COURTESY PHOTO BY ELIZABETH WARRICK
Erica Cushing of the Maui Ocean Center took the pulse of the female striped dolphin that was stranded on a beach in South Maui on Friday morning. The dolphin was being supported by John Gorman, the aquarium's curatorial director, left, and Jake Jacobus, a staff diver. The dolphin was monitored overnight, but its condition rapidly deteriorated yesterday morning, and it had to be euthanized.
Huge collective effort
fails to save beached dolphin
A female striped dolphin that beached itself at Maui's Wailea Beach several times Friday died early yesterday at the Maui Ocean Center.
"They put it down this morning about 7 o'clock," Jim Luecke, Maui Ocean Center assistant curator of exhibits, said yesterday. "Overnight it had taken a turn for the worse."
The 7-foot-4-inch, 230-pound female first beached itself about 9 or 9:30 a.m. Friday, Luecke said, and people tried unsuccessfully to help it out to deeper water four times.
"It was a huge collective effort of the public, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service, the Maui Ocean Center, the Pacific Whale Foundation," Luecke said. "Everyone came together to do what they could for the animal."
Two veterinarians tried but were not able to help the animal once it was brought to the Maui Ocean Center, Luecke said. Results of testing done before the animals body was buried at sea yesterday may eventually determine a cause of death.
"Things didn't work out," Luecke said, who said it was the first beached dolphin he's worked with since coming to the center two-and-a-half years ago. "It was beaching itself for a reason."
