B.C. mammal researchers are intrigued after a Haida Gwaii woman made the unfortunate, yet rare, discovery of a dead striped dolphin on a local beach.
Alex Rinfret was walking along the beach in Tlell, on Graham Island, with her dog Juno Wednesday morning, when they stumbled upon something washing ashore with the waves.
"It was amazing. I went up to it and it was bigger than me and I had no idea what it was," Rinfret says.
She thought it was a baby killer whale because of the black and white colouring and prominent fin on the mammal's back. But researchers now say it's a striped dolphin, which is rare for B.C. waters.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada scientist John Ford says there have only been 16 of these dolphins found stranded on B.C. beaches since 1950 and only a single sighting of a live one during that same period.
"We don't really know why these animals strand, it's usually single animals that end up getting perhaps separated from their group, or failing health for any number of reasons" Ford says.
Researchers will perform a necropsy to try to determine why this particular dolphin died.
"I could see its underside and the top of it and no, it looked like it was in beautiful shape," Rinfret says.
"I've seen a lot of dead seals and sea lions and often they're decomposed and this wasn't decomposed at all, it was in perfect shape."
Striped dolphins are normally found in sub-tropical to warm-temperate waters, according to Ford. He says those that do make it into B.C. waters come here by accident.
Rinfret says she was surprised she had come across something so uncommon.
"It was definitely a rare find for me. I was quite surprised to find it was a rare find for everybody," she says.
Rinfret says she saw representatives from Fisheries and Oceans Canada measuring and photographing the dolphin before carrying it away inside a marine mammal bag on a stretcher.
Researchers say the rare discovery reinforces the importance of reporting unusual mammal finds to the federal government's incident reporting line at 1-800-465-4336.
