More than 100 dolphins have been found dead in the Amazon River after the water temperatures exceed 37c – the average temperature of a hot human bath.
The shocking discovery was made in Lake Tefe, and is thought to have been the result of a long drought in the area. A spokesman for Brazil's Mamirauá Institute said: “It’s still early to determine the cause of this extreme event but according to our experts, it is certainly connected to the drought period and high temperatures in Lake Tefé, in which some points are exceeding 39 degrees Celsius.”
And British researcher Daniel Tregidgo, who lives in the area, claimed that the last month of weather has seemed like “science fiction”. Distraught at the sight of the dead dolphins, which he called a “tragedy”, he said: “The past month in Tefé has seemed like a science-fiction climate-change scenario.
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“Regular sightings of pink river dolphins are one of the great privileges of living in the heart of the Amazon. Pretty much every time I go to the market to have breakfast I see them come to the surface and it reminds me why I live here. To know that one has died is sad, but to see piles of carcasses, knowing that this drought has killed over 100, is a tragedy.”
The exact cause is not known, although many experts have claimed that the hot water was “certainly a main component”. However, investigations are ongoing, with researchers looking into possible disease and sewage contamination of the area.
It has been found that the level of the Amazon's river, which is the world's biggest, has actually fallen dramatically by a whopping 30cm per day for the last two weeks, and has dried up by 7.4 metres in total just this year alone.
This has led to some areas being unreachable by boat, cutting smaller communities off from the vital network of food deliveries normally sent using the river.
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