SECTION X 

 UMTTATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 



Lany J. Hansen 



Southeast Fisheries Science Center 



Miami Laboratory 



75 Virginia Beach Drive 



Miami, FL 33149 



Limitations 



As with all investigations of unpredictable events of this nature, the scope of the 

 investigation, and therefore it's ultimate usefulness, was limited to a degree due to available 

 resources; including financial, human, and the existing baseline information. Some difiiculties 

 in executing both the data collection and analytical phases of the investigation were 

 encountered, which limited to some degree the scope of the investigation. The inability to 

 recognize the anomalous mortality event, and the lack of a rapid response plan and a 

 dedicated response team also hampered the investigation. 



Because of the timing and locations of stranded animals relative to available 

 persormel, data collection was generally limited to areas where stranding networks were in 

 place and had sufficient resources to deal with the increased workload. Because of this, after 

 the mortality event was perceived as anomalous, the Texas network received considerable 

 assistance from SEFC, but other areas did not. Lack of pre-existing standard and emergency 

 tissue collection protocols was also a problem. After the event was recognized, SEUS 

 network participants were asked to collect a specific set of tissues for the investigation. This 

 lag in recognition of the event resulted in the protocol being established after about half of 

 what has been defined as the anomalous mortality event occurred. Before the mortality 

 event occurred, some data were lost from those animals investigated but for which no 

 standard tissue sampling protocol was in place. The condition of the stranded animals also 

 had a limiting effect on data collection. As is common in most investigations of stranded 

 animals, few of the strandings were fi-eshly dead, and thus few provided tissues useful for 

 histopathology and other pathological examinations (the available clinical necropsy and 

 histopathology reports are presented in Appendix VIII). The inability to examine numerous 

 live healthy and live "affected" dolphins limited the possibility of identifying disease agents 

 or other potential causes of mortality. Few of the voluntary network participants have the 

 skills required to conduct an adequate gross pathologic examination on marine mammals. 



The scope of the anomalous mortality event was not evident until about the end of 

 February, 1990. At first, the event was somewhat obscured by the mass stranding in 



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