When Michael McCarthy noticed the recognizable flash of silver in the water in front of him, he was canoeing across the Intracoastal Waterway close to St. Petersburg, Florida. There was a dolphin swimming close, and it seemed like she was carrying a little, lifeless body.
McCarthy initially believed the dolphin had just caught her supper, but as he continued to watch, a tragic 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 looked to have been involved in a collision with a motorboat, which McCarthy has all too regularly seen happen. According to the scar patterns on the calf, McCarthy concluded that it had most likely been struck by a boat propeller.
“Unfortunately, I am extremely familiar with what propeller wounds look like because I have spent the most of my life on the water and a lot of time with manatees and dolphins.”
McCarthy said that this strengthened his resolve to document the dolphin’s anguish in order to “help bring awareness to a situation I witness all the time.”
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
A common misconception among boaters is that dolphins are “too fast to get hit,” notes McCarthy, but that’s just not true. “The calves are even more vulnerable because they can’t swim as fast and have to surface much more frequently for air,” he added.
Previous studies suggest that cetaceans — dolphins and whales — display grieving behaviors, especially mothers mourning their dead calves.
McCarthy posted the video to Twitter last week, and it has since been viewed over 76,000 times.
“It was really hard to watch,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter. “That image is going to be stuck in my head for a while.”
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