{"id":599883,"date":"2026-09-14T08:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599883\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T08:18:09","slug":"headless-dolphin-likely-dead-before-decapitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/599883\/","title":{"rendered":"Headless dolphin likely dead before decapitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">DoC believes the head was removed using a tool or implement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWe can\u2019t confirm what the cause of death was and will not be able to. The dolphin was already in a state of decay when it was found, so a necropsy was unlikely to give us any more information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">DoC\u2019s marine scientists believe it is a bottlenose, fully protected under the Marine Mammals Act 1978.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">It is an offence to take or possess any part of a marine mammal without a DoC permit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">A tissue sample was sent for genetic testing to confirm the species.<\/p>\n<p class=\"DsYfyjGuqRwC\" style=\"display:none\">Anyone with information is asked to contact DoC\u2019s 0800 DOC HOT line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DoC believes the head was removed using a tool or implement. \u201cWe can\u2019t confirm what the cause of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[7972,9218,1389,22506,690,160518,108688,26034,6179,67917,6440,1874,295697,6036,120,111,139,69,312,147,122,406,1533],"class_list":["post-599883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-beach","tag-before","tag-conservation","tag-coromandel","tag-dead","tag-decapitated","tag-decapitation","tag-department","tag-died","tag-dolphin","tag-ever","tag-found","tag-headless","tag-know","tag-likely","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-says","tag-science","tag-unlikely","tag-wildlife","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}