Saturday, January 26, 2013

Heartbreaking Photos Of A Sad End: The Gowanus Dolphin

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Dolphin on snow at Gowanus Canal Union Street Bridge_pic by Eymund Diegel_Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club_2013_26 January
The dolphin which got stranded in the Gowanus Canal on Friday and sadly died after hours of struggling in the polluted waterway, was still very much on everyone's mind the day after the event.
The unusual story made its way through media all over the United States.

My friend Eymund Diegel sent me the heartbreaking photos above which he took earlier today. The dolphin was still lying close to the shore near the Union Street Bridge.
The images are now part of the permanent Proteus Gowanus photo archive of  The Fauna of the Gowanus Canal.  More photos of the poor creature can be accessed here.

Thank you for sharing them, Eymund.

UPDATE:
According to the Huffington Post,  the dolphin has been removed and has been sent to a lab on Long Island for a necropsy.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

sorry mother nature, our bad

debbie s. said...

Been so sad about this all weekend, and these photos just really broke my heart, especially after having seen this poor creature struggling earlier in the day. It does seem like some sort of indictment of our species, doesn't it? One thing that made me feel a bit better on Saturday was seeing the makeshift memorial that had been placed there at the bridge. Did you see that, or get any pictures? It was very sweet.

Anonymous said...

Was the dolphin removed? Will it be left there? I am devastated by this.

Michael R. said...

Yes, Debbie. The dolphin dying is absolutely an indictment of our species. For every beautiful person, there are 7000 who will crap in a river or dump ridiculously foul chemicals where they shouldn't. The dolphin is a chilling symbol of human apathy, mercenary stupidity, and a vermin-like behavior that is destroying everything in our world, at an increasingly alarming speed.

I'm sure there are readers, even of this very blog, who will dismiss our heartache as sentimental weakness. But most people were shocked. I just wonder... are some of the people who are shocked the same people who will, next week, go back to shitting the joint up? The answer is... uh... you might not like the answer.

One Love. One World.