Dolphins found killed on Pensacola Beach and in Naples, NOAA offers $20K reward for info

Two dolphins in Pensacola Beach and Naples were found killed within three days of each other at the end of January, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to offer a reward in exchange for information that leads to the people responsible for the creatures' deaths.

In a Tuesday news release, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement said biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission discovered a dead dolphin in Naples on Jan. 30. The animal was fatally wounded from either a bullet or a sharp object.

Just three days prior to that on Jan. 27, Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge experts recovered a dolphin with a bullet in its left side along Pensacola Beach.

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NOAA is offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information that leads to a civil penalty or criminal conviction.

"Right now, we're leaving all possibilities open, we haven't committed to any particular scenario," said Tracy Dunn, the assistant director of NOAA Fisheries' Southeast Division of Law Enforcement. "We're just looking for leads from the public to help us out with it."

NOAA Fisheries bottlenose dolphin conservation specialist Stacey Horstman said Tuesday that humans killing dolphins often stems from those dolphins being illegally fed by people.

When that happens, Horstman said, dolphins' natural wariness of people fades and they become more inclined to beg people out on the water for more food.

"They start to associate people and boats with food, and fishing gear as well, so they'll start approaching boats, begging, and even taking bait and catch off of fishing gear," Horstman said. "So this can then lead to a domino effect of impacts, including entanglement in fishing gear, boat strikes and intentional-harm cases like these, as these types of changed behaviors from the dolphins aren't always welcomed and they can lead to frustration."

A dolphin, also with a fatal puncture wound to its head, was found dead off Captiva Island, Florida, in May 2019. That investigation is ongoing and also offers a reward for information, according to NOAA.

NOAA deals with an average of one to two dolphin intentional-harm cases a year in the Gulf of Mexico, Horstman said, referring to bottlenose dolphin stranding data accumulated since 2002.

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Horstman referred to three cases in eight months — all of which occurred in Florida — as unusual. She said the best way for people to prevent these cases from arising is to refrain from feeding or attempting to feed dolphins.

"What we see is that a fed dolphin is a dead dolphin," Horstman said. "I know it's really hard for people to understand how this simple act of feeding a dolphin can lead to such harm, but it's that domino effect of impacts, that loss of wariness, that behavioral change. That's what leads to some of these more egregious and shocking intentional harm cases."

NOAA officials ask that anyone with details about these incidents call the enforcement hotline at 800-853-1964. Tips may be left anonymously, but in order to redeem any reward money, personal contact information must be left with authorities.

Jake Newby can be reached at jnewby@pnj.com or 850-435-8538.