Photo courtesy of Alec Tabak
UPDATE: As of 6:20 p.m. EST, the Dolphin has died, according to a Marine Foundation spokesperson.
Original story below.
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A scared dolphin has become trapped in the dreaded Gowanus canal, close to downtown Brooklyn. The canal is known as being a cesspool, as well as being dangerous to sea-dwelling mammals and mafia informants alike.
Althea Graham, who’s at the scene, told Heavy.com:
It’s alive. Apparently it’s been here since the AM. And they are saying they can’t do anything until tomorrow.
The canal is known to be carcinogenic to humans, so God knows what it might do to a Dolphin. The EPA is currently undergoing a $500 million Superfund cleanup of the waterway. The 1.8-mile canal has consistently ranked as one of the nation’s most polluted stretches of water.
Brooklynite Cathy Ryan, 65, told the Daily News:
You can see the dolphin. He keeps going up and down and going from side to side and people are saying we don’t know what’s taking so long to go in there and save him. He’s in bad shape, you can tell. A dolphin is grey, but he’s black right now. He was starting to swim toward the middle of the canal. But it doesn’t look good.
According to a Gothamist source:
The dolphin is surfacing to breathe really irregularly and its breathing sounds shallow,” she says, adding that the water is so murky you can’t see it when it’s more than a foot below the surface.
Red Hook Lobster, a restaurant close to the scene, seem to have broken the story with this Tweet:
I just saw a dolphin in the Gowanus canal near Union Street. Poor dolphin
— RedHookLobsterPound (@Redhooklobster) January 25, 2013