posted October 01, 2007 05:54 PM
A pink bottlenose dolphin calf spotted in Louisiana
By Kyle Carter
Fishing guide Erik Rue was entertaining guests on one of his Calcasieu Charter Series boats for the afternoon as he does almost every day of the summer.
Erik Rue of Calcasieu Charter Service
Erik Rue, the captain who spotted the dolphin, said he talked to someone who had seen it in the same area a month earlier.
Rue, who spends more time on the water in Louisiana than he does on its shores, was heading back to dock on Sunday, June 17, when something caught his eye.
"I just happened to see a little pod of dolphins, and I noticed one that was a little lighter," said Rue, who was fishing just south of Lake Charles. "I shut down and kind of waited around because I wanted to verify what I had just seen."
They waited for the pod to resurface and after a couple of minutes, Rue confirmed that he wasn't crazy. Much to the delight of the guests, who thought they were done, he had spotted a pink dolphin.
"It was absolutely, stunningly pink," Rue said. "I had never seen anything like it. It's the same color throughout the whole body. It looks like it just came out of a paint booth."
It was a confusing find considering the only species of truly pink dolphins are found in some of the fresh-water rivers of South America and they are on the verge of extinction. Rue correctly assumed the calf bottlenose dolphin that he saw swimming with its mother was an albino. But why the pink?
"Calf's don't have as much of a blubber layer, and without the gray coloration the blood is right at the surface," said Dagmar Fertl, a marine biologist for Geo-Marine, Inc. out of Dallas. "It's also possible that the animal could have been flushed.
"The water is warm down there and a calf is not going to be the best swimmer, so it could have looked even pinker because it had been working hard in the heat."
The significance of what Rue and his guests saw depends on how you look at it. If you're from Ticuna tribe on the Amazon River, it's time to hide the daughters. They believe that pink dolphins morph into human from at night to come out to party and impregnate the women of the village. Others take a the omen angle, seeing a pink dolphin as a sign of good or evil. Fertl, who just helped finish an update for the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals on albino marine life, had a slightly more scientific view of the situation.
"It's a big deal," she said. "It's only the third report of an albino bottlenose dolphin in the Gulf of Mexico."
The first was seen in 1994 in Little Lake, just outside of New Orleans. In that case, the group followed the white aberration for 20-to-30 minutes and it was never seen again. The second time was along the coast of Texas and was also a short-lived experience. When you bring the entire world into play, it's rare but not as rare. There have been 13 recorded sightings (14 if you count this one), with the earliest coming in 1962.
"It seems like you hear about it a little more often for bottlenose dolphins, but you have to remember that there are thousands of them and they stay close to shore, so they are more visible," Fertl said.
Patty Rosel, a Marine Biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been studying the genetics of Albino dolphins for a few years and teamed up with Fertl on the report for the encyclopedia. She said that most of what they know about the behaviors or abnormalities of an albino dolphin, they have inferred from humans.
"Obviously, their skin might be more sensitive to the sun because it doesn't have any pigmentation," Rosel said. "They might also have poor eyesight, which is another common trait in albinos."
Fertl had other concerns for the dolphin's future.
Erik Rue of Calcasieu Charter Service
This pink dolphin was swimming with its mother in Lake Charles, La.
"You stick out like a sore thumb when you are white, and you become an easy target," she said. "You don't often see adult whales that are white. It is possible for them to reach full maturity but there are a ton of handicaps that come with having that funky coloration."
Rosel also said it's almost impossible to say whether the dolphin will stay in the area or move back out into the gulf and explore other parts of the coast.
"There have been reports of a certain group of dolphins staying exclusively in one area, but that's not always the case," she said. "If it's a good habitat with good food, there would be no reason to think that it would leave, but there is really no way to tell."
Rue hasn't seen the dolphin since the first sighting almost a week ago, but he said the winds have kept him from fishing in that same area. He does, however, have reason to think it will be there when he makes it back.
His daughter and her boyfriend were at Rue's house when he got home that day, and he started uploading the photos of his rare find. He called them over to take a look.
"Her boyfriend said, 'Oh yeah, a pink dolphin. I saw that thing about a month ago,'" Rue said. After chastising the boyfriend for not telling anybody, Rue went in for more details and found out that they had both seen it in the same area. "That gave me a little encouragement that it's going to hang around."
"Editors note: When watching or following
Lindaland
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posted October 01, 2007 05:54 PM
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