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© Paul Horsman

Eight months after BP PLC capped the well that spewed 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, dolphins are washing ashore in east Louisiana with oil from that spill on their bodies - most recently two weeks ago, a federal stranding coordinator said Thursday.

Blair Mase, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service, said oil may not have had anything to do with the animals' deaths. The causes have not been determined, she said.

"We're still seeing dolphins wash ashore with evidence of oil," she said. She said 15 dolphins with some oil on them have been found since last April, when the Deepwater Horizon well blew wild, and eight of them bore oil from that well. One of those eight was found two weeks ago, she said in a teleconference Thursday.

The well was capped July 15. Dead dolphins spotted with oil from the spill were found Dec. 3, Jan. 25, Feb. 18, 19 and 28, and March 25, all in east Louisiana, NOAA spokeswoman Kim Amendola said in an email. A seventh dolphin found since Nov. 2 also had oil on it, but not from that well, and two have not been tested, she said.

"The dolphins had a few spots of weathered oil on them, but none of them was completely covered in oil," she wrote.

Four dead dolphins with oil on their bodies were among the 100 found by Nov. 2 in the spill area, across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, according to the most recent consolidated wildlife report on the federal-BP spill response site.