Unusual dolphin washes up on SC beach. Where did it come from?

A type of dolphin rarely found near South Carolina beaches died after washing up on the seashore this past weekend south of Myrtle Beach, the suspected victim of an illness that drove it inshore from deep water.

That’s the word from the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network, which says rescuers had attempted to save the striped dolphin when it came ashore late Friday night at North Litchfield Beach.

Hours after people pushed the dolphin back into the ocean, the network received a report that it was found dead farther down the beach at Litchfield, a Georgetown County community between Myrtle Beach and Pawleys Island on the northern coast. Photographs confirmed the creature was likely the same one that had stranded at Litchfield, the network said in a news release Monday.

“This is an offshore dolphin. There is no reason why it would be this close to shore without there being an issue,’’ said Lauren Rust, the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network’s director. “It stranded several times and died, which leads us to believe something was wrong.’’

Striped dolphins, characterized by a black line that runs down their sides, live in the deep ocean far from land. They are abundant worldwide, but the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network says they are not usually found along South Carolina beaches. The one that washed up at Litchfield was under 7 feet long, Rust said.

Bottlenose dolphins, which can reach 13 feet and are often larger than striped dolphins, are the types usually seen along the South Carolina coast, either in tidal creeks and or in the ocean just off the beaches. About 50 to 60 marine mammals, many of them bottlenose dolphins, wash up on beaches each year in South Carolina, the network said. That often results from illness or injury, experts say.

But the last recorded stranding of a striped dolphin in South Carolina was in 2015, the news release said. The first recorded stranding was in 1976 in South Carolina, the Lowcountry Marine Mammal Network said.

“It is always unfortunate to see such a beautiful animal deceased, but the information we get from this animal will help us better understand this species,’’ the network’s release said. The carcass was sent to a federal laboratory in Charleston and is being kept in a freezer for further study.

A spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, the state’s wildlife agency, said she had not heard about the stranding, but agreed it would be unusual. DNR spokeswoman Erin Weeks said she was checking on the report.

The striped dolphin that stranded in Georgetown County was about six to seven years old and appeared to be “emaciated,’’ the network said.