A boater stands for a better look at dolphins near the Oceanic Bridge last October. (Click to enlarge)

For the second time in a week, the discovery of a dead dolphin has raised concern that not all of last year’s visiting pod made it safely out of the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers.

The Associated Press reports that the badly decomposed corpse of an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin was discovered Saturday in the Navesink near Victory Park in Rumson.

Last Tuesday, a decomposed dolphin body was found near the confluence of the Shrewsbury River and Sandy Hook Bay.

Federal wildlife researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration later said the dorsal fin of the animal was too badly deteriorated to be useful in determining if the animal was from the pod of 16 Atlantic bottlenose that took up seven-month residence in local inland waters.

Three members of the pod are known to have died locally. No live dolphins have been reported in the area since January 15, when witnesses reported that several made it out of the Shrewsbury into Sandy Hook Bay just head of the river’s first freeze of the winter.

Email this story