More stunned than surprised, we would say, was the resident facing a dolphin washed up near his home on the shore of his Southern town. Who could blame him? It is a rarity in Lebanon. This is a dolphin from the Common Bottlenose Dolphin’s species, a particular sea animal holding the scientific name of Tursiops Truncatus.
“As I was sitting in my house on the beach, sipping my coffee, I saw a body being tossed by the waves,” Mohammad al-Jundi who lives 30 meters from the sea recounted to some local media sources.
He feared it was a human body. “I rushed towards it, only to find out that it was a dead dolphin, I took it out of the sea and put it onto the rocks.”
Mr. Jundi contacted immediately Lebanon Diving Center that dispatched a team on the scene to photograph the deceased dolphin. He also reached out to The National Council for Oceanography to take charge of the sea animal, which they did professionally.
The NCO team lifts carefully the dolphin and transfers it to their laboratories where an autopsy was performed to identify the cause of death.
In spite of the sad occurrence, it was a relief to notice the absence of any trace of murder or torture on the dolphin.
According to the Lebanese Diving Center, “The presence of dolphins is not an emergency on the sea of Lebanon that is located on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon has a distinct marine diversity that exists since a long time ago, and they [the dolphins] are mammal species that don’t present any threat to human beings.”
The research specialists are now working to establish the cause of death of the unfortunate dolphin in order to take the required precautions to prevent similar cases in the future.
The bottlenose dolphin is a type of dolphins that are found in all seas around the world. As per the IUCN Red List ( List of Threatened Species), they are not an endangered species.
You have certainly come to see at least once this type of dolphins in movies or TV commercials. They are friendly and fun sea animals that are much loved by kids and adults alike around the world.
