A study probing the reason behind the death of dolphins has claimed that the 2010 BP oil spill has a major role to play in the mess. It was due to the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that some 186 dead bottlenose dolphins were reported to be found dead between Louisiana and western Florida, between January and April 2011.

The shocking part was the number of calves among the dead dolphins, thereby shocking one and all. "The oil spill and cold water of 2010 had already put significant stress on their food resources. … It appears the high volumes of cold freshwater coming from snowmelt water that pushed through Mobile Bay and Mississippi Sound in 2011 was the final blow”, said study researcher Graham Worthy, a biologist at the University of Central Florida, in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

It was around April 2011 that the oil started spilling, thereby affecting the environment badly, which followed huge explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform. While there was already mess due to extremely cold conditions on wildlife, including Finfish, marine birds, sea turtles and manatees etc, and then this oil spill further exaggerated the crisis.

It was through a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) survey of Louisiana dolphins in 2011 that it was found that though dolphins can sustain fluctuating temperatures, they were found to be extremely underweight and anemic.