Yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m. a 6-foot, 500-pound common dolphin washed up on the shore of Gilgo Beach on Long Island. It was first watched over and comforted by the Nassau County Police, who said they had a brochure on what to do in this type of emergency, according to WPIX. A rescue team from the Riverhead Foundation showed up with a stretcher and took over from there. more ›

Earlier this week, iReport had a video of a really cute harbor seal spotted off Red Hook [Via Brownstoner] - the video is below (it's an auto-play and it's seriously awww-worthy)! Besides being ridiculously cute, the video brings back a flood of memories of various seal sighting in the city. There was Gowana, the harp seal in the Gowanus Canal, a harbor seal in Brooklyn, another harp seal near Battery Park, and a harbor seal on the Upper West Side. more ›

WCBS reports that, according to an Animal Department Supervisor at the New York Aquarium, the shark was a thresher shark, not known for attacking humans. Its attempts to swim onto shore are considered abnormal so the shark could have been sick. In fact, a 10-year-old witness said, "It was like freaking out. Its tail was flopping everywhere...Maybe it got separated from its family. It looked sick." more ›

Sad news about Sludgie the whale: The baby minke whale, who captivated our attention as he frolicked in the Gowanus Bay, died yesterday afternoon. He beached himself near Clinton Street around 5PM. more ›

Yesterday, WNBC's Chopper 4 captured footage of a minke whale swimming in the Gowanus Canal Bay. Minke whales are a suborder of baleen whales, which rise to the surface the way this whale does. more ›

"Look at them, they're like bags of meat. They're huge." more ›

Last weekend, Newsday had a story about a baby harbor seal that was sick and possibly lost. Like many a Manhattanite at 1AM, the male pup was stranded in Brooklyn. The Riverhead Foundation took him in, after making sure he was really lost and/or abandoned by his mother, versus "just sunning himself as he waited for his mother." The six week old seal was responding to initial treatment, but Gothamist would love Newsday to update the story. In the meantime, we're adopting a seal. more ›

Dead bodies, oildrums, garbage from 1964, these are things that you'd expect to find in the Gowanus Canal. But not a harp seal. The Times reports on the 1 year-old harp seal who has defied the laws of science by living and apparently in the Gowanus. The president of the Gowanus Industrial Park, John Quadrozzi Jr. (who calls the waters of the Gowanus "pretty disgusting") saw the seal when it emerged, hurt and bloodied. The seal has been recovering Riverhead Foundation, pretty much fully recovered, though scientists will never know if the canal's conditions contributed to the seal's malnutrition. Oh, scientific process Gothamist's foot - have these scientists ever been within half a mile of the Gowanus? more ›