Climate Change: A Dorset Marine Life expert says it could be pushing dead animals to the coast
There have been a number of dead dolphins and seals found washed up on the coast of Dorset in recent weeks.
This week three dead dolphins and a dead seal were found on Chesil Beach near Portland.
It is not the first time this has happened, in the past few months locals have spotted a number of dead mammals on Weymouth beach, Portland and West Bay.
Dan Jarvis the Welfare Development and Field support officer at the British Diver marine life rescue says there a could be a number of reasons why this keeps happening:
- Natural reasons like old age, infections and injuries.
- Bycatching in fisheries - Marine mammals being caught unintentionally.
- Strong winds.
But Dan said there could be something happening on a scale that we are not really aware of and that could be down to climate change.
"As we've heard from presenters in recent documentaries such as David Attenborough, climate change is having a huge affect on our environment and for our marine animals around our coastline.
"Water temperatures are changing, meaning species move to different areas at different times of the year from when they normally would.
"The predators are following them and there seems to be a general trend that everything is moving north and this might be why we're seeing more animals in the area but this is something that is very much under research at the moment."
In the last few days the county's had strong southerly winds and this might be pushing some of the animals bodies on the coast where they are being found.
According to Marine Life Rescue it is very unlikely that the cruise ships in the area have anything to do with the mammals deaths unless the mammal is hit by a ship while it was moving.
Dan continued:
"The only real way to determine the cause of death in these animals is through a post-mortem investigation, and these are carried out by the certain standings investigation programme which is based at the Zoological society of London."
If anyone does find a dead, stranded Marine mammal they can report it to them on the Zoological society of London hotline 0800 652 0333.