According to government data, marine species deaths along coastal areas in the Mumbai Metropolitan are increasing, causing concern – from 12 cases in 2015 to 34 cases in the first nine months of 2018. In 2016 and 2017, 21 and 27 deaths were reported respectively, however prior to 2015, there was no protocol to record such cases so figures before that year are not clear.
The reported deaths between 2015 and 2018 include 40 Indian Ocean humpback dolphins, 17 Indo-Pacific finless porpoises, and five whales – one blue whale, three Bryde’s whales, and one dwarf sperm whale. In most cases due to the being carcasses decomposed, conducting post-mortems have not been possible but post-mortem reports for some of the dolphins revealed all had a respiratory infection.
From November of this year, the state plans to initiate a five-year study to understand the distribution, population, behaviour and threats to marine mammals along the Konkan coast by installing noise monitoring instruments at sea and training programmes for veterinarians have commenced to help assist teams during stranding rescue operations.
