Don’t you all love it when the authoritarian jerkwads try to keep a secret? As a non-conformist, it’s like red meat on a Tuesday.

Well today’s secret is lots of dead dolphins, washing up in the Gulf of Mexico, in what is all but conclusive evidence that BP’s oil blowout has serious health consequences for mammals and especially pregnant dolphins as a rash of dead ones and their dead babies have been washing up on shores, probably horrifying the hell out of tourists. Anyone with a shred of credibility, like say a marine biologist, who says anything scientifically alarming is being backhanded as “speaking out of turn” by government officials.

From Digital Journal back in February:

The first birthing season for dolphins since BP’s disaster last year in the Gulf of Mexico is getting off on a tragic note, with at least 17 stillborn or infant dolphins discovered in the last two weeks along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines. Moby Solangi, director of Gulfport’s Institute for Marine Mammal Studies told the Sun Herald it is still too early to determine the cause of the dolphins’ deaths. “For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said, according to the Sun Herald. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet,” he added.

Freaky shit, right? Well now they’ve got wind of an order from on high blocking scientists from making theories in public, because golly that might sully the reputation of BP, which is clearly getting a helping hand out of accountability:

One biologist involved with tracking dolphin mortalities for over 20 years and speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that: “It throws accountability right out the window. We are confused and … we are angry because they claim they want teamwork, but at the same time they are leaving the marine experts out of the loop completely.” Some scientists said they have received a personal rebuke from government officials about “speaking out of turn” to the media over attempts at determining the dolphins’ deaths. Additionally, these scientists say the collected specimens and samples are being turned over to the government for evaluation under a deal that omits independent scientists from the final results of lab tests. […]“We are treating the evidence, which are the dolphin samples, like a murder case,” said Dr. Erin Fougeres, a Fisheries Service marine biologist, Reuters notes. “The chain of custody is being closely watched. Every dolphin sample is considered evidence in the BP case now,” she added.

So they try to keep everything under hush hush wraps, which is pretty much SOP for the government as it is these days, but more to the point it’s clear they are trying to curb any backlash against BP by attempting to stack the deck beforehand to help a huge multi-billion dollar corporation weasel out of accountability.

BP’s image has been shot to hell, and now it’s only going to get worse as viral images will no doubt begin to link BP and dead dolphins. BP has a dead dolphin problem in the Gulf of Mexico, there will certainly be litigation before this is through. It’s extremely unlikely BP’s dead dolphin problem to be going away anytime soon no matter how much our government tries to waste more of our money to stage a PR campaign.

Tourism season is coming.