How did this animal die?

Thanks for this Mark,

I have seen some pretty sad sights in the sea around here but none quite so puzzling. We are told its a bottlenose and Mark ( Mark Williams, skipper of the "Vigilance") may be right but in this state of decomposition its difficult to be certain. The size compared to the gull looks about right though.

It seems to have been dead a long time, several months would be my guess. Cold salt water tends to keep things pretty fresh so I would think it was over 6 months, possibly more. The tail appears to have been detached so it could have been caught in a net. The wood impaled in its body is pretty gruesome but may have happened after death, possibly used in getting the animal out of a net? Maybe it breached and landed on the wood impaling itself? Difficult to know if the rest of the stuff coming out from the cavity is tissue or some foriegn body somehow associated with the wood.. or not. I will try to get more details from Mark which may shed more light on the subject

Nice to know the other stuff was alive and well!

Hi Cliff,

We did a survey up from Neyland on Tuesday and unfortunately came across the body of a bottlenose dolphins (please see photo attached). Note the tail is missing and the wood. On a better note we saw loads of porpoise from St.Davids hd up to Fishguard and about 16 bottlenose between Llangranog and Newquay. The dead one was found 1/4 mile off Mwnt.

Mark

Vigilance