WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Federal officials say the number of bottlenose dolphins that have died along the East Coast this year from a deadly virus exceeds the number killed in a similar outbreak in the late 1980s.
Teri Rowles, a coordinator of the federal fisheries and marine mammal health and stranding response program, says the number of deaths in the current outbreak has occurred in less than half the time of the 1987-88 die off.
The News Journal of Wilmington reports that there have been more than 50 bottlenose dolphin strandings in Delaware since July, many of them during and just after a long-lasting nor'easter storm last month.
Officials believe the deaths are linked to the cetacean morbillivirus, which also was responsible for the last major dolphin die-off.
