Oil worked its way into the Mississippi and Chandeleur sounds and other bays and shallow waters where dolphins breed and give birth.
Dolphins breed in the spring and carry their young for 11 to 12 months, Solangi said.
Typically in January and February, there are one or two baby dolphins per month found dead in Mississippi and Alabama, then the birthing season goes into full swing in March.
Deaths for the adult dolphin population in the area rose in the year of the oil spill from a norm of about 30 to 89, Solangi said.
Solangi is gathering tissue and organs for a thorough forensic study of the deaths and is cautious about drawing conclusions until the data from the research is in, probably within a couple of weeks.
No trend has emerged from the autopsies.
“But this is more than just a coincidence,” he said.
Another coast
Heidi Whitehead, state coordinator for the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network said numbers like the ones in Mississippi and Alabama would be considered normal for the Texas coast.
In 2007 or 2008, she said, they had an “unusual mortality event” when as many as 50 neonates washed ashore in two weeks. Some were ill and some were abandoned stillborn, but many were too decomposed to find the cause of death.
Whitehead said that in Texas now, no deaths, as far as they could detect, have been related to the oil spill this year and the numbers of deaths have been well within the normal range.
Renee Schoof, environment and energy writer with McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau, contributed to this report.
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