Around New England

Nine Dolphins Get Stranded On Cape Cod

May 5, 2023

Over a two-day span, nine stranded dolphins — two of them repeats —  were rescued off the coast of Cape Cod.

On the morning of Monday, May 1, nine Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins were seen swimming in Wellfleet Harbor, according to The Cape Cod Times. As rescuers arrived to help the dolphins to deeper waters, one got stranded, followed by seven others.

The next day, Tuesday, May 2, one of the same dolphins got stranded in Provincetown, which researchers could identify because of the temporary satellite tag they had put on it.

At almost the same time that day, another of the dolphins became stranded in Barnstable.

Both dolphins were safely released in Herring Cove in Provincetown.

According to researchers, Cape Cod is a “hot spot” for dolphins to become stranded.

“This area gets the most frequent mass stranding events of anywhere in the world,” Misty Niemeyer, a stranding coordinator on Cape Cod for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told The Cape Cod Times.

Niemeyer also noted that roughly 25 percent of dolphin strandings in the United States occur on the Cape.

Mass strandings like the one on May 1 “are generally suspected to be caused due to the geography of the Cape, the extreme tidal changes, [and] extreme weather system,” Niemeyer said, “and they may get disoriented when navigating using echolocation in particular areas.”

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