I had a phone call this morning from Alan Cowell telling me he had found a dead dolphin on Newgale Beach I thanked him for his call and relayed the message to Rod Penrose Welsh Stranding's Coordinator ( Marine Environmental Monitoring on 0800 6520333.) who deals with any dead whales dolphins and porpoises found dead on our beaches. At the time Rod was involved in another Stranding of a juvenile Risso's Dolphin in the south of the county. Thankfully my message got through and Rod turned up with the Dolphin to show me at the Ocean lab just as it was getting dark.
The really amazing thing was this dead dolphin was not a common dolphin as first suspected but a very rare, for our waters striped dolphin!
I have spent literally thousands of hours recording filming and photographing dolphins but never seen a live Striped Dolphin in our waters. Strangely we do get two or three dead ones stranded each year which is not what we would expect given the fact we don't see live ones!
There was some damage as reported by Alan to its left flipper, but Rod thought this was probably caused by a dog or some other scavenger earlier in the day. Otherwise the Dolphin looked fit and healthy so it will be interesting to know the Post Mortem results later when they have been carried out. Thanks to Alan for letting us know and thanks to Rod for taking the trouble to show us the Striper
Rods number is above if you do find any dead cetaceans or if you see a turtle as he is also the recorder for turtles but If you cant get Rod feel free to contact us and we will get through to him!