In the Cleaned-Up Potomac River, Dolphins Are Living, Mating – and Even Giving Birth

Five decades of pollution control and restoration efforts at the United States’ Potomac River is finally paying off: where dolphins had once long-disappeared, researchers are now cataloging well over a thousand of them in the lower reaches of the river.

The researchers even witnessed a dolphin giving birth in the Mid-Atlantic river in August, and it marked one of only three times scientists have ever seen a bottlenose dolphin giving birth in the wild anywhere.

“People actually forgot that there were dolphins in the river because they hadn’t been seen since the 1880s and because the river was in poor condition, people weren’t seeing them,” adds Melissa Diemand, spokesperson for Potomac Conservancy, to NBC4.