ABSTRACT
The early morning mist was disappearing from the beach at Asbury Park, New Jersey, on a late summer day in 1988, and as it dissipated it revealed the bloated bodies of three sea mammals that had floated in with the tide during the night. They were young adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiopsis truncatus) — a species noted for their graceful antics at sea and for crowd-pleasing trained behavior in seaside commercial aquaria. But these specimens were, unaccountably, dead. They were also statistics, because during the summers of 1987 and 1988 more than 700 other members of their species had washed up on Atlantic shores — an unprecedented event.
