Researchers say they've now firmly connected the high rates of dolphin deaths seen in the northern Gulf of Mexico to the 5-year-old Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which damaged the mammals' lungs and adrenal glands. "No feasible alternative causes remain that can reasonably explain the timing, location, and nature of these distinct lesions and increase in deaths," veterinary epidemiologist Stephanie Venn-Watson said. The dead dolphins "show unusual and life-threatening adrenal and lung diseases" that weakened them and contributed to their deaths, she said. Dolphins in the northern Gulf have been dying at rates four to five times higher than before the spill. Finding out why is one of the goals of the National Resource Damage Assessment that federal agencies have been conducting since the April 2010 blowout, which killed 11 men aboard the drill rig Deepwater Horizon and uncorked a subsea gusher that spewed for three months.

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