How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 117: Dolphin Killed After Beachgoers Pass It Around To Pet And Take Selfies
A La Plate River Dolphin washed up on a beach, likely stranded, when beachgoers decided to pass it around to pet and take selfies with it before it died of dehydration. The La Plate River Dolphin is listed on the IUNC Red List as a Vulnerable Species.
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Show Notes:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/session117
welcome to the speaker for blue podcast session 117 happy Monday everybody were back hope you had a great weekend unfortunately news over the weekend did not come with great news we are going to talk today about how baby dolphin dies or small species of dolphin dies because of beach goers in Argentina so not a fun topic to talk about but something we need to talk about and solutions to get over this kind of action so stay tuned for this episode of the speaker for blue podcast welcome to the speak up for blue podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation and now there's your host he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care and rule on hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the speaker for blue podcast your voice for the ocean I am your host angel and founder speak up for blue dot com rien ecologist and self proclaimed ocean printer and today is Monday I hope you had a great weekend just want to thank you for keep listening over the weekend we actually hit over 80,000 downloads which is for terrific for me because it just means that we're reaching more and more people a lot of people seem to be going back to the older episodes because we're at 117 now and and people are just going to are continuing to listen to the other episode which is great to hear so I'm happy to see that people are listening to the new and old episodes so keep listening keep sharing thank you very much for those of you who want to continue to support our ocean conservation message here at team speak up for blue as you well know or you may not know but it's usually myself and Nathan Johnson and Kate who help out producing this show providing content and helping me run the website and just run the logistics of hosting this podcast because it becomes a little difficult sometimes so just thank you very much for doing that if you want to help us continue to spread the ocean conservation through podcasting as well as other platforms you can do so through our ocean conservation patreon campaigns a crowd funding campaign over at www.speakupforblue.com/patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N I just want to thank those who are already supporting us as Chris and Claire Jefford, Ron and Judy and Dr. Judith Weiss thank you very much for your support and your continued support it is a monthly support system so thank you very much for all of you who are contributing let's get into the show unfortunately I would like on a Monday no more than anybody else to start off with some great news but it's not going to happen because stuff over the weekend happened and it was just disappointing the news I think came out on a Friday was after I did after I did the Friday OTF and our ocean talk Friday we like to call OTF which I sound sounds a lot better but there was news that came out of Argentina which showed beachgoers on an Argentinian resort the resort of Santa Teresita or Teresita in the northeastern Buenos Aires province that grabbed the news came out that it grabbed a dolphin beachgoers found a dolphin that was it probably beached itself smaller dolphin and it was the Francis Francisca dolphin and it's a small dolphin that's actually vulnerable according to the IUCN it's on the IUCN red less with less than 30,000 individuals this dolphin was grabbed from the the beach there's pictures of the dolphin being petted by a lot of and it's a small dolphin I don't know if it was they say it's a baby dolphin to be honest I don't know much about the species we're going to learn more about it hopefully on the neck on Tuesday's episode when I do a species Tuesday and we're going to talk about this dolphin however less than 30,000 species this dolphin gets picked up from the water and it gets laid out there and people start petting it's on the beach it's not near water as many of you know dolphins need water to survive they don't need water to breathe but they need water to survive they can get very dehydrated quickly and these beachgoers didn't really put it back in the water according to these pictures that I'm looking at right now on the dailymail.co.uk and it just shows a bunch of beachgoers one one man holding this dolphin and then kids and women and children and adults alike are petting this dolphin which is essentially dying in this person's hands so the article that I'm reading at the dailymail at the end of the whole the whole you know the whole story talks about how this dolphin was taken from the water and it wasn't put back and essentially people were taking selfies with it taking video of it for the most part the dolphin didn't look like it was moving very much however at the end of the at the end of the the there's a video associated with it but when I read the article I didn't want the video right away at the end of the article the author says that the the dolphin wasn't wasn't alive and people were saying oh wait the dolphin wasn't alive when you took when they took it out and that's why they took it out it's hard to tell if it was alive or not I've watched the video a couple of times that dissociate this and if we can embed it we I think there's a way we can embed it we'll embed it and put it on the website so you can judge for yourself when I first heard of this story I was I rate that the ignorance of people just taking a dolphin that's beast and not trying to put it back in the water to make sure it can get back out into the ocean dolphins beach themselves for many different reasons a lot of them we really don't know why underwater noise has associated with beach dolphin dolphins beaching a lot of dolphins will beach if their their navigation system gets thrown off and sometimes they can be rescued and they can be put back in the water other times not so much maybe they're older and they beat themselves and they end up dying just because they die of older age some have toxins in them there's a lot of different reasons why these dolphins will beat themselves mostly because their navigation is thrown off for whatever reason whether they're old whether they're there's something wrong with them or whether there's some sort of underwater noise that throws them off or they have to get away out of the water because they're so loud we don't know exactly why those are just some of the things that can cause it that we know however when they are beached usually people try and put them back in the water there's a few years ago I put up a video of the beachgoers in Brazil actually saving a bunch of dolphins that schooled or potted dolphins that actually beached and they put them back in the water they saved most of them and they all went back in the water and they swam away this situation it looked like it was the opposite they didn't give a chance for the dolphin to get back in the water and they just assumed it was I don't know if they just assumed it was dead or they just wanted to selflessly just wanted to pet it I'm not sure it's very difficult to tell I want to be optimistic about this and just say they knew the dolphin was dead when it came out and that's why they took it out even though I still think it's disgusting petting a dead dolphin just because it had just died and maybe there was a way to actually get it back into the water I don't know but either way it doesn't come off looking good I posted it on speaker for Blue Page pretty irate other people posted it and it was just like people are just like no you know like this is ridiculous people were angry they're like what's wrong with these people I just said these are you know these are just stupid people who are ignorant of the fact that animals need respect and care and we are not doing it and of course last week if you listen to it I believe it was on the Wednesdays episode episode that would be 114 I believe session 114 it was you know people were were watching their kids as they were kicking dirt on sea lions and just shows the lack of respect these were of course were live sea lions and these were just hauling out on a beast just sitting out and chilling out and these people were actually trying to these kids were actually just having fun I guess they're way of having fun and you know putting dirt on a sea lion it's just shows the lack of respect the parents weren't even telling the kids to stop it was just a or didn't look like it anyway it was just a lack of respect for animals that we were instilling in our children and this is another situation but maybe more from an ignorant point of view where the the parents and the adults are not caring about the animals well-being enough to just say hey kids you know what maybe we shouldn't pet it one it might be dead and we don't know what it died of so be careful to let's make sure that this dolphin is not alive like make sure like we gave him enough chance to get out there three call the authorities people maybe they know how to treat it off and maybe it's injured and just can't swim and maybe there's some more there's a rescue center or something that can come out and you know do that like maybe take care of this animal and bring it back and do the proper you know the proper method of one healing it or finding out what's wrong with it or two maybe doing the proper proper necropsy and finding out what it died from because you never know what these things what these things die from there is a local wildlife non-profit in the area that is called I believe it's Wildlife Foundation it's an Argentinian wildlife foundation in Argentina and then what they did is they actually created a poster with the picture of all these people petting it and saying hey look you know if you want you know don't do this don't be this ignorant respect the animals call the right authorities and be a proper advocate be a proper steward proper steward of the environment if you're on the beach and you see something wash up do your best to save it don't just pet it and show it around and take selfies with it be the proper steward of the ocean and put it back in the ocean right there are certain ways to deal with this in different countries you can call local authorities you can call a non-profit because most of our listeners are in the US you can if you see a stranded animal you can call we're gonna post this on this the site on the on our show notes at speakupforblue.com forward slash session 117 but you can call the authorities to help come in and either save the animal or try and you know figure out what it died from we're trying you know put the animal back in so there's a number of phone numbers that you can get it's all usually at NOAA the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration and they have a bunch for each state or each region they have a bunch of numbers and then we're gonna post this on the on the website on the show notes speak up for blue.com forward slash session 117 if you are in the UK I'm not sure the authority number but if you go to the British Marine let me just pull this up British Marine life I think it's British Marine life divers rescue I always forget the name divers rescue either way we're gonna put their them on there yeah British Marine life rescue British divers marine life rescue okay and that's at BDMLR.org.uk if you go there there's a bunch of hotlines that you can call and we're gonna post post this on the session notes as well if you're in the UK and you see a stranded animal marine animal then you can just call them and they have volunteers all over the country all over the UK many different countries and they will they will go there and they will assess it okay so I think we want to make sure that you guys are equipped the listeners of this audience the audience members here are equipped with the right phone numbers and the right information to call these you know just in case you see a stranded animal and don't do what these Argentinian people did and just pass it around one never touch a marine mammal that's dead you never want to touch you don't know why it's dead a lot of these animals there are some orcas in the Northwest that when they die they're not allowed they have to be disposed as as a toxic waste because they're so full of contaminants okay so you have to be very careful just for your own health and your children's help not to touch a dead marine mammal you never know what they're carrying you never know what disease what kind of contaminants they're carrying you don't know why they died do not touch a dead marine mammal do not pass it around to be petted have some you know show some restraint it's just common sense but if you do see something and you're in the UK or the United States go to our website you can copy down the numbers and just kind of keep it in your contacts if you live by a coast where you're going by a coast because you never know when you might need them okay and we'll try and you know in the future we'll try and have something handy like this so that you guys can have an app or something that you can just call these numbers so but yeah this is really just an episode to tell you that there was a dead dolphin it could have been caused by these people who are you know who grab it and you know they didn't help it in any by passing it around and getting touched by a bunch of different people I mean I don't know where these hands have been you don't know you know it's it's pretty bad when when you see a number of people I'm looking at the picture and there's probably about 20 to 30 people huddled around this dolphin trying to pet it they're pushing each other there's kids there's adults there's parents it's just it to be honest it disgusts me with the picture when I watch the video it does look like the person who picked it up tried to put it back in the water it doesn't look like the animals moving but again it's hard to tell from this video I want to be optimistic but yeah it's really hard to be when you see a dead animal being passed around or an animal that's barely alive being passed around that's struggling to get the water it needs to stay hydrated and being able to try and survive from that and all it is is being passed around for basically you know human entertainment which is kind of disgusting so people be smart have some common sense if you are on a beach and you see dolphins that are stranded one you can try and help them the best way to do though before you even help them is call the right authorities or go to the hotel if you're part of a hotel or go somewhere where you can actually call or tell someone about it that they can call the right authorities when I was in Florida we saw my my daughter and I she was really young we actually saw in the early early mornings about just that dawn to be honest we saw a mound on the beach that was that looked like a sea turtle nest we went over to the I didn't know what number to call I didn't have anything on me my phone or anything like that we went into the hotel we said look there's a there's looks like there's a sea turtle nest on your beach do you know what number we need to call they were completely aware what number to call they call the u.s. fisheries and wildlife and then within a half an hour the u.s. fish of a wildlife had already corned off that area and then my kids actually the for the entire day basically cleaned up around it any kind of trash or anything around it and you know kind of called it their nest that they were taken care of so you know own the protection realize who you need to go to before you go to a beach or if you see something then go to a hotel or somewhere that may know something more than you about that specific area in the protections that are put on and how to deal with stranded animals or anything that happens along the beach so that's probably the best thing you can do so that's all for the episode today just people just have some common sense and don't pass around a dead animal it's just not safe and it's just not respectful especially one that just died anyway and there's a bunch of smiles of people petting and it's just ridiculous so have some common sense this is a speaker for blue podcast my name is Angela and I'm your host happy Monday treat your animals with respect I know you do because you're listening to this epic listening to these episodes and the speak of blue podcast and happy conservation