Cape Cod Dolphin Stranding Leaves One Dead, Four Rescued [VIDEO]

One dolphin died and another four were rescued and released back to sea Thursday after they became stranded along the coast of Provincetown Harbor in Cape Cod, Mass.

According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), a marine mammal rescue team responded to a call from the Cape Cod police department early Thursday morning.

By the time the team arrived, one of the dolphins was already dead. But after preforming a physical examination on the living dolphins, the animal rescue team deemed the four living dolphins were healthy enough to be released.

The dolphin that died likely succumbed to shock, said Brian Sharp, manager of IFAW's marine mammal rescue unit.

It's a very traumatic event," Sharp said, according to the Boston Globe. "Feeling the effects of gravity for the first time and the stress can make them go into shock, and with shock, there's a chance of the body shutting down."

The Cape Cod region is a hotspot for marine mammal strandings, however the number of dolphin strandings this year has been below average, according to Cape Cod Today, which cited IFAW figures. In a typical year 226 animals strand off of Cape Cod. So far this year the region's marine mammal response team has reported 44 animal strandings, but only two events involved dolphins.

Citing marine mammal specialists, the Boston Globe said that Thursday's stranding probably happened after the five dolphins became separated from a larger group and became trapped in shallow water between sandbars.

"Sometimes they get really deep into the bay or they swim up creeks, and the tide fluctuations are so pronounced here in Cape Cod that they can't find their way out," Booth said.

The four dolphins were loaded onto special transportation trailers and moved from their stranding location to Herring Cove Beach, which is an ideal spot to release rescued dolphins because the water becomes quite deep close to shore, Sharp said.

During summer of 2013, dolphins were stranding themselves up and down the US East Coast in shockingly high numbers. Marine mammal experts from NOAA attributed the mass dolphin stranding, which amounted to nearly 1,400 beached animals from New York to Florida, to a measles-like virus.