Brooklyn May Be Killing Its Dolphins
Not intentionally, to be clear, but evidence is mounting that this is a pretty bad borough for the hyper-intelligent sea mammals we all know and love. I don’t know if I’d totally agree with Brooklyn Daily that Brooklyn is now “where dolphins go to die,” but still. Not great.
Last weekend, apparently, an ailing baby dolphin washed up on the beach near the Coney Island Boardwalk, and in spite of rescue efforts, he didn’t make it. “Someone walked past and then stripped down to his boxing shorts and took the dolphin out doing the breast stroke,” said Ken Woo, a boy scout leader who was on the beach at the time. “In another 20 minutes the dolphin was pushed back onto shore and it wasn’t moving by that time.”
Ugh, terrible. This after last month’s dolphin-in-the-Gowanus disaster, and the semi-related incident a couple of summers ago when I saw a baby shark wash up on Coney Island and die. Are our waters really so irrevocably dangerous and filthy? Can we do nothing to keep adorable sea life from dying on our shores? Does anyone have a wading pool in their apartment we could use as a temporary dolphin rescue until a better solution presents itself?
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
