What sprang out of the sea shocked everybody. What was in the sea shocked visitors to the Romanian coast. A wounded dolphin was carried to land with the waves.
Sadly, there was no chance to save the dolphin even after it was hauled out of the water. It belongs to the Delphinus Delphis species, according to experts.
Its body has several wounds, most likely from nets used by fisherman.
There exist three species of marine mammals in the Black Sea:
Delphinus ponticus, common dolphin
Tursiops truncatus ponticus, the bottlenose dolphin
Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena relicta)
Both the main food sources and the morpho-anatomical traits of the Black Sea dolphins are different. Whereas the common dolphin eats fish and other water column creatures, the bottlenose dolphin and harbor porpoise mostly eat fish and other benthic creatures.
According to these characteristics, each species favors particular environments; the common dolphin is typically found in offshore zones, while the first two species are mostly found in coastal regions.
The dorsal side of a common dolphin is bluish-gray to brown, with a very pale V-shaped lateral border. A band of varied darkness that is pigmented joins the lower jaw to the pectoral fin insertion. The fins, dorsal, pectoral, and caudal, are gray-brown to black.
Their birth size is about 0.80-0.95 meters. They are not bigger than 2 m in the Black Sea (males 177 cm, ladies 159 cm). Both chemical and aural pollution greatly affects them. Generally, they congregate in pairs or alone, as well as in groups of ten to fifteen. Swimming at about 50 km/h, they are rather fast. They dive briefly, often for one-third of a second, and they breathe at the surface. They can be found down to 70 meters.
Two years old is when they become sexually mature; ten months pass during the gestation period, and four months pass before weaning. They show quite advanced maternal instincts. They are thought to live 25 to 30 years. Their primary food is crustaceans and tiny pelagic fish (sprat, anchovy, gobies), although their stomachs frequently contain additional species like horse mackerel, cod, bluefish, red mullet, sea bass, shrimp, and mollusks. They eat about ten kilogrammes of food a day.
