BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — Despite efforts of the Long Branch fire department, residents and volunteers, a dolphin that had washed up on the city’s shoreline last week succumbed to its injuries.

The dolphin was transported to the University of Pennsylvania veterinary hospital in New Bolton, Pa., about 3 p.m. Dec. 29 by the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine. Shortly after its arrival, the dolphin began convulsing and was euthanized, according to Bob Schoelkopf, director of the center.

“Any animal that washes up on a beach has something wrong with it,” he said. “A healthy dolphin would not have come up on the beach.”

Members of the Long Branch Fire Department work to save a dolphin that washed up on a Long Branch beach Dec. 29. The injured dolphin was found near the southern jetty at the Takanassee Beach Club around 8 a.m. Dec. 29 by resident Cathy Cornell.

“I was walking my dog on the beach, and the dog ran over to something and started barking,” she said. “[The dolphin] looked like it had an injury on its back and on its fin, but it was definitely breathing.”

Cornell called a girlfriend from her cell phone, and asked her to call the police department and animal control.

At 8:30 a.m., Jay Smuro, career firefighter for the uniform division, heard the call about the dolphin over the police scanner, according to firefighter Steven Peterson.

“People really do not know that we [firefighters] are not just out there fighting fires,” Peterson said. “We are also in charge of water rescue and are the first ones to respond when anything washes ashore.”

Smuro alerted the Marine Mammal Stranding Center at Brigantine and was told to keep the dolphin wet and try to get it back into the water while awaiting arrival of the rescue team.

Smuro, along with firefighter Noel Johnson, suited up in cold-water emergency survival rescue suits and submerged the dolphin in the water.

“The dolphin began to swim, but soon it was caught in the waves and washed up again,” Smuro said.

The two firefighters laid the dolphin in an upright position on shore where it would remain wet without being caught in waves, until the rescue team arrived at 12:30 p.m.

“We are not so much trained for animal rescue, but we have cold-water rescue training,” Smuro said. “We did all we could.”

Smuro said he saw an open wound on the dolphin’s back and witnessed bleeding from two fins.

The dolphin, thought to be a hybrid species, was loaded into the emergency vehicle, but could not be brought to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center for treatment.

“There were already seals in the Brigantine facility, and you cannot mix species,” Schoelkopf explained.

The center is a rehabilitation facility for mammals and sea turtles throughout New Jersey. Some 214 animals were rehabilitated there in 2004, Schoelkopf added.

The cause of the dolphin’s death is not yet known, according to Schoelkopf, who said the center is waiting for the autopsy.

Samples have been taken to see what was wrong with the dolphin and were sent to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, where an investigation will be conducted, he said.

It could take up to a year before any results are received, he added.

Tissue samples have also been sent to a genetics lab to examine the dolphin’s DNA.