4 min read Dolphins Are Still Washing Up Dead 5 Years After Gulf Oil Spill

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Bottlenose dolphins continue to wash up dead on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, five years after the biggest marine oil spill in history. BP says oil has nothing to do with it. Record dolphin strandings and die-offs have been occurring in the Gulf since 2010, when 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into it, according to a report published this month by the National Marine Mammal Foundation. The researchers point to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill as one of the likely main contributors. Dolphins are now experiencing an unusual mortality event (UME), meaning it's not at all normal that they are dying in droves. Flickr/Phil Long

According to the report, published in the journal PLOS ONE, "...the current UME is composed of multiple clusters of bottlenose dolphin deaths, including some that overlap both temporally and spatially with the [Deepwater Horizon] oil spill." Since 2010, 1,305 dolphins have stranded on the shores of the Gulf, 94 percent of them dead. It's become the longest-lasting dolphin die-off in the Gulf ever recorded. Flickr/Dominic Sherony