Zak Smith is an attorney for the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC. This Op-Ed is adapted from one that first appeared on the NRDC blog Switchboard. Smith contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Something bad is happening in the ocean. No one's certain what's causing it, but in the past three months more than 550 bottlenose dolphins have stranded along the Atlantic Coast and there's no indication that the strandings are letting up. While researches rush to catalog data on the dolphins' deaths, larger questions loom — is the Atlantic coastal ecosystem broken, and are humans the cause?
Yes, dolphins strand all the time, but not like this. As shown below in the figure from the National Marine Fisheries Service, strandings have skyrocketed this year, especially in Virginia and fanning out north and south, with large numbers in Maryland, New Jersey and North Carolina.