Skip to content
All articles
  • All articles
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
Fishers' involvement is crucial. Image: WDC/JTF

When porpoises and people overlap

We're funding a project in Hong Kong that's working with fishing communities to help save...

Mindful conservation – why we need a new respect for nature

'We should look at whales and dolphins as the indigenous people of the seas -...
A dolphin called Arnie with a shell

Dolphins catch fish using giant shell tools

In Shark Bay, Australia, two groups of dolphins have figured out how to use tools...
Common dolphins at surface

Did you know that dolphins have unique personalities?

We all have personalities, and between the work Christmas party and your family get-together, perhaps...
Leaping harbour porpoise

The power of harbour porpoise poo

We know we need to save the whale to save the world. Now we are...
Holly. Image: Miray Campbell

Meet Holly, she’s an incredible orca leader

Let me tell you the story of an awe-inspiring orca with a fascinating family story...
Humpback whale. Image: Christopher Swann

A story about whales and humans

As well as working for WDC, I write books for young people. Stories; about the...
Risso's dolphin at surface

My lucky number – 13 years studying amazing Risso’s dolphins

Everything we learn about the Risso's dolphins off the coast of Scotland amazes us and...

Something fishy about dolphin’s death in Wales

Earlier this week, what appeared to be a healthy bottlenose dolphin was found stranded on a beach (perhaps aptly named Hell’s Mouth) in Wales. Teams from the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) and Marine Environmental Monitoring were quickly on the scene to undertake a post-mortem to try and find out what had caused the individual to strand and die – what they found was beyond the bizarre.

Given that the dolphin appeared to be in a good nutritional state, it wasn’t surprising for the teams to find a stomach full of recently ingested fish, revealing that prior to its death, the dolphin had been feasting on some of the local fish. However what was surprising was that the stomach wasn’t the only place they found fish – an almost whole dab fish (a type of flat fish) was found lodged in the dolphin’s nasal cavity, completely blocking the airspace and therefore preventing the dolphin from breathing. 

So “death by fish”, or in technical speak, “asphyxiation by dab” has been officially noted as the cause of death for this unfortunate dolphin, not something that the investigators see very often. In fact this is only the second time (in over 11,500 strandings) that a dolphin has been documented as having died of asphyxia by ingestion.

Unfortunately, this adult male dolphin has since been identified as a member of the population of resident bottlenose dolphins found in the wider Cardigan Bay. Each and every dolphin is important and none more so when they’re from small relatively discrete populations however sometimes life and death really are stranger than fiction and if it wasn’t for him eating his food the wrong way (and perhaps not having another dolphin on hand to conduct the heimlich manoeuvre) this individual may have lived for many more years.