Monday April 7, 2025
PhysOrg —
In 2013, 8% of the bottlenose dolphins living in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon died. Investigations have now revealed that the dolphins may have starved because key habitats for nutritious prey were destroyed by a phytoplankton bloom.
This bloom was driven by the accumulation in the lagoon of fertilizer, effluent from septic tanks, and other by-products of human activity that are rich in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.
“We linked mortality and malnutrition to a decreased intake of energy following a shift in dolphins’ diets,” said Dr. Charles Jacoby of the Florida Flood Hub for Applied Research and Innovation, corresponding author of the article in Frontiers in Marine Science.
“We linked the dietary shifts to changes in prey availability, and we connected changes in prey to system-wide reductions in the abundance of seagrass and drifting macroalgae. These reductions were driven by shading from an intense, extensive, and long-lasting bloom of phytoplankton.”