Michael McCarthy was canoeing through the Intracoastal Waterway near St. Petersburg, Florida, when he spotted the familiar flash of silver in the water ahead of him. A dolphin was swimming nearby, and she appeared to be cradling a small, limp body.
McCarthy initially assumed the dolphin had just grabbed her supper, but as he stood there watching, a terrible event unfolded in front of him.
“It took me a minute to accept what I was seeing when I first spotted the dolphin,” McCarthy, the owner of the See Through Canoe Company, told The Dodo. “I wanted to believe it was a large redfish or something, but it quickly became apparent that it was a dead calf.”
McCarthy whipped out his camera and began filming the mother dolphin’s funeral procession. She nuzzled the body of her calf, caressing it in a dance of grief.
Luckily, she wasn’t alone. A fellow dolphin swam alongside her, in a seeming effort to protect and comfort his friend. “As the mother made her way north through the Intracoastal Waterway, other dolphins joined her for short distances and then went on their way,” McCarthy said, “except for one dolphin that stayed with the mother the whole time.”
The calf appears to have been involved in a collision with a motorboat, which McCarthy has seen far too often. “It was most likely hit by a boat propeller,” McCarthy stated, based on the scar patterns on the calf. “I’ve spent much of my life on the water, including a lot of time among manatees and dolphins, so I’m all too acquainted with the appearance of propeller wounds.”
McCarthy became even more motivated to video the dolphin’s anguish in order to “help raise awareness to a situation I witness all the time,” as he put it.
Mother #dolphin not ready to let go of her dead calf and pushing it through the intracoastal waterway.
It's hard to say for sure without examination, but the calf may have been hit by a boat. Please don't assume that because #dolphins are fast that you won't hit them. #sad pic.twitter.com/Le2MAwvPIB— See Through Canoe (@SeeThroughCanoe) June 3, 2019
According to McCarthy, a widespread misperception among boaters is that dolphins are “too swift to be hit,” which is just not true. “The calves are considerably more sensitive,” he explained, “since they can’t swim as rapidly and must surface much more frequently for oxygen.”
Previous research has suggested that cetaceans, such as dolphins and whales, are capable of grief, particularly mothers mourning their dead young.
McCarthy shared the video on Twitter last week, and it has had over 76,000 views since then.
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