Unusual Number of Dolphin Deaths

March has been a bit…’mad’ (crazy) for the team with the Florida Panhandle Marine Institute. Today, FPMI staff, volunteers, and community partners worked together to recover the 41st bottlenose dolphin stranding of 2026! Of those, 21 have been reported just in the month of March!! The stranding today was already deceased, and was in good enough condition to recover for a post-mortem examination. With the elevated number of deceased dolphins being reported these last few days, our team has been working diligently to recover and examine as many as possible. Samples taken from those exams have been and will continue to be sent out for analyses at offsite laboratories, to try and discover the cause of such a sudden event.

Everything we are doing right now, from managing calls from concerned citizens, to driving across the Panhandle almost daily, to conducting necropsies at (almost) all hours of the day, are being done while we are still without a “home”. We are actively fundraising to rebuild our base of operations (including all our rehabilitation infrastructure for sea turtles and marine mammals), and we need your help to do it! If you’d like to support the mission that we continue to work towards every day, and want to help get us back on our feet fully, please see the link below to donate!

Thank you for your continued support! We will update as we can regarding the current dolphin stranding event. A special thank you too to all of our network partners, local community support, local law enforcement, and neighboring conservation groups who have stepped up to help us manage these last few critical weeks.

*All marine mammal stranding response work is conducted under a Stranding Agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

WJHG TV Story

WMBB TV Story