Coast shores, including areas in Tidewater. "They appeared as if they had been dipped in acid," he said.
Independent scientists, disputing Geraci's findings, have suggested that the dolphins' condition may have been caused by manmade contaminants, such as DDT and PCBs.
Geraci acknowledged that high levels of PCBs were detected in some of the dolphin carcasses, which washed ashore from New Jersey to Florida in 1987 and 1988. But he also noted that many of the dolphins that died had no contaminants in their system.