A Year Later And No Answers For Louisiana Dolphin Shot Dead

It was early year that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was informed of a dolphin that had been found stranded on the shores of Louisiana. NOAA offered $20k to anyone with details on the case, but almost a year later it seems no one has claimed this reward.

Bottlenose Dolphin Found Dead in Cameron Parish

On March 13th, 2024, NOAA was informed that fishers had found a young bottlenose dolphin, stranded on the shores and shot several times.  NOAA called the Audubon Aquarium Rescue, which took the dolphin back to New Orleans for examination.

The examination found the dolphin died after it had been shot in the brain, spinal cord, and heart. NOAA announced in April of 2024 that they were offering a reward of up to $20,000 for anyone who could share details about the crime that would lead to that assailant's identification, prosecution, or arrest.

A Year Later and No News

It's been almost a full year since NOAA announced their reward, yet nothing (at least publicly) has been updated with this case.

It's been so long that it seems people have forgotten about this story.

A user on X must have mistaken the date on the story which is why they posted the headline as if it happened today, or they could just be spreading awareness on this cold case a year later.

Louisiana has good reason to take our dolphin population so seriously after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit the Gulf of America in 2010 (or the Gulf of Mexico depending on where you live).

A report from 2022 found that the population of dolphins in the Gulf dropped by 45% because of the Deepwater spill. It could take 35 years for the Gulf dolphin population to recover their numbers to where they were before the spill.