GASTRIC problems may have caused the unexpected death of Khethiwe, one of the most loved bottlenose dolphins at uShaka Sea World aquarium on Thursday evening.
At the time of her death, Khethiwe was surrounded by the five other female dolphins from her group who immediately went to her side when they realised she was not well.
Dr Francois Lampen, a vet at the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR), said they did a post-mortem evaluation yesterday and were sending away multiple tests for histopathology and other blood diagnostic tests to determine precisely what happened.
“We feel that she had a gastrointestinal spasm, a torsion, kind of a twisted gut, and we feel that caused her to traumatise herself and she died in a very short time period,” he said.
“She swam against the wall while the other dolphins were with her and we feel that there was both a cerebral trauma and gastrointestinal trauma.”
According to Lampen, when the staff did their rounds at 5pm on Thursday to monitor the dolphins, there was no indication that Khethiwe was in distress. Just 30 minutes later she was dead.
“She was playing around with some of the enrichment items they have in the pool and the other females were in the pool next door, so there was really nothing leading up to this.”
Lampen said the staff were at the pool trying to help when she went into distress but there was nothing they could do.
“The dolphins surrounding her were also trying to assist and she unfortunately then had a traumatic event where she reacted and that was within three minutes. I left work 20 minutes prior to that, but I was back there within 15 minutes and unfortunately she was already deceased.”
Lampen said all the staff were “very, very sad” and traumatised because they had all worked intensively with Khethiwe who was about to turn 16 in November. She was known as a sweet-natured dolphin who was quite vocal and was often heard calling for attention and toys.
He said one moment Khethiwe was playing and the next she was in agony. Lampen said having a twisted gut was a common occurrence in dolphins and a lot of institutions across the world had reported that.
“They have a lot of small intestines and they can twist very quickly. That causes severe pain as you can imagine, but this was a very, very short situation. I can say unreservedly that I feel that within a very, very short time, two to three minutes, she passed away. We have spoken with specialists and this is something that has been recorded in other facilities as well,” said Lampen.
Khethiwe will be cremated and her ashes returned to the staff at uShaka Marine World. “As you can imagine, the staff are very attached to this animal, they’ve got a very close bond so the ashes will give them some closure, they’ll be able to grieve together.”
Lampen warned that unlike the movies, the results of the post mortem tests could take a while to finalise and the findings might not be conclusive.