Dead Baby Dolphin on Innerarity Point

"I looked and saw a baby porpoise, a terrible sight to see."
What started as a normal Tuesday morning for Chris McCune, "I came out to have my coffee, practice, play my guitar and write some songs."
That all changed when he looked down the beach.

Eleanor Milford saw it too. "I've been hearing about it but I didn't expect to see it in my own backyard and I hope we get some answers."

It'll be up to the National Marine Fisheries to answer that question who began tracking the accelerated number of dolphin deaths a year before the oil spill.

"They saw an increase a year ago prior to the oil spill and were ready to declare at that time that there was some mortality event going on in the Gulf of Mexico," says Steve Shippee with Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge. "But there are a set of criteria that have to be met and right as they were trying to come up to that conclusion there's oil in the gulf."

Shippee collected the carcass. He says last year more adult dolphins died. This year there is a huge number of stillborns. "What it is, we don't have any idea but definitely the indicators are that this animal here tells us something about the health of the environment."

This dolphin will go where most have gone, into a freezer until tests can be done to determine what killed it. "We can't seem to get any answers from anybody about anything and that's very frustrating," says Milford.

According to Shippee the National Marine Fisheries is taking the lead in the investigation because dolphins are a protected species. There is a strict protocol that has to be followed. So far, no laboratories have been contracted to do the testing.