The Common Bottlenose Dolphin: Tursiops Trucantus

Introduction
The bottlenose dolphin is also known as Tursiops truncatus. It’s the adorable mammals whose mouth somehow appears to be curved in a friendly smile that invites people to come and swim with them and watch them perform complex tricks. They weigh around eleven hundred pounds and can be anywhere between ten and fourteen feet long. These creatures can swim around eighteen miles per hour and often travel in large social groups. They can live up to fifty years and most are found in the tropical oceans and others can be found in warm water all over the globe. Tursiops truncatus are a higher-order predator that is often referred to as “ocean sentinels of health.”
Starting July the first of 2013 these Tursiops truncatus were dying in unusually large numbers all down the east coast. Facts show that in the month of July the average numbers of these animals that usually wash upon shore are just around six or seven in Virginia and thirty-six in all the states between New York and Florida. Starting up north in the month of July ninety-one died in New York. Sixty-three died in New Jersey, twenty-seven in Maryland and forty-one in Delaware. In Virginia around one hundred and seventy-four had been found and seventy-eight of them washed up on shore. Virginia had a bigger number of deaths thought to be because we have more suitable habitat, we have more coastline. In that summer the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center had found and examined 44 deaths, than that following week the same aquarium confirmed that an additional 13 dead Tursiops truncatus were found over the weekend. 333 Tursiops truncatus had washed up dead on beaches from New York to North Carolina by August 26, 2013.
A coordinator with NOAA Fisheries marine mammal h...

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...tuation plays out like it did in 1988 were looking at more deaths and Morbillivirus traveling down south until May of 2014. Right now, experts think this outbreak is probably due to "herd immunity." That’s when Tursiops truncatus that survived the 1987-88 Morbillivirus outbreak carry antibodies to the virus which protects them against the virus. These protected individuals also help protect new or young Tursiops truncatus without natural immunity, since these unprotected individuals have less chance of contracting the virus. Sadly eventually, those virus-resistant Tursiops truncatus will die or leave, and then the whole population becomes immured. Studies have shown that Tursiops truncatus younger than 26 years have limited to no immunity to this virus. So if this virus is now revealed, they don't have the initial antibodies to protect them from this deadly illness.