May 12, 2026 — Officials at the Florida Panhandle Maritime Institute have said that while further testing needs to be completed to conclude its investigation, red tide appears to be the likely cause of death of the March 2026 stranding of about two dozen bottlenose dolphins in the Panhandle, the majority of which were in Gulf and Bay counties.
Lauren Albritton, coordinator at FPMI, wrote in a May 7 email that while they are awaiting the results from histopathology, in which tissues are sectioned and examined under a microscope by an expert, “at this time our leading hypothesis is that it was caused by brevetoxin, or red tide.”
Of the stranded bottlenose dolphins, she wrote that 88 percent were in a moderate to advanced state of decomposition, when they were recovered.