Chris D'Angelo is a senior reporter at HuffPost, based in Maine. He covers public lands, climate change, biodiversity and environmental policy. Prior to joining HuffPost, he wrote for daily newspapers in Hawaii.
Bones from an Amazon pink river dolphin are embedded in dried mud along the banks of Lake Tefé in Tefe, Brazil , on Oct. 31, 2023. More than 200 river dolphins died in the 2023 drought that sent water levels to new lows and water temperatures to record highs. When dolphins were dying in the highest numbers, the water topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“That’s keeping the heat down a little bit,” Marmontel said of the smoke and rain. “That’s what’s saving us, I think, us and the dolphins.” What they would later conclude is it wasn’t a contagious disease or pollution that killed the animals. Instead, researchers are confident that for the first time on record, dolphins in the Amazon died because the water they live in became too hot.In the end, more than 200 endangered dolphins perished in the waters around Tefé — a loss of approximately 20% of the lake’s population of Amazon pink river dolphins and 7% of tucuxi.
Dr. Jenny Meegan, a veterinarian and dolphin expert with the U.S.-based National Marine Mammal Foundation, examines an endangered pink river dolphin with an ultrasound machine on Aug. 20, 2024. Meegan was part of an international team working with the Mamirauá Institute to conduct health assessments of Lake Tefé's pink river dolphins over two weeks in August.Once the dolphins reached shallow water, Marmontel and her team got to work.
Biologist Daiana Guedes da Costa documents a dead pink river dolphin she found floating during a routine monitoring trip on Aug. 28.Daiana Guedes da Costa, a biologist at Mamirauá Institute, discovered the corpse of one pink river dolphin washed up near a home on Lake Tefé on Aug. 28. Two more were found on Sept. 7, another on Sept. 10 and another on Sept. 13.
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