Don’t look away. Look for the monster who killed this dolphin and make him pay | Opinion

From the Lowest-Human-Life-Form Department comes grisly news from authorities that another wild Florida dolphin —the third in less than a year — has been found dead after being either shot or stabbed.

The latest case happened near Naples, where the corpse of a male dolphin was discovered Jan. 30 with a deep wound on its snout. Biologists are trying to determine whether the fatal injury was caused by a bullet or a spear-like object.

Photographs of the dead mammal are as infuriating as they are sickening. The lowlife who killed it obviously was poised at close range, probably on a boat.

Only three days earlier, another dolphin washed up dead on Pensacola Beach after somebody shot it with a gun. And last May, off Captiva Island, still another dolphin died from a lethal puncture wound to the head.

No arrests have been made in any of the cases, and the federal government is now offering up to $20,000 for information leading to criminal convictions or civil penalties.

There’s nothing “civil” about intentionally killing one of these astounding animals. Anyone who does it shouldn’t be able to buy their way out. They belong behind bars.

Unfortunately, the Marine Mammal Protection Act calls for a maximum of only one year in jail for feeding, harassing, hunting or killing dolphins. It seems crazy that a moron who shoots one faces no greater penalty than the moron who tosses a sardine to one.

Not that dolphin-feeding isn’t a major problem, especially in the Gulf waters of southwest Florida and the Panhandle. The dimmest of dim tourists don’t know any better, but a few outlaw charter captains still dump fish off the transom to lure wild pods close to the boat so that clueless customers can get their Instagram moment.

Dolphins learn fast, and in some places you can watch them follow certain boats from the harbor every morning, anticipating a free breakfast. The result is mother dolphins that teach their young how to take handouts instead of how to hunt down their own mullet or mackerel.

Worse, dolphins that get fed by people often go miles out of their way to interact with boaters — including commercial fishermen, who understandably don’t want to share their catch.

As endearingly clever as they are, dolphins can also become pests. Still, it’s one thing to get frustrated and quite another to reach for a rifle or spear gun.

Wildlife officials believe some of the attacks on dolphins are carried out by disgruntled fishermen. Evidence is elusive —the crimes typically take place on open water and are virtually impossible to prove in the absence of witnesses.

A rare prosecution took place in 2009, when a Panama City boat captain got two years in prison for making pipe bombs to throw at dolphins. His sentence would have been half that long if he hadn’t also pleaded guilty to being a convicted felon in possession of explosives.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that at least 29 dolphins in southeastern coastal states have been found shot or stabbed since 2002.

Some of the incidents were exceptionally sadistic. In 2012, a dolphin was fatally impaled with a screwdriver in Perdido Bay, near the Florida-Alabama border. The crime was never solved.

It was an awful year for dolphins in that region of the Gulf. Six were killed by humans, including a mutilation case in which the lower jaw of the mammal was severed.

Since then, fines have been hiked to a maximum $100,000 for each violation of the laws protecting dolphin species and whales. The type of scum that would kill one is unlikely to keep that much cash in the bank, but the government’s hope was that the threat of a six-figure penalty would be a strong deterrent.

Not for some people, obviously.

Based on the nature of the injuries, both of the Florida dolphins killed last month appeared to have been in a “begging posture” at the time they were attacked, according to a NOAA wildlife official interviewed by the Washington Post.

Stacey Horstman, the agency’s bottlenose dolphin conservation coordinator, said dolphins that have grown accustomed to being fed by humans will approach unfamiliar boats and linger closely — easy targets for shooters.

She described the wound on the dead Naples dolphin as “particularly horrific,” adding, “We have not seen something quite like that before.”

Somebody out there knows who did it. A creep like this usually brags.

So let him buy you a beer, listen to his sick story and then turn him in. If you don’t do it for your conscience, do it for the twenty grand.

Easy call. Just look at the picture.

This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 3:52 PM.