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MARCUS FRANKLINMote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota works to save the rough-toothed dolphins, survivors of a mass beaching near Fort Pierce last week.
SARASOTA - Inside a circular 50,000-gallon rehabilitation tank at Mote Marine Laboratory, four rough-toothed dolphins glided swiftly through the water, offering proof of their reputation as powerful swimmers.
A few feet away, in an identical tank, three others barely moved, floating near the top of the water.
"These guys are the sickest, more lethargic and slower moving right now," said Tonya Clauss, a veterinarian at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium.
Whether any of the seven will live is about a 50-50 chance, said Clauss, who is among the Mote Marine personnel working to save the survivors of a mass stranding last week near Fort Pierce.
The seven dolphins, named for their sharp, serrated teeth, arrived at the hospital off Sarasota Bay early Monday morning after a "traumatizing" six-hour ride on thick, wet foam inside a grocery store 18-wheeler from Fort Pierce. The dolphins were among 36 that beached Friday afternoon in St. Lucie County. The species is social and usually travels in groups of as many as 50. The reasons for the beaching are unknown.
The seven dolphins' arrival at Mote's Dolphin & Whale Hospital marked the largest number the nonprofit hospital has treated at one time, said Daniel F. Bebak, vice president of Mote's aquarium and special projects. Mote staff have named the mammals, six male and one female, after Snow White's seven dwarfs.
On Saturday, after volunteers and experts made unsuccessful attempts to get the beached dolphins back in the ocean, 30 of the animals were euthanized by lethal injection. On Sunday morning, one more rough-toothed dolphin turned up about 4 miles north of Friday's stranding, said Steve McCulloch, executive director of the Division of Marine Mammal Research and Conservation at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce. Institution officials transported the seven dolphins to Mote because it had more space, McCulloch said.
During the weekend, 20 of the dolphins' carcasses arrived at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory in St. Petersburg for necropsies.
Officials examined three during the weekend, said Allison Bozarth, a commission spokeswoman. The animals were generally thin. Lab test results could take several months, she said.
"We're making our way through the necropsies on them to try to determine what happened to them, what was wrong with them," Bozarth said.
As the surviving dolphins traveled to Sarasota in the back of a Publix 18-wheeler, two veterinarians monitored them, regularly checking their heart rates, respiratory systems and temperatures. They kept them wet with hand sprayers and sponges.
After the dolphins arrived, suffering from exhaustion, muscle soreness, minor abrasions and dehydration, staff and volunteers weighed them and put them into the water one by one. There, with three to five people holding each dolphin, the team did physical exams.
"We assessed them from rostrum to flukes," or nose to tail, Clauss said.
Test results, expected by week's end, could shed light on the dolphins' health or why they beached. Generally, little is known about mass strandings. In 1997, about 62 dolphins beached themselves in the Panhandle. Since March, more than 100 dolphin carcasses have inexplicably washed up on Panhandle beaches.
"Many times, the cause of a stranding cannot be determined," Clauss said. She speculated one or more of the dolphins became sick before beaching.
"They're all doing quite well considering what they've been through," Clauss said. "They whole stranding event and transporting them are very hard on their bodies. But we still consider them all critical."
Two suffer from respiratory problems, one with a mild case of pneumonia, "which is not uncommon after what they've been through," Clauss said.
She said there was no way to know how long the dolphins would stay at Mote.
"Even the healthiest could take a turn for the worst," Clauss said. "We just can't predict."
To make room for the dolphins and keep them together, Mote officials on Sunday transferred Mayo, an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin that stranded May 3, to Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
Marcus Franklin can be reached at 727 893-8488 mfranklin@sptimes.com